From Excavations to Occupations: Characterizing the Faunal Assemblage of a Late Woodland Site

Summary

Analysis of a faunal assemblage gives us direct evidence of a subsistence base of archaeological occupation. Woodpecker Cave is a Late Woodland rockshelter site used by the University of Iowa as a field school for student education. The site was first excavated by Warren W. Caldwell after his initial surveying in 1956. In the subsequent years since the university first began excavations in 2012 with Jim Enloe as supervisor, students have expanded the excavation area horizontally leading to portions of levels being excavated throughout different years. The site is excavated in arbitrary ten centimeter levels below datum. To present, each year’s faunal assemblage has been examined by a succession of students for annual reports submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers (CoE). For research purposes, we have chosen to look at level five, excavated during three different seasons, because it appears to have coherent spatial structure, anchored by a hearth with different tasks indicated by distributions of various classes of artifacts. This analysis combines several years’ collections of animal bones from level five to give an integrated, coherent faunal assemblage. This will be viewed in the context of the evident spatial structure for interpretation of site function.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21826