Selective Transport of Animal Parts by Ancient Hunters: A New Statistical Method and an Application to the Emeryville Shellmound Fauna

doi:10.1006/jasc.2000.0601

Journal of Archaeological Science

Volume 28, Issue 7, July 2001, Pages 763-773

https://doi.org/10.1006/jasc.2000.0601 Get rights and content

Abstract

When deciding which parts of a prey animal to transport home, hunters may be more or less selective. In our vocabulary, unselective hunters are those who usually bring home most of the carcass; selective hunters are those who usually abandon all but the choicest (and/or lightest) parts. This paper uses the abcml statistical method to develop a means of estimating transport selectivity from the frequencies of skeletal parts in a faunal assemblage. It then applies the method to artiodactyl data from the Emeryville Shellmound in order to test the local depression and distant patch use hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that selectivity should decline during the early part of the Emeryville sequence and rise during the later part. The initial analysis did reveal such a pattern, but this pattern disappeared when samples were pooled in order to produce acceptably narrow confidence intervals. Although this result weakens the hypothesis, it does not firmly refute it, because the model fits the data imperfectly in the critical middle portion of the sequence. Abcml also provides estimates of the intensity of attrition, which indicate that attrition was most severe in early strata and least severe in later ones. Substantial attrition (50% of bones surviving) is indicated even from samples that show no indication of attrition using conventional methods. These conclusions are based on assumptions about the processes of transport and attrition that are more reliable in qualitative outline than in quantitative detail. Consequently, the paper's qualitative conclusions are more trustworthy than its quantitative estimates.

