A Hunter’s Paradise: a zooarchaeological analysis of hunting practices in the Kankakee Marsh

Summary

From about 16,000 BCE to the early 20th century, the Kankakee Marsh was a vast wetland covering about a million acres in northern Indiana and Illinois. Today the marsh covers about one percent of its original area. After Removal Period, the marsh was famous among hunters for its abundant populations of fur bearing mammals and waterfowl. A regional analysis of the Kankakee Marsh is conducted to analyze the intersite variability of the faunal remains recovered. These sites date from the Archaic to the protohistoric. The data are then compared with primary historical sources in order to assess the ways that faunal populations changed over time. This research contributes to a broader understanding of past foodways, as well as to the discourse on the impact human societies have on animal populations.

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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