Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates on Terminal Pleistocene Horses from North America Shows Synchronous Local Extirpation and Overlap with Paleoindian Technocomplexes

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.

Absolute dating in archaeology is dominated by radiocarbon dating, a method that is frequently conducted on zooarchaeological material, creating a large and diverse global dataset that is readily accessible. Though radiocarbon dates are certainly valuable on their own, their value extends beyond their original contexts. When aggregated, radiocarbon dates can also contribute to answering big archaeological questions—for example, debates over North American Pleistocene extinctions. In this paper, I use data from published works and the Canadian Radiocarbon Database to show that there is good evidence that Pleistocene horses and recognized Paleoindian peoples shared the landscape in North America for a substantial period of time. This has considerable implications for our understanding of regional megafaunal extinctions, Paleoindian diet breadth, and horse evolutionary history. By using data produced by multidisciplinary communities and focusing on one taxon, this project uses a complex zooarchaeological dataset to address questions that have permeated generations of researchers. The radiocarbon date modeling used here is an example of how researchers can employ previously published data in addition to new dates to generate aggregations and answer novel questions.

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): 38226.0