Fish Body Size and Ancestral Pueblo Foraging Decisions in New Mexico, ca. AD 1350–1600

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Small numbers of fish remains are frequently recovered from Pueblo IV (AD 1350–1600) sites in the Middle Rio Grande basin of central New Mexico, but they are rare during earlier time periods. Increased aquatic habitat quality during this time could have increased fish body size and the energy obtained by Ancestral Puebloan fishers could have been maximized. Paleozoologists, however, frequently estimate the body size of fishes from skeletal remains with linear measurements and cherry-picked specimens. Such an approach will not work with archaeological fish assemblages from the American Southwest/Mexican Northwest. The relatively small size of fish assemblages requires that the remains present be used more efficiently. Here, I use a 3D geometric morphometric approach to estimate the body size of archaeological fishes more accurately and efficiently from fragmented skeletal remains recovered from the Middle Rio Grande. Such an approach can help rigorously test whether a shift in body size made the pursuit of fishes in small quantities optimal for Ancestral Pueblo people.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Animal Bones to Human Behavior   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32065