Wing With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Elizabeth Wing will enter information on a series of archaeological assemblages into a Paradox data management system. Approximately 25 specimens are included in a "catalogued lot", and 19,526 of these lots will be entered into the Florida Museum of Natural History computer system. The materials themselves consist of faunal remains from: archaeological sites from Historic period Florida and southeastern Georgia; prehistoric Florida and Georgia; and from coastal and highland Ecuador and Peru. The Florida faunal remains trace changing human-environmental interaction over thousands of years and indicate how human subsistence responded to changing environmental conditions at differing levels of cultural and technological complexity. The South American collections permit scientists to chart the origin and spread of domestic animals in the Andean region and therefore gain insight into perhaps the most significant change in human subsistence technology. Museums such as the Florida State Museum of Natural History contain collections which, in theory, will allow scientists to address many significant questions. However often such materials are difficult to use because they are poorly catalogued and the information which may be available is difficult to recover. Dr. Wing curates one of the most important archaeological faunal collections in the United States and with National Science Foundation support, these remains will be made available online to a very wide group of potential users.
