A collaboration with a working group of faunal analysts concerned with a broad research issue involving archaeological fauna will inform our development efforts. The grant will support both meetings of a working group and the registration of datasets from multiple projects, which will allow the group to pursue important comparative and synthetic research.
Resource Depression
Ethnographers and archaeologists have shown that humans, like other predators, can affect the population density of their prey [11, 96]. Hunters often deplete the most highly desired game species---usually the largest mammals and birds. This process is well studied in nonhuman predators and is known as resource depression. The population levels of optimum-prey species are depressed through predation to a point where they become sufficiently scarce that the predator finds it difficult to locate a prey individual. Provided the original prey is not too severely depleted, it will continue to reproduce, but population levels will remain low through continued predation. Hunters may then add less-valued prey species to their diet to compensate for the reduction in the most-preferred species. That this process occurred in western North America has been demonstrated by historical and archaeological research. For example, studies of the Lewis and Clark expedition diaries have shown that the availability of game animals was inversely correlated with Native American population density. Archaeologists have demonstrated that long-term human occupations tend to deplete the large-game species most highly desired by humans.
Archaeological Cases
We will use analyses of zooarchaeological data collected by multiple projects within two sets of environmentally and economically distinct cases in the US Southwest and eastern woodlands. In the eastern woodlands, extant faunal data from the 2000-year span of hunter-gatherer occupation at the Koster site in the lower Illinois River valley will provide the opportunity to examine long-term stability in resource acquisition by hunter-gatherers in the context of increasing sedentism. In the Southwest, we will compare and contrast extant faunal databases from later prehistoric, aggregated agricultural settlements in three different areas, the Sonoran Desert (Phoenix and Tonto Basins), the Colorado Plateau (Four Corners area), and the Rio Grande region (Salinas pueblos). Variation in the density and distribution of large game across these portions of the Southwest and variation iin the timing and intensity of human population aggregation provide an ideal laboratory in which to investigate the relationship among resource abundance, population aggregation, and resource depression.
Fauna Working Group
The working group will collaborate on the development of KADIS in the context of pursuing the testbed research on resource depression. It will address this research issue in a synthetic manner using the grant-developed cybertools. Participants will: contribute datasets; identify other needed data sources; provide subject-matter expertise; give feedback on the framework; and help disseminate results. This effort follows directly on the work of the Fauna Working Group established under our exploratory grant. At the initiation of the grant, working group members will identify key datasets from their areas. During Year 1, the grant will support efforts to acquire these datasets and their associated metadata (including any needed conversions from archaic media). When the dataset registration and data and metadata archive software become available late in Year 1 (Table 1), these datasets will be registered. Early in the Year 2, the working group will meet for three days to: a) articulate approaches to understanding resource depression in the context of population aggregation in different environments; b) address issues arising during registration of project datasets; and c) discuss issues related to the development of the core ontology and means to address key data-integration challenges for faunal data. With the development of a beta version of the integration software in the latter half of Year 2 the working group members will independently explore the testbed research issues. Early in Year 3, the project data archive will be fully available, and the data-integration software will be available in a beta version. At this time the group will again meet for three days, focusing first on synthetic analyses related to resource depression and second, interacting with the CS team on the usability of the data integration software. The results of this research will be reported in a symposium, followed by a forum at the SAA annual meeting toward the end of Year 3.
Fauna Working Group Members
- Jonathan Driver, Simon Frasier University
- Donald Grayson, University of Washington
- Sarah Neusius, Indiana University of Pennslyvania
- Sarah Kansa, Alexandria Archive Institute
- Katherine Spielmann, Arizona State University (organizer)
- Bonnie Styles, Illinois State Museum
- Christine Szuter, University of Arizona Press