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Influence of Bone Survivorship on Taxonomic Abundance Measures

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Zooarchaeology in Practice

Abstract

Abundance indices are commonly used to test hypotheses formed under optimal foraging theory. Index values may be a reflection of foraging behavior, but analysts must first consider the influence of taphonomic processes that may vary across space, time, and taxa. Bone survivorship is expected to differ among taxa according to their nutritional value, bone density, how carcasses were processed, and their attractiveness to secondary consumers. Greater survivorship is expected for higher ranked resources when foraging efficiency declines due to increases in processing intensity that renders discarded bone less attractive to secondary scavengers. This in turn will potentially result in a greater number of specimens identified despite lower declines in large game hunting. I review spatial and temporal differences in bone attrition at Five Finger Ridge, a Fremont period (ca. AD 400–1300) site located in the eastern Great Basin, USA. Relative taxonomic abundance is largely explained by density-mediated destruction and cannot be taken as an accurate reflection of human behavior, such as hunting efficiency among households or across time at this particular site. This finding demonstrates the importance of accounting for variation in density-mediated destruction among multiple species before any human behavioral inferences are formed from taxonomic diversity measures.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Simpson’s 1/D values were also computed for each site context as this diversity measure incorporates a wider range of taxa than the abundance index. When 1/D values are compared against the difference in attrition among site contexts, the relationship is similarly significant (r 2 = 0.35, p = 0.04). This is likely due to the fact that artiodactyl and leporid remains are by far the most common taxa and thus are driving the relationship.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

    Jacob L. Fisher

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  1. Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

    Christina M. Giovas

  2. Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Michelle J. LeFebvre

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Fisher, J.L. (2018). Influence of Bone Survivorship on Taxonomic Abundance Measures. In: Giovas, C., LeFebvre, M. (eds) Zooarchaeology in Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64763-0_7

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