Climate, Prey Choice, Signaling, and Risk: An Integrated Analysis of Holocene Hunting in the Bonneville and Wyoming Basins, USA

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this poster, we synthesize the available empirical data on return rates for artiodactyls and lagomorphs and explore and integrate different currencies to guide a trans-Holocene analysis of variation in artiodactyl hunting using massive archaeofaunal datasets from predominantly open-air sites from the Bonneville and Wyoming basins. The available empirical data continue to suggest that artiodactyls yield consistently higher return rates than lagomorphs, allowing us to leverage predictions from both the prey choice and energetic-risk models that the relative importance of artiodactyl hunting should scale closely with climate-based change in their abundance on the landscape. We document with modeled climate data that seasonal variables correlated with the relative frequency of artiodactyl hunting in both regions, but that summer temperature has the most important effect. The results have implications for influential behavioral ecological models that relate to diachronic variation in artiodactyl abundances. Specifically, we use the negative relationships between summer temperature and artiodactyl abundances to test predictions from costly signaling models that suggest contexts characterized by greater platforms for social display should exhibit higher artiodactyl abundances than would be predicted from prevailing climatic conditions alone—there is no support for this prediction in either region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37170.0