Is Bigger Always Better? Body-Size, Prey Rank, and Hunting Technology

Summary

Zooarchaeological applications of rationale derived from the Prey Choice Model (PCM) are based on the assumption that prey body-size is a robust proxy for prey rank and post-encounter return rate. The PCM predicts dietary expansion and contraction in response to the encounter rates with large-sized and highly ranked game. In zooarchaeological assemblages, co-variation in the abundances of large and small-sized prey are often viewed as reflecting changes in foraging efficiency and are usually attributed to resource depression or other processes that influence the encounter rates with large-sized, high ranked prey. However, changes in hunting technology and techniques can greatly alter the efficiency of hunting different prey. Using empirical data from ethnographic sources we show how snaring and other techniques used to procure smaller-sized prey can be more reliable and productive than hunting certain large game. We then use archaeological data from Holocene sites in the Bonneville basin of western North America to show that leporids were more frequently targeted than larger-sized and presumably high ranked game, even when the latter were abundant on the landscape.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• A Sense of Question: Papers in Honor of James F. O'Connell

Keywords

Spatial Coverage