Notes from Nature - Labs

ArchaeoZooArchive is an online community science project developed by the Environmental Archaeology Program of the Florida Museum of Natural History. We are asking for your help to transcribe specimen data from paper archives recording information about animal remains found in archaeological deposits. Hundreds of thousands of these archives have never been recorded from the paper records to digital databases where researchers and the public can access the information. These are a rich resource of scientific information about 10,000 years of interaction between people and animals across the circum-Caribbean. We need your help!

From human’s best friends to a delicious fish dinner, help us use archaeological data to learn about the different kinds of animals that humans have interacted with through the past! Join us and delve into the legacy archives of animal specimen data from archaeological sites.

Natural history museums often curate archaeological animal remains which are studied by zooarchaeologists to learn about past biodiversity and the many ways that humans have adapted to and impacted the environments in which they lived.

Here at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Environmental Archaeology Program curates animal, plant, and sediment remains from archaeological sites. These have been used for decades in environmental archaeology research by anthropologists, biologists, ecologists, and others. The results of their investigations are “hidden” in an archive of paper specimen records. Help us reveal those data by digitizing our archival records!