Faunal assemblages from three Early Archaic sites are compared to evaluate whether or not significant differences in diet can be attributed to geographic variability. The results of this study suggest that geographic variability, specifically that associated with longitude, does not contribute to dietary differences in any significant fashion. Understanding the impact of geographic variability on diet is critical to successfully modeling cultural responses to the Altithermal, a period of unusually warm and dry climate roughly coeval with the Early Archaic.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AntevsE.1955Geological-Climatic Dating in the West, American Antiquity, 20, pp. 317–335.
2.
BamforthDouglas B.1988Ecology and Human Organization on the Great Plains, Plenum, New York.
3.
BarnoskyC.1989Postglacial Vegetation and Climate in the Northwestern Great Plains of Montana, Quaternary Research, 31, pp. 57–73.
4.
BarnoskyC.GrimmE., and WrightH. E.1987Towards a Postglacial History of the Northern Great Plains: Review of Paleo-ecological Problems, Annals of the Carnegie Museum, 56, pp. 259–273.
5.
BayhamFrank1979Factors Influencing the Archaic Pattern of Animal Exploitation, The Kiva, 44, pp. 219–235.
6.
BenedictJames B.1979Getting Away From It All: A Study of Man, Mountains, and the Two-Drought Altithermal, Southwestern Lore, 45, pp. 1–12.
7.
BrownD. A.1993Early Nineteenth-Century Grasslands of the Plains, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 83, pp. 589–612.
8.
BrownD. A. and GersmehlP. J.1985Migration Models for Grasses in the American Midcontinent, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 75, pp. 383–394.
9.
BrownL.1985Grasslands, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
10.
BrysonR.BarraeisR., and WendlandW.1970The Character of Late-Glacial and Post-Glacial Climatic Changes, in Pleistocene and Recent Environments of the Central Great Plains, DortW. and JonesJ. (eds.), pp. 53–74, University of Kansas Press, Lawrence.
11.
BuchnerAnthony P.1980Cultural Responses to Altithermal (Atlantic) Climate Along the Eastern Margins of the North American Grasslands 5500 to 3000 B.C., National Museum of Man Mercury Series, No. 97, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Ottawa.
12.
BurtW. H. and GrossenheiderR. P.1976A Field Guide to the Mammals, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.
13.
CaldwellJoseph R.1958Trend and Tradition in the Prehistory of the Eastern United States, American Anthropological Association Memoir 88, Menasha.
14.
ClagueJ. and MathewesR.1989Early Holocene Thermal Maximum in Western North America: New Evidence from Castle Peak, British Columbia, Geology, 17, pp. 277–280.
15.
CostelloDavid F.1975The Prairie World: Plants and Animals of the Grassland Sea, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York.
16.
DavisE. M.1962Archeology of the Lime Creek Site in Southwestern Nebraska, Special Publication No. 3, University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln.
17.
FaganB.1995Ancient North America (2nd Edition), Thames and Hudson, New York.
18.
FelchRichard E.1978Drought: Characteristics and Assessment, in North American Droughts, RosenbergN. J. (ed.), pp. 25–42, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.
19.
FrisonGeorge C.1991Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains (2nd Edition), Academic Press, New York.
20.
FrisonGeorge C.WilsonMichael, and WilsonDiane J.1976Fossil Bison and Artifacts from an Early Altithermal Period Arroyo Trap in Wyoming, American Antiquity, 41, pp. 28–57.
21.
GrangeRoger T.1980Archaeological Investigations in Red Willow Reservoir, Nebraska, Publications in Anthropology, No. 9, Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln.
22.
GreiserS. T.1985Predictive Models of Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence and Settlement Strategies on the Central High Plains, Plains Anthropologist Memoir 20.
23.
HurtWesley R.1966The Altithermal and the Prehistory of the Northern Plains, Quaternaria, 8, pp. 101–113.
24.
HustedWilfred M.1968The Western Macrotradition: Mountain Plains Division, paper presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Plains Anthropological Society, Lincoln, Nebraska.
25.
