Microfauna Analysis at the La Prele Mammoth Site (48CO1401): Implications for Clovis Diet and Paleoenvironments

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Most of the research focusing on Late Pleistocene hunting has been tailored to examining megafauna, with microfauna receiving little attention in the Clovis archaeological record. This project examines the microfauna remains recovered from the La Prele Mammoth Site (48CO1401). La Prele is an open-air Clovis mammoth camp and kill site located in Converse County, Wyoming dated to ~12,900 years ago. Analyzing the microfauna recovered from La Prele provides the opportunity to infer if these small animals constituted as prey that aided in subsistence or if the microfauna naturally occur on the landscape. To compliment my traditional osteological identifications, this research incorporates Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) analysis. The peptide sequences that result from ZooMS analysis can be used to identify microfauna species in bone fragments where morphological characteristics did not survive in the archaeological record. Results will not only improve our understanding of Clovis subsistence and fill a major gap in the archaeological record but also shed light on the generalist versus specialist theoretical debate in the context of Late Pleistocene archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35672.0