Hunting Varmints, or Tasty Morsels?: An Isotopic Survey of Iroquoian Garden Hunting

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We use stable carbon and nitrogen analyses of over 500 archaeological animal bones to explore the relationship between ancient farming practices and local wild fauna in the context of Iroquoian horticulture in Southern Ontario (AD 1000-1600). By creating openings in the forest and introducing non-local plants, Iroquoian farming served to increase habitat diversity and foraging opportunities for wild animals, potentially attracting a wide range of mammal and bird species that could then be hunted and incorporated into local subsistence. While such garden hunting has long been theorized for Iroquoian sites in the region, it has been difficult to securely identify garden-hunted specimens in the archaeological record. Because maize, a key plant grown in these gardens, has a distinctive isotopic signature, animals feeding within a garden-subsidized ecosystem for a significant portion of their lives should be isotopically distinctive. By comparing the relative importance of maize in the diets of different wild taxa, we identify which species were most effective at exploiting ancient human food systems and relate this to the widely theorized practice of garden hunting. These findings also shed new light on the role of indigenous farming practices in the ecological structure of ancient forest ecosystems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23750