Communal Hunting and Teasing Out Signs of Cooperation in the Past

Summary

Communal hunting represents an intensification on particular prey species requiring significant cooperation and coordination, but identifying the social organization of this extinct mode of terrestrial hunting in North America leaves inquiries relegated to evidence derived from archaeology and ethnohistory. One tangible line of evidence used to identify social interaction between participants in hunting activity has been meat sharing. Yet observing meat sharing in the archaeological record has been stymied by the small scale of archaeological excavations and taphonomic processes that have destroyed faunal evidence or obscured provenience. The Protohistoric Site of Eden-Farson provides a rare opportunity to examine meat sharing practices within the context of communal hunting. Past excavations revealed at least 10 discrete households with discrete refuse discarded within each of the structures and a well preserved faunal assemblage dominated by at least 174 Antilocapra americana. Faunal analysis established contemporaneity among households and identified the distribution of hunt proceeds among the participating families. In addition, X-Ray Fluorescence analysis on 50 obsidian tools with household provenience highlights the variation in procurement of obsidian through trade or direct procurement. These independent lines of evidence provide a more complete picture of Shoshone communal hunt participation as well as its organization.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeological Perspectives on the Evolution of Forager Cooperation

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16234