Commodification and Resource Depression of White-Tailed Deer in Seventeenth-Century New England

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While white-tailed deer were hunted by Native peoples in eastern North America for thousands of years, historical evidence suggests that deer populations declined dramatically following European colonization. Yet questions remain about the exact timing and causes of this decline. To address these questions, I analyzed zooarchaeological data from several sites in southern New England through the lens of behavioral ecology and with specific attention to information on deer age, body size, body part representation, and skeletal fragmentation. Results indicate that deer declined in abundance during the seventeenth century and that deer experienced both increased predation and decreased food availability at this time. Interestingly however, these changes occurred alongside large-scale demographic collapse of Native American populations and prior to the widespread influx of European settlers to the region. Deer population decline was therefore driven not exclusively by human demography, but by the cessation of anthropogenic niche construction as well as economic forces such as the commodification of deerskins and venison under capitalism.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35778.0