Profile

Biography

Terry O'Connor read Archaeology at London University, specialising in field archaeology and the study of animal remains. On completion of a PhD in which sheep featured strongly, he worked at the Environmental Archaeology Unit, University of York for nine years, principally conducting zooarchaeological research on material from York. He then moved to the University of Bradford for a further nine years, teaching zooarchaeology and environmental archaeology.

Terry returned to York in 1999 and intends to stay here.

Research

Overview

My research explores the relations between past peoples and the animals around them. Within that, I am particularly interested in how archaeological bone assemblages form, beginning with the disposal decisions that people make and going on through the action of scavengers, sediment chemistry, and the sampling decisions that we take on site. These taphonomic studies can seem to be over-detailed and pedantic, but understanding the formation of archaeological assemblages is fundamental to making credible and rigorous inferences from them.

A different line of research concerns the animals that have adapted to our homes and settlements and that live alongside us. We are familiar with rats and mice, pigeons and crows, today but for how long has this been going on? These commensal animals tell us something about the ecology of past settlements - what colonisation opportunities they offered - but may also tell us about past attitudes to animals. Are rats vermin or pets or just a convenient snack? A major book on this subject is planned for publication in 2012.

I have recently completed a major research project on livestock, deadstock and animal husbandry in towns across Viking Age Europe (in Environmental Archaeology 15 [2010]), with further work and a major synthesis on urban assemblages from York.  This has demonstrated the existence of spatial patterning in the condition and composition of faunal assemblages which relates to ‘neighbourhood’ patterns of selection, consumption and disposal.  It has also highlighted the complexity of the taphonomic processes which need to be considered in these contexts. This research has led to the proposal of new methodologies for dealing with large urban assemblages, published in Archaeology of York 19(2). 

At the same time, I have been pursuing research on the evidence for Late Upper Palaeolithic activity in the Karstic Dales of North Yorkshire. This has involved a detailed analysis and reappraisal of historic collections from cave excavations and the application of high precision C14 dating to human and animal material. The primary focus of this work has been to resolve stratigraphic problems with the deposits from specific caves and more general biostratigraphic issues relating to this distinctive region during a period of high amplitude climate change. This has led to a broader concern with the multi-period nature of many deposits of human and animal remains in caves, in particular, the use of caves for burial and other rites in the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age. This work continues, in collaboration with Dr Tim Taylor (University of Bradford) and Tom Lord.  

One other area of research interest is the diagnosis and interpretation of animal palaeopathology. This is partly methodological, seeking to improve the criteria that we use in diagnosis (e.g. in Documenta Archaeobiologiae 6 [2008]), and partly interpretive, using the prevalence of pathologies as another source of information on past peoples' use of and attitude towards the animals around them. 

My published work includes a number of publications in the Archaeology of York series.  Other major publications include the books The Archaeology of Animal Bones (Sutton, 2000), Biosphere to Lithosphere (Oxbow, 2005), Extinctions and Introductions (2010) and, with John Evans, Environmental Archaeology: Principles and Methods (Sutton, 1999; 2nd ed. 2005).

Current projects

• Livestock and deadstock in medieval towns
• Vertebrates in Caves
• Vertebrate Palaeopathology
• Vertebrate Taphonomy

Future research:

• Further work on bone taphonomy across a full range of contexts will run alongside more detailed treatment of prehistoric human and animal bone from caves in Britain; this will provide the context for a new programme of C14 dating on material from caves across the country (in collaboration with Taylor, Edmonds & Milner)
• against this background, next year will see the start of a major book on past human/animal relationships; premised on a radical critique of approaches to domestication, this study will emphasise the complex webs of historical and ecological relations in which animals and people are always set
• currently co-editing (with Dr Naomi Sykes, University of Nottingham) a book on introductions and extinctions in the British fauna

Research group(s)

• Bioarchaeology
• Theory and Practice

Publications

Selected publications

• O'Connor, T.P. 2010. "Livestock and deadstock in early medieval Europe from the North Sea to the Baltic", Environmental Archaeology 15(1), 1-15
  
• O'Connor, T.P. and Sykes, N. 2010. Extinctions and Invasions. A social history of British fauna. Oxford, Windgather Press. ["Introduction - the British fauna in a changing world" pp1-9; "The house mouse" pp127-133; with A.C. Kitchener "Wild, domestic and feral cats" pp83-94].
  
