Contextualizing the Influence of Climate and Culture on Mollusk Collection: *Donax obesulus Malacology from the Jequetepeque and Nepeña Valleys, Peru

Summary

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

The influences of climate and human activity on archaeomalacological assemblages can be difficult to disentangle. We compare Early Horizon (EH; 800–200 BC) and Middle Horizon (MH; AD 600–1000) *Donax obesulus size, age estimates, and paleoclimate data. *D. obesulus is a short-lived (<5 years) intertidal clam common in archaeological and modern contexts along the coastline of Peru. Prehispanic anthropogenic pressures on the fishery and role of *D. obesulus in ritual life are poorly understood. We estimate age of capture of *D. obesulus specimens using a length-based Von Bertalanffy growth function to quantify the ubiquity of shell age, and compare both specimen size and age with % lithic flux, a proxy of El Niño frequency and strength, from a marine sediment core. The main pattern we observe is diachronic variation in *D. obesulus size with larger shells during the EH and smaller shells during the later MH, alongside a decrease in % lithic flux (implying reduced El Niño event frequency). There is stasis in *D. obesulus size during the MH through different occupational phases despite another reduction in % lithic flux. The data reveal that this bivalve collection may have been impacted by climate, seasonal, and cultural circumstances during these periods.

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): 32296