Considering the Role of Mammoth and Other Megafauna in Food Systems across North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists agree that proboscideans and other megafauna played a role in lifeways of the first Americans. From eastern Beringia to central America, the evidence is unequivocal: humans hunted mammoths. But what role did these animals play in the food systems of the first Americans? New research at several archaeological sites seeks to go beyond the kill site to the campsite. Investigating domestic areas associated with proboscidean remains can help us to better understand how people used this resource as food, their importance to past lifeways, and what changed when they disappeared from the landscape. From Swan Point to La Prele and Colby, this paper considers how researchers are reinvestigating terminal Pleistocene occupations to better understand the relationship between foragers and their environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38362.0