Ecological and Anthropogenetic Drivers of Artiodactyl Abundance and Distribution in Northeastern California: Implications for Social Signaling, Resource Intensification, and Resource Depression

Summary

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

Variation in large-game hunting has long been viewed as a primary driver influencing many aspects of change in human behavior and biology worldwide. In western North America, variation in Holocene artiodactyl (e.g., bison, deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep) hunting has often been examined from a behavioral ecological perspective to understand past foraging and land-use practices and related changes in human behavior, including settlement patterns, technological change, social signaling, large-scale resource intensification, and anthropogenic resource depression. However, rarely are past climate records and proxies of human population density coupled with zooarchaeological estimates of artiodactyl abundance to evaluate the ecological and anthropogenic drivers of change over time. Here, we first evaluate how Holocene climatic variability and inferred human population density impacted artiodactyl abundance and distribution in northeastern California using modeled paleoclimatic reconstructions, distributions of radiocarbon dates, and faunal data representing more than 50 archaeological sites and >100,000 faunal specimens. These results offer a regional perspective on how ecological and anthropogenic drivers impacted spatio-temporal distributions of artiodactyls on the landscape. We then use these insights to understand past regional hunting and land-use practices, particularly related to arguments for social signaling, large-scale resource intensification, and anthropogenic resource depression.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37237.0