Seasonal Bison Exploitation in North American Prehistory: A Probabilistic Approach Using Fetal Prey Osteometry

Summary

Bison remains often serve as evidence for seasonal food exploitation in archaeological investigations of the Great Plains and adjacent regions. Interpreting this evidence relies on discrete rutting and calving periods that allow zooarchaeologists to link ontogenetic data to a specific time of year. However, ecological data on modern bison show that the timing of rutting and calving behavior varies between herds and even within the same herd between years. To address this problem, this study models variability in conception dates across modern bison herds. In combination with metric data from fetal prey remains, these conception models are then used to create intra-annual probability distributions for the timing of a hunting event. Using intra-annual probability distributions obtained through this approach, this paper assesses seasonal subsistence hypotheses at three Late Holocene sites: Big Goose Creek (Wyoming), Baker Cave III (Idaho), and Upper Tucker (Texas). Unlike efforts to infer seasonality from fetal bison remains with other methods, this study provides easily interpretable probabilities showing the level of agreement between data and hypotheses.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rethinking Methods of Faunal Analysis   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14662