Investigating Precontact Resource Conservation of Deer Populations in the San Francisco Bay Area

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mule deer were important resources for the Ancestral Ohlone populations in the California San Francisco Bay area. Researchers typically use artiodactyl abundance information derived from archaeological assemblages to understand past hunting and land use behavior. Building upon previous models (diet breadth, costly signaling, climate change, and resource intensification) which use a single explanatory cause to explain the artiodactyl abundance, my research investigates how Ancestral Ohlone peoples hunted deer through the analysis of teeth collected from several sites mitigated through cultural resource management practices. Teeth provide a snapshot of each individual by recording information which is accessible through archaeometric methods: proteomics (estimate animal sex), wear patterns (estimate animal age), stable isotopes (e.g. diet, environment, life history, migration patterns, local or non-local), and dental cementum increment analysis (estimate animal age and season of death). I expect conservation, or the increase of deer remains to be represented by the differential culling of younger males, which would allow females to successfully reach maturity and produce offspring. The results of this study have potential wide-ranging implications for understanding prehistoric hunting, land-use practices, forensics, and has relevance to modern habitat restoration and species conservation studies by biologists and ecologists.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40231.0