Applying ZooMS to Gault Site Faunal Material: Identifying the Unidentifiable and the Case for Database Expansion

Summary

The Gault site is a well-known Clovis-age occupation site in Texas, with further evidence of pre-Clovis activity. In addition to an abundance of lithic artifacts, the site has yielded thousands of faunal remains. Unfortunately, the taphonomic processes to which these bones have been subjected have resulted in the vast majority of them being morphologically unidentifiable beyond small, medium, and large mammal. This greatly restricts researchers’ abilities to understand the human-environmental relationships at this site. However, the application of the peptide mass fingerprinting technique ZooMS promises to allow for the reconsideration of these otherwise limited materials by opening the door to biomolecular identification to the genus or species level. Recent initial analysis of Gault faunal material from two areas of excavation has yielded results indicating that collagen preservation in some samples is sufficient to allow for ZooMS identification. These results demonstrate the need for the expansion of the reference database to include more North, Central, and South American species. Such an expansion would enable the reconsideration of otherwise severely restrictive faunal assemblages, and allow us to increase understanding of the earliest American’s lifeways.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16227