Size matters: 3-mm sieves do not increase richness in a fishbone assemblage from Arrawarra I, an aboriginal Australian shell midden on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, Australia

For 30 years the prevailing viewpoint regarding the retrieval of archaeological faunal material has been: smaller sieve mesh yields more identified taxa. We discuss the findings of sieving experiments form a coastal midden site, in which an assemblage of more than 60,000 fish-bone specimens was successively sieved through 6, 3, and 1-mm mesh sieves. Against expectations, we identified no more taxa in the 3- mm sieve fraction than were apparent in the 6-mm fraction. We discuss the probable causes of a result at odds with other researchers' results and attribute the difference to (a) idiosyncratic, inter-regional variability in the range of skeletal morphologies in fish communities; (b) the possiblity that processing activities will differentially delete skeletal segments such as the head; and (c) destructive physical and chemical processes that may have rendered otoliths invisible, despite the use of small-mesh.