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Previous research has documented declines in the abundance of high-return resources including tule elk (Cervus canadensis nannodes) over the past three millennia in central California, suggesting the occurrence of resource depression. We test the hypothesis that hunting depressed tule elk in this setting by articulating stable isotope analyses from 88 directly dated tule elk specimens with data on the age structure and skeletal part representation from the King Brown and Emeryville Shellmound sites. Late Holocene trends in stable isotopes and modeled climatic variation are inconsistent with climate-based population declines. However, at King Brown, located within the Central Valley and vast tule elk freshwater marsh and grassland habitat, increasing isotopic diversity, a decline in mean age, and increasing abundance of high-utility skeletal elements suggest local depression stimulated the increasing use of distant elk patches. Although faunal trends are consistent with the depression of elk at Emeryville, the site is located on the shore of the San Francisco Bay where limited elk habitat existed, and no evidence of distant elk patch use is indicated. This analysis underscores how human behavioral responses to resource depression can vary in relation to the local ecology as they affect patch use economics for specific prey and demonstrates how such responses can be deciphered through stable isotope and faunal data.
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Citation Excerpt :
In archaeological contexts, evaluation of animal portions in terms of relative food utility as an indicator of transport has most often been conducted on large prey species such as ungulates that could not easily have been carried whole by hunter-gatherers. In contexts in which load weights were limited and animal portions had to be chosen for transport, high food value has often been prioritized (Binford, 1978; Bunn, 1986; Cannon, 2003; Faith, 2007; Klein, 1989; Meltzer et al., 2002; O’Connell et al., 1988; Perkins and Daly, 1968; Rogers and Broughton, 2001; Stiner, 1991). Processing and transport are likely to have been somewhat different considerations when prey animals were small and unlike larger prey could easily have been carried away from capture locations in their entirety.
Recent archaeological research in coastal areas of British Columbia has focused on investigations of coastline sites and marine-based subsistence. This study differs in its investigation of the High Burrow Site (DhSh-2), a late Holocene coast-proximal inland camp at which terrestrial taxa comprised the majority of the faunal assemblage and Vancouver Island marmot (Marmota vancouverensis) was the most numerous taxon represented. Analysis of the marmot assemblage indicated that bone density mediated attrition influenced the relative abundance of skeletal elements more so than did the transport of marmot portions away from the site. The distribution of marmot bones at coastline sites supports this conclusion and may link changes in regional settlement patterning across south Vancouver Island with the decline of marmot hunting at High Burrow in the late prehistoric. This study thus draws our focus from coastlines upland to interior landscapes as vital components in the interpretation of prehistoric subsistence and settlement along the coast.
Hunting and skeletal element abundance of guanaco during the Holocene of Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina
2020, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
The guanaco (Lama guanicoe) was the most important faunal resource exploited by past people from Sierras of Córdoba (Argentina). However, their relative taxonomic abundance decreased across the Holocene in relation to other small-taxa, which has been interpreted as an evidence of resource depression resulted from changes in the distribution of grassland and human hunting pressure. If the encounter rate with L. guanicoe decreased and hunters needed to travel greater distances to pursue a prey, it should be expected that the pattern in mean utility of body parts would parallel changes in the taxonomic composition of the assemblage. The expectation is that early archaic assemblages will have greater body-parts diversity than late prehispanic assemblages, reflecting a high encounter rate and a more complete deposition of entire carcasses. Conversely, late prehispanic people should respond to the greater cost of hunting by reducing transportation loads, carrying high-ranked body part of carcass to camps. The aim of this article is to test these predictions using a comprehensive analysis of the skeletal part representation from a suite of Holocene archaeological sites dated at 7400-to-360 years BP. The high and low-utility body part frequency observed during the initial and later phases reveals a more dynamic view of late prehispanic site formation process and raises new inquiries regarding whether different taphonomic histories of assemblages can have substantial influence on the skeletal element abundance.
Optimal Foraging Theory: Application and Inspiration in Human Endeavors Outside Biology
2019, Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, Second Edition: Volume 1-5
Since it began, just over 50 years ago, Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT) has grown and developed a great deal, largely as initially anticipated. Mostly unanticipated, however, has been the application of the approach to areas outside of biology. OFT has inspired developments in a wide range of fields.
Investigators have applied OFT to an amazing range of human endeavors both within biology and farther afield; including resource conservation and management, archaeology, criminology, gambling, searching the internet, development of computer software, and a wide variety of other human activities. The literature in relation to these areas is substantial and growing, with general agreement that OFT helps significantly.
Inspiration by OFT has emerged from a combination of the following three ideas: foraging organisms face problems that are analogous to problems that humans commonly confront; organisms have evolved ‘solutions’, possibly optimal ones, to these pervasive problems; analogous solutions may help to solve the human situations that involve optimization.
However, by necessity and without detracting from the usefulness of this approach, these models make assumptions that are not based on known biology and in the end do not really include much biology.
None-the-less, a wide array of organisms has provided inspiration for solving many different human technology problems that involve optimization. Any human problem that involves climbing gradients towards maxima would seem well suited to OFT-inspired models or algorithms. The array of organisms that have been used as inspiration for solving such human problems is truly amazing, and has included bacteria, ants, cuckoos, honeybees, spiders, hummingbirds, bats, frogs, and even plant roots.
OFT has also inspired research in other areas that do not involve optimization but include conceptual similarities between situations faced by foraging animals and certain human situations; most of these have so far been medically-related.
Models or algorithms, generated in the context of human optimization, could be used to develop and test predictions in terms of animal foraging, but so far this has apparently not been attempted. Such integration between OFT and human optimization therefore awaits further research.
Application and inspiration of OFT into areas outside the traditional realm of biology and into human technology have been almost completely unanticipated. One might have anticipated the application into archaeology, but who would have guessed that OFT would ultimately be applied into the worlds of criminals, drug addicts, and computer users! Perhaps OFT will provide future application and inspiration in ways yet to be imagined!
Optimal foraging theory: Application and inspiration in human endeavors outside biology
2019, Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior
Since it began, just over 50 years ago, Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT) has grown and developed a great deal, largely as initially anticipated. Mostly unanticipated, however, has been the application of the approach to areas outside of biology. OFT has inspired developments in a wide range of fields.
Investigators have applied OFT to an amazing range of human endeavors both within biology and farther afield; including resource conservation and management, archaeology, criminology, gambling, searching the internet, development of computer software, and a wide variety of other human activities. The literature in relation to these areas is substantial and growing, with general agreement that OFT helps significantly.
Inspiration by OFT has emerged from a combination of the following three ideas: foraging organisms face problems that are analogous to problems that humans commonly confront; organisms have evolved ‘solutions’, possibly optimal ones, to these pervasive problems; analogous solutions may help to solve the human situations that involve optimization.
However, by necessity and without detracting from the usefulness of this approach, these models make assumptions that are not based on known biology and in the end do not really include much biology.
None-the-less, a wide array of organisms has provided inspiration for solving many different human technology problems that involve optimization. Any human problem that involves climbing gradients towards maxima would seem well suited to OFT-inspired models or algorithms. The array of organisms that have been used as inspiration for solving such human problems is truly amazing, and has included bacteria, ants, cuckoos, honeybees, spiders, hummingbirds, bats, frogs, and even plant roots.
OFT has also inspired research in other areas that do not involve optimization but include conceptual similarities between situations faced by foraging animals and certain human situations; most of these have so far been medically-related.
Models or algorithms, generated in the context of human optimization, could be used to develop and test predictions in terms of animal foraging, but so far this has apparently not been attempted. Such integration between OFT and human optimization therefore awaits further research.
Application and inspiration of OFT into areas outside the traditional realm of biology and into human technology have been almost completely unanticipated. One might have anticipated the application into archaeology, but who would have guessed that OFT would ultimately be applied into the worlds of criminals, drug addicts, and computer users! Perhaps OFT will provide future application and inspiration in ways yet to be imagined!
Biogenic control on the origin of a vertebrate monotypic accumulation from the Late Triassic of southern Brazil
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Citation Excerpt :
Based on the first hypothesis, we should find skulls and jaws with some signs of abrasion and a high degree of fragmentation, both caused by impact of grains against their surface during hydraulic flow, which is actually not the case. On the other hand, fossil concentrations with no visible preferred spatial orientation of bioclasts in the matrix and predominance of cranial elements are generally explained as resulting from biogenic activity (predators or scavengers act on the carcasses causing bioclastic sorting; Badgley, 1986; Rogers and Broughton, 2001; Bertoni-Machado et al., 2008). According to Behrensmeyer (1991), the poor representation of postcranial elements in vertebrate accumulations results from preferential dispersion by predators/scavengers, as such bone elements are the most nutritious parts of the prey.
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Regular ArticlesSelective Transport of Animal Parts by Ancient Hunters: A New Statistical Method and an Application to the Emeryville Shellmound Fauna

Abstract

Plant utility indices: Two Great Basin examples

Journal of Archaeological Science

Perspectives on skeletal part profiles and utility curves

Resource intensification among hunter-gatherers: Acorn economies in prehistoric California

Research in Economic Anthropology

Hunter-Gatherers: Archaeological and Evolutionary Theory

Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology

Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths

Hottentot food remains and their bearing on the interpretation of fossil bone assemblages

Scientific Papers of the Namib Desert Research Station

Who killed the Swartkrans ape-man?

South African Museum Bulletin

The contribution of Namib Desert Hottentots to and understanding of australopithecine bone accumulations

Scientific Papers of the Namib Desert Research Station

Declines in mammalian foraging efficiency during the late Holocene

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Late Holocene resource intensification in the Sacremento Valley, California

Journal of Archaeological Science

Widening diet breadth, declining foraging efficiency, and prehistoric harvest pressure: Ichthyofaunal evidence from the Emeryville Shellmound

Antiquity

Resource Depression and Intensification During the Late Holocene, San Francisco Bay: Evidence from the Emeryville Shellmound Vertebrate Fauna, volume 32 of Anthropological Records

Variability in bone assemblage formation from Hadza hunting, scavenging, and carcass processing

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Local regression models

Ancient North America: Tha Archaeology of a Continent. 2nd edition

Composition of California shellmounds

University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology

Danger Cave, Last Supper Cave, and Hanging Rock Shelter: The faunas

Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History

Bone transport, bone destruction, and reverse utility curves

Journal of Archaeological Science

Evolution of marine mammal hunting: A view from the California and Oregon coasts

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Reasserting a prehistoric tragedy of the commons: Reply to Lyman

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Regular Articles
Selective Transport of Animal Parts by Ancient Hunters: A New Statistical Method and an Application to the Emeryville Shellmound Fauna