Stalking the Bison: Changing Perspectives in the Zooarchaeology of Big Game Hunters of the Great Plains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the mid-1980s, Lawrence Todd and colleagues published influential, groundbreaking research in Great Plains zooarchaeology. Todd’s pioneering research established innovative methodological and analytical approaches to studying archaeofauna, focusing on large multi-animal bonebeds representing potential kill and butchery sites. This innovative work formed the foundation on which Great Plains zooarchaeologists conduct analysis today, 40 years later. During his career, Todd published several theoretically based and empirically informed studies presenting fundamental models of the subsistence and land use strategies of North America’s early big game hunters. This paper examines how archaeologists’ inferences of Great Plains big game hunting have evolved using several of Todd’s key early publications as a starting point(e.g., Kelly and Todd 1988; Frison and Todd 1987; Todd et al. 1990). In addition, we assess how new data, methods, and theoretical perspectives have changed our views of Todd’s early work and models of human settlement and subsistence practices in the region. Whether Todd’s theories or approaches remain in vogue, this paper highlights that more than almost any other researcher, Todd has, directly and indirectly, shaped the course of the following generations of zooarchaeologists.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37138.0