Applied zooarchaeology provides baselines which can be used in modern conservation biology to better understand how faunal communities have changed over time. This goal can only be accomplished, however, by first accounting for the multiple biases present within the archaeological record, and how they may affect sample representativeness. Taxonomic analysis was conducted on freshwater mussel shell from the late prehistoric (ca. A.D. 700 - 1200) Kinlock site, Sunflower County, Mississippi. Species-area curves and biodiversity indices demonstrate that random sampling of surface clusters of shell, up to about 4,000 valves, provides an adequate picture of the overall surface assemblage. Comparison of surface and subsurface contexts shows a highly significant difference in species numbers and proportions, indicating a need for multi-context sampling when dealing with archaeological shell deposits.

The historically introduced House Rock Valley bison herd has, in recent years, migrated from the eastern Arizona Strip onto the Kaibab Plateau within Grand Canyon National Park. Bison are considered a nonnative species to the southern Colorado Plateau, and the animals adversely impact sensitive ecosystems prompting National Park Service wildlife managers to pursue their removal. Archaeofaunal evidence of bison in the Grand Canyon and neighboring regions, however, raises concern that bison may in fact be native. Assessing the evidence within a zooarchaeological interpretive framework is critical since mere presence/absence lists of bison remains do not address the potentially complex cultural processes involved in the formation of archaeofaunal assemblages. Inter-assemblage comparisons illustrate a decline in relative abundance and skeletal completeness correlated to distance from traditionally understood historical bison distribution. If bison were present in the Southwest, as the evidence suggests, they likely entered the region only occasionally as small, dispersed herds.