Introduction to Zooarchaeological Method and Theory: a Special Issue Honoring R. Lee Lyman

The Society for American Archaeology presented R. Lee Lyman with the Fryxell award for Interdisciplinary Excellence in Zooarchaeology in 2011. Lyman has produced over 120 journal articles or book chapters, and four single-authored books on the topic, and this issue honors his contributions to zooarchaeological method and theory with six original pieces by his peers. Arguably, his greatest impact has been in the field of vertebrate taphonomy and the development of a means to measure density-mediated bone attrition, but of equal importance was emphasis in the discipline that unit selection, or what one measures, should be linked to a particular research question. Lyman's work has also stressed the importance of making zooarchaeology relevant to modern issues of conservation biology.