• Koon, H.E.C., O'Connor, T.P. and Collins, M.C. 2009. "Sorting the butchered from the boiled", Journal of Archaeological Science. doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2009.08.015
  
• O'Connor, T.P. 2009. "Culture and Environment; mind the gap" Land and People. Papers in memory of John G. Evans. Allen, M.J., Sharples, N. and O’Connor, T.P. (eds), Prehistoric Society Research Paper 2. London: The Prehistoric Society; 11-18
• O'Connor, T.P. and Bunting, M.J. 2009. "Environmental Change in an Orkney Wetland: plant and molluscan evidence from Quoyloo Meadow", Land and People. Papers in memory of John G. Evans. Allen, M.J., Sharples, N. and O’Connor, T.P. (eds), Prehistoric Society Research Paper 2. London: The Prehistoric Society; 162-8
• O’Connor, T.P. 2008. ‘Zooarchaeology in Southern Africa: a view from the North’, in S. Badenhorst, P. Mitchell and J. Driver (eds) Animals and People. Archaeozoological papers in honour of Ina Plug. Oxford, British Archaeological Reports 1849; 8-15
• O’Connor, T.P. 2008. ‘On the differential diagnosis of arthropathy in bovids’, in J. Peters (ed.) Documenta Archaeobiologae 6; pp 165-186. 2007.
• "Wild or domestic? Biometric variation in the cat Felis silvestris Schreber", International Journal of Osteoarchaeology DOI: 10.1002/oa.913
• 2007. with Lord, T.C., Siebrandt, D.C., Jacobi, R.M. "People and large carnivores as taphonomic agents in Late Glacial cave assemblages" Journal of Quaternary Science DOI: 10.1002/jqs.1101
• 2007. "Thinking about beastly bodies", Breaking and shaping beastly bodies. Animals as material culture in the Middle Ages, A. Pluskowski (ed.). Oxford, Oxbow Books, pp. 1-10
• 2006. "Vertebrate demography by numbers: age, sex and zooarchaeological practice", in Recent Advances in Ageing and Sexing Animal Bones, D. Ruscillo (ed.). Oxford, Oxbow Books, pp. 1-8.
• 2006: with James Barrett "Animal Bones", Archaeology in Practice. A student guide to archaeological analyses, J. Balme and A. Paterson (eds). Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 260-294.
• 2005. (ed.) Biosphere to lithosphere. New studies in vertebrate taphonomy. Oxford, Oxbow Books
• 2005: with O'Connor, S., "Digitising and image-processing radiographs to enhance interpretation in avian palaeopathology", Feathers, grit and symbolism. Birds and humans in the ancient Old and New Worlds, G. Grupe and J. Peters (eds). Rahden, Marie Leidorf, pp. 69-82.
• 2003. Comment on Leach “Human domestication reconsidered”, Current Anthropology 44(3), 361-2
• 2003. The analysis of urban animal bone assemblages. Archaeology of York 19/2. York, Council for British Archaeology.
• 2003: with Robinson, S., Nicholson, R.A. and Pollard A.M. “An evaluation of Nitrogen porosimetry as a technique for predicting taphonomic durability in animal bone”, Journal of Archaeological Science 30, 391-403.
• 2001. “Collecting, sieving, and animal bone quantification”, in Animals and Man in the Past, H. Buitenhuis, W. Prummel (eds). Groningen: ARC Publicatie 41, pp. 7-16.
• 2001: with Piper, P.J. “Urban small vertebrate taphonomy: a case study from Anglo-Scandinavian York”, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 11, 336-344.
• 2001. “On the interpretation of animal bone assemblages from wics”, in Wics. The early mediaeval trading centres of northern Europe, D. Hill and R. Cowie (eds). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, pp. 54-60.
• 2001. "Economic prehistory or environmental archaeology? On gaining a sense of identity", in Theoretical Issues in Environmental Archaeology, U. Albarella (ed.). Amsterdam, Kluwer  Scientific Publications, pp. 17-27.
• 2001. "Archaeozoology: Western Europe", in Medieval Archaeology, an Encyclopaedia, P. Crabtree (ed.). New York, Garland Publishing, pp. 9-12.
• 2000. The Archaeology of Animal Bones. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.2000. "Animal bone quantification", in Handbook of Archaeological Sciences D.R. Brothwell and A.M. Pollard (eds). London, John Wiley, pp. 699-706.
• 2000: with Jones, A.K.G. "Vertebrate resources", in Handbook  of Archaeological Sciences.   D.R.Brothwell and A.M. Pollard (eds). London, John Wiley, pp. 411-421.
• 2000. "Human refuse as a major ecological factor in medieval urban vertebrate communities", in Human Ecodynamics. G. Bailey, R. Charles and N. Winder (eds). Oxford, Oxbow Books, pp. 15-20.
• 2000: with R.A. Nicholson (eds). People as an Agent of Environmental Change. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Teaching

External activities

Memberships

• Elected Member, International Committee of the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) 2002–6 (re-elected 2006)
• Board Member and Trustee, York Archaeological Trust 2005-10
  
• Member of ERC Peer Review panel, and former member of the AHRB and NERC Peer Review Colleges
  
• President of the Archaeology and Anthropology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (2008)
• Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (elected 2008)

Editorial duties

• Editor of International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 2005-2011
  

Invited talks and conferences

• Session Co-Ordinator & Chair ‘Taphonomy’, ICAZ International Conference Durham 2002
• Session Chair Session Co-Ordinator & Chair ‘Caves and Vertebrates’, ICAZ International Conference Mexico City 2006
• Keynote Speaker Environmental Archaeology of Urban Sites, University of Gdansk, September 2011
  

Media coverage