Identifying and applying a "canopy effect" as a marker for deforestation: stable isotope analysis of small artiodactyl and rodent fauna from hunter-gatherer sites in Central Africa

Summary

Applying stable carbon isotopic analyses to discern anthropogenic and natural deforestation events is both useful and important to current deforestation and landscape modification research. The goal of this project is to identify a shift in δ13C content of mammalian teeth caused by the thinning of canopied forests using the "canopy effect" hypothesis. This pilot study tests the merits of the canopy effect hypothesis as applied to deforestation signatures using two extant village sites on the edge of the Central African Republic’s N’Gotto Forest Reserve, which each have different deforestation histories and differing levels of canopy cover. The two species of fauna, giant pouched rats (Cricetomys gambianus), and blue duikers (Philantomba monticola), chosen for this pilot study represent commonly and similarly hunted genera, thus allowing for widespread application of this method. Future studies will encompass multiple varieties of forested environments (eg. tropical, island, temperate, etc.), to test the limits of this hypothesis and its applications.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage