Tuhinga 7: 1-20, doi: 10.3897/tuhinga.7.e34124
The estimation of live fish size from archaeological cranial bones of the New Zealand kahawai Arripis trutta
expand article infoFoss Leach, Janet Davidson, Michelle Horwood, Sean Mallon
© Foss Leach, Janet Davidson, Michelle Horwood, Sean Mallon.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Leach F, Davidson J, Horwood M, Mallon S (1996) The estimation of live fish size from archaeological cranial bones of the New Zealand kahawai Arripis trutta. Tuhinga 7: 1-20. https://doi.org/10.3897/tuhinga.7.e34124
Open Access
Abstract
Five paired cranial bones and the otoliths of a modern sample of 143 kahawai, Arripis trutta, were measured and regression analysis performed against live fork length and ungutted weight. A number of regression models were examined (linear, logarithmic, exponential and power curve) to work out the optimum estimator for each bone measurement. Coefficients are provided for 44 equations linking archaeological bone size to live characteristics. It was found that fork length could be estimated with a standard error of less than ±29 mm and weight to less than ±290 g.
Keywords
New Zealand, kahawai, archaeozoology, Arripis trutta, regression analysis, length and weight estimation.