Late Holocene Resource Depression in San Francisco Bay: Recent Research with Tule Elk, Sturgeon, and Waterfowl

Summary

Prehistoric resource depression has been widely documented in many late Holocene contexts characterized by expanding human population densities and some of the most detailed records of this phenomenon have been derived from the San Francisco Bay area of California. I summarize here recent analyses focusing on tule elk, waterfowl, and sturgeon from multiple regional sites using traditional zooarchaeological measures of resource depression but also those drawing on allometric size relationships, stable isotopes, and ancient DNA. These analyses suggest the late prehistoric faunal landscape of the region was fundamentally anthropogenic and have implications for a wide range of other significant changes in human behavior and biology as well as the modern management of California vertebrate faunas.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ancestral Native American Archaeology of the San Francisco Bay Area   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage