People and Animals on the Move: Insights from the Promontory Caves on Proto-Apachaean Faunal Use and Hunting Practices

Summary

The faunal assemblages recovered from the Promontory Caves by Julian Steward, and more recently by John Ives and Joel Janetski, suggest that the subsistence practices, hunting patterns, and mobility strategies of those using the caves ca. AD 1100 to 1300 differed greatly from those of later peoples who used similar ceramics in the same region. While there are many potential explanations for these differences, this paper uses faunal data to argue that large game hunting, together with the mobility patterns of the animals hunted and transport decisions made by hunters living in the Promontory caves, may have adversely affected large game populations in the area and, as a result, prompted some proto-Apachean individuals to leave the Great Salt Lake region when large game populations became less reliable. Because of the heavy dietary focus individuals living in the Promontory Caves placed on large game, it is possible that when these individuals left the area, they followed migrating game, eventually ending up in new places such as the Dismal River region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Implications of the Promontory, Dismal River, and Franktown Archaeological Records for Apachean Prehistory

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15463