Separating Sheep (Ovis aries L.) and Goats (Capra hircus L.) Using Geometric Morphometric Methods: An Investigation of Astragalus Morphology from Late and Final Bronze Age Central Asian Contexts

Many qualitative and quantitative methods for the separation of sheep and goat bones are based upon Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and European specimens. However, these methods may not be as applicable in other geographical contexts due to regional morphological variation. In order to address this, both traditional and geometric morphometric methods were applied to sheep, (Ovis aries L.) and goat (Capra hircus L.) astragali from archaeological sites from Kazakhstan dating to the Late and Final Bronze Age (1900-900 bce). This exploratory research confirmed that qualitative features remained useful for distinguishing between species, while traditional morphometric methods were unable to conclusively support the field identification of species. Geometric morphometric methods found significant morphological differences between species and confirmed group membership while exploring specific qualitative features that were effective in distinguishing between sheep and goat in Central Asian contexts. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.