Bonfire Shelter: A Zooarchaeological Reevaluation of Bone Bed 2

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bonfire Shelter is a rockshelter in Eagle Nest Canyon, a short tributary of the Rio Grande in West Texas, that contains three distinct bone beds of varying ages. The middle bone bed, Bone Bed 2, is a Paleoindian-aged deposit dating to ~12,000 years BP. Bone Bed 2 was originally interpreted as the remains of one or more bison mass kills; however, this interpretation has been heavily contested. Current investigations focus on the zooarchaeological findings of the ASWT Project’s 2019 field season at Bonfire Shelter to reassess the accuracy of earlier interpretations. The bison assemblage was examined with respect to utility indices and butchering patterns to determine trends in carcass transport and utilization. Data collected from both current and previous excavations were combined in order to create an up-to-date age profile for the assemblage. These results will shed more light on the herd structure present in the assemblage and provide information on Paleoindian carcass processing strategies. The implications for site interpretation that arise when that data is integrated with the previous research are also discussed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32133