HustedWilfred M.1993The Altithermal, Population Reduction and the Rocky Mountains: Seeing the Forest and the Trees, paper presented at the 1st Biennial Rocky Mountain Anthropology Conference, Jackson, Wyoming.
26.
JochimMichael1976Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence and Settlement: A Predictive Model, Academic Press, New York.
27.
KellyR. and ToddL.1988Coming into the Country: Early Paleoindian Hunting and Mobility, American Antiquity, 53, pp. 231–244.
28.
KivettM.1962The Logan Creek Complex, paper presented at the 20th Plains Archeological Conference.
29.
KvammeKenneth1990One Sample Tests in Regional Archaeological Analysis: New Possibilities Through Computer Technology, American Antiquity, 55, pp. 367–381.
30.
MarkgrafV. and LennonT.1986Paleoenvironmental History of the Last 13,000 Years of the Eastern Powder River Basin, Wyoming, and Its Implications for Prehistoric Cultural Patterns, Plains Anthropologist, 31, pp. 1–12.
31.
MeizeiLouis M.1990Spreadsheet Statistics and Curve Fitting, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
32.
MeltzerD. J.1991Altithermal Archaeology and Paleoecology at Mustang Springs, on the Southern High Plains of Texas, American Antiquity, 56, pp. 236–267.
33.
MeltzerD. J.1995Modeling the Prehistoric Response to Altithermal Climates on the Southern Plains, in Ancient Peoples and Landscapes, JohnsonE. (ed.), pp. 349–368, Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.
34.
MulloyWilliam1958A Preliminary Historical Outline for the Northwestern Plains, University of Wyoming Publications in Science, 22, pp. 1–235.
35.
ReevesBrian1973The Concept of an Altithermal Cultural Hiatus in Northern Plains Prehistory, American Anthropologist, 75, pp. 1221–1253.
36.
ReevesBrian1993Communal Bison Hunters of the Northern Plains, in Hunters of Recent Past, DavisL. B. and ReevesB. O. K. (eds.), pp. 168–194, Unwin Hyman, London.
37.
SchmittsLarry J.1978The Coffey Site: Environment and Cultural Adaptation at a Prairie Plains Archaic Site, Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 3, pp. 69–185.
38.
SchmittsLarry J.1980Holocene Fluvial History and Depositional Environments at the Coffey Site, Kansas, in Archaic Prehistory on the Prairie-Plains Border, JohnsonA. E. (ed.), pp. 79–106, University of Kansas Publications in Anthropology No. 12, Lawrence.
39.
SheehanMichael S.1991The Altithermal and the Plains Early Archaic: A New Look at the Refugium Model, Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.
40.
SheehanMichael S.1994aCultural Responses to the Altithermal: The Role of Aquifer-Related Water Resources, Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, 9, pp. 113–137.
41.
SheehanMichael S.1994bClimatic Change and Hunter-Gatherer Diet Breadth: A North American Perspective, paper presented at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Atlanta, Georgia.
42.
SheehanMichael S.1995Cultural Responses to the Altithermal or Inadequate Sampling?Plains Anthropologist, 40, pp. 261–270.
43.
SynderL. and BozellJ.1983Identification and Analysis of Vertebrate Faunal Remains Recovered from the Logan Creek Site (25BT3) Burt County, Nebraska, Division of Archeological Research, Department of Anthropology, University of Nebraska, Technical Report No. 83-03.
44.
WebbT. and BrysonR. A.1972Late and Postglacial Climatic Change in the Northern Midwest, U.S.A.: Quantitative Estimates Derived from Fossil Pollen Spectra by Multivariate Statistical Analysis, Quaternary Research, 2, pp. 70–115.
45.
WedelWaldo R.1961Prehistoric Man on the Great Plains, University of Oklahoma, Norman.
46.
WedelWaldo R.1986Central Plains Prehistory, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
47.
WendlandWayne1978Holocene Man in North America: The Ecological Setting and Climatic Background, Plains Anthropologist, 23, pp. 273–287.
48.
WheatJoe-Ben1972The Olsen-Chubbock Site