Could Large Mammal Faunal Remains Provide Indirect Evidence of Precontact Landscape Management?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

It is widely acknowledged that fire was used throughout the western United States as a landscape management tool. Direct archaeological evidence is rare and successful studies that identify Native American burning rely on multidisciplinary approaches. One such study in California by Lightfoot, Cuthrell, and colleagues used changes in the relative abundance of small mammal species through time as part of a broader argument that precontact Native American burning was used to maintain open meadows in what is now a forested environment. In an unrelated series of studies, Broughton has identified a pattern of increased hunting of artiodactyls in the Late period. Using a detailed biological habitat suitability model for black-tailed deer I examine whether Late period increases in artiodactyl indices in Central California may have been driven by regular Native American burning of chaparral habitats. If these patterns can be demonstrated it suggests that faunal data (old and new) could provide evidence of widescale landscape management.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40253.0