What Late Formative Period and Modern Jackrabbits (*Lepus californicus) Tell Us about Climate Change in the Southeastern Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This poster documents the environmental conditions of the Tularosa Basin/Hueco Bolson during the Doña Ana and El Paso phases (AD 1000–1450) in the Jornada Mogollon Region of the US Southwest by comparing stable carbon isotope values of black-tailed jackrabbits (*Lepus californicus) from archaeological sites to modern jackrabbits in southern New Mexico and west Texas. Research by Stephen Smith and his collaborators provides evidence that carbon isotope values of jackrabbit bone collagen produce an effective proxy for plant communities, and by extension environmental conditions, within which these herbivorous animals lived and foraged. Knowing this, it is possible not only to understand jackrabbit diet and environmental conditions in prehistory but also to compare environmental proxies with modern jackrabbit stable carbon values to document how the environment has changed in the last 500–1,000 years. A comparison between archaeological and modern jackrabbits provide a deeper temporal context for understanding climate change in the Tularosa Basin and Hueco Bolson than traditional historical methods. Additionally, a discussion of the utility of stable hydrogen isotope analysis for differentiating between jackrabbit diets biased toward either C4 or CAM plants will be presented as a method to increase interpretive precision of dietary and environmental variability.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33483