Possibly no other subject divides the zooarchaeology world into two separate camps more than biometry: those who like it and those who hate it. Although the choice depends very much on personalattitudes and expertise it also relies on different traditions. For instance, some North American zooarchae-ologists do not even measure bones, an attitude that probably horrifies many central European researchers. In the last two or three decades there has been a tendency to see biometrical studies as terribly old fashioned, almost a symbol of an obsolete approach to zooarchaeology divorced from mainstream archaeology. This idea developed as a consequence of the emergence–in the'60s–and spread–in the “70s and'80s–of" processual archaeology". Processual archaeology was by and large good news for zooarchaeology. The strong emphasis on systemic approach, experimental work and, to some extent, middle range theory, helped to centralise the role of the study of the animal bones and to stress its importance for archaeological understanding. It is indeed revealing that one of the classic books of the “New Archaeology" was simply called Bones (Binford 1981). Nevertheless, processual archaeology, like any cultural trend, also brought with it a large baggage of preconceptions and biases. Taphonomy and butchery became the core ofzooarchaeological investigations, the former because it could be replicated experimentally and observed ethnographically and the latter because it was the direct consequence of a human gesture, and in this respect emphasised the link between archaeology and anthropology. Though these were valuable areas of research they were unfortunately prioritised at the expense of more traditional subjects, such as biometry. This trend has been (and to some extent still is) particularly strong in North America and Great Britain. Other countries, less influenced by the processual thought, have con-tinued to operate in the same way as they had done for decades–in some cases completely ignoring any taphonomic issues. The work done by the Munich school at Manching (Germany)(Boessneck et al. 1971) relied heavily on biometricanalysis, and many zooarchaeologists based in central Europe have continued to operate in a similar vein in the following three decades. The fact that processual archaeology has grown older and that many of its aspects have been reevaluated should encourage zooarchaeologists to reconsider their priorities. In 1978 Joachim Boessneck and Angela von den Driesch wrote a plea for a more effective and extensive use of metric data from zooarchaeological assemblages. With the aid ofa number of examples they showed how biometry can help in addressing important questions regard-ing species identifications, ecology and cultural history (Boessneck & von den Driesch 1978). This paper has a similar scope. It is not inappropriate that after more than twenty years similar concepts should be reiterated. It is unquestionable that in these last two decades animal biometry has continued to provide its useful contribution to archaeology, but it is also true–partly for the reasons discussed above–that the subject has not made any substantial progress. The large amount of research-driven analyses of animalbone measurements that has been carried out in the last few years should change all this. After a dormant period biometry has, in the late “90s, started to build the foundations for becoming one of the most rewarding areas of zooarchaeological research in the 21st century. Due to the opportunities offered nowadays by the sophistication of computer analysis and a better understanding of the factors affecting …