Northern Latitude Hunters, Meat Caches, and Problems Assessing Season of Occupation from Faunal Remains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part I" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Hunting terrestrial mammals is an unpredictable enterprise, with boom periods interspersed with periods of poor returns. Lack of success can arise for many reasons: scarcity of animals or difficulty finding them; failing to get close enough for an effective shot; animals are in poor condition; communal drives fail; etc. Northern foragers heavily dependent on meat cope with unpredictable returns by caching surpluses, whenever available, for use during times of shortfall. Caches were often located off site along travel routes or close to major hunting grounds. Simple rock cairns placed directly on the surface were among the most widely used means of caching. Contents were tapped repeatedly over weeks, months, multiple seasons, even years. During times of need, foragers traveled considerable distances to retrieve food from their caches. These observations lead to interesting archaeological implications: (1) the season of an animal's death may bear little relationship to the season of consumption; (2) the span of time indicated by an occupation's faunal assemblage may greatly exceed the period when people were actually present there; and (3) the environmental signature(s) provided by a site's fauna may be a poor indicator of the habitat(s) actually exploited by the site's inhabitants while in residence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• 2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part I

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51130