Assessing Bias in Archaeological Shell Assemblages

It is frequently assumed that assemblages of shell from archaeological sites suffer from various types of bias that might affect interpretations of the data. Such biases potentially include both pre- and post-depositional alteration of the shell; prehistoric practices that led to nonrandom collecting; sampling and recovery methods; and differing analytic capabilities. Species representation and metric data show that the effects of bias on three prehistoric freshwater mussel shell assemblages from the SE United States are minimal.