Foxes and Humans at the Late Holocene Uyak Site, Kodiak, Alaska

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.

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is a generalist, omnivorous predator that is often drawn to human environments, exploiting anthropogenic refuse. Foxes may bear little or significant economic importance to prehistoric human foragers, depending on the environmental, economic, and cultural context. Here we investigate human-fox interaction at the late Holocene Uyak site (KOD-145) on Kodiak Island, Alaska. We apply zooarchaeological, taphonomic and stable isotope analyses to the fox remains and find that complete animals were processed for meat and pelts and then discarded. Stable isotope results support foxes as omnivores eating in both the terrestrial and marine environments, and a comparison of archaeological and modern foxes show more dietary variability in ancient foxes. Together, these data suggest that the Uyak foxes were drawn to the village as a stable source of food subsidies, eating discarded marine and terrestrial resources, and consequently were embedded in human subsistence as sources of meat and raw materials. The regular presence of foxes within the settlement could explain why the villagers, who already enjoyed an abundant supply of marine foods, included foxes in their diet.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24557