Zooarchaeological, Stable Isotope, Radiocarbon, and Ancient DNA Evidence

Abstract

Anthropogenic impacts generated by smallscale societies have been observed in severalregions of the world (Alvard 1998; Balée 2006;Grayson 2001; Winterhalder and Lu 1997).Studies spanning all continents, but especiallyin America, have suggested that landscapesdescribed by early European explorers as richin wildlife differ greatly from late precontactlandscapes as characterized by many archaeologists (Broughton 2002a, 2004; Denevan2016; Preston 2002). During the millenniumbefore Europeans arrived in the New World,many archaeological studies show that animalresources, and in some cases plant species, wereunder strong exploitation pressure leading toresource depletion caused by Indigenous exploitation (e.g., Bettinger et al. 2001; Broughton1994a; Ellyson et al. 2019; Martínez and Gutierrez 2004; Wolverton et al. 2015; Zangrando andTivoli 2015). One common observation in suchstudies is a substantial decline in the abundanceof large prey remains. Large prey species populations seem to have suffered from millennia ofhunting pressure associated with increases inhuman populations (Bayham 1979; Broughton1994a; Grayson 1991; Nagaoka 2002).After 500 cal years bp, however, there was adecrease in corn consumption and an apparentincrease in artiodactyl exploitation, which canbe characterized as de-intensification (sensuFisher, 2018). This reversal, or rebound, mayhave been caused by shifts in regional climatethat impacted farming productivity as well asthe presence of new animal and plant foodspecies introduced by European colonists.