The Curious Case of Bunnies: Human Behavioral Ecology Perspectives on Fauna from Homol’ovi I, Room 733

Author(s): Matthew Rowe; Kassi Bailey; E. Charles Adams

Year: 2019

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) models are useful in linking the composition of faunal assemblages deposited in archaeological sites to environmental conditions at the time of their deposition, but questions remain about HBE’s utility in evaluating assemblages dominated by small fauna. In this paper, we view the faunal assemblage from Room 733 at Homol’ovi I, an Ancestral Hopi site near Winslow, Arizona through the lens of HBE. Room 733 dates to the Late Homol’ovi Phase (LHP) 1385-1400, but also includes dates from the Early Homol’ovi Phase (EHP) 1330-1365. The room was likely used for maize storage and habitation and closure of the room occurred over an extended period. The resulting fill contained a large trash cone made up of alternating layers of sand and ash. Filling of the room occurred during a period that was much wetter than current conditions, and contrary to predictions drawn from Human Behavioral Ecology, Lagomorphs dominate the assemblage and larger fauna are poorly represented. Given the wetter conditions, HBE models predict that there should be a much greater representation of large fauna. We explore alternative hypotheses to explain the composition of this faunal assemblage and evaluate the applicability of Human Behavioral Ecology models to this assemblage.

Cite this Record

The Curious Case of Bunnies: Human Behavioral Ecology Perspectives on Fauna from Homol’ovi I, Room 733. Matthew Rowe, Kassi Bailey, E. Charles Adams. Presented at The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM. 2019 ( tDAR id: 451079)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -124.365; min lat: 25.958 ; max long: -93.428; max lat: 41.902 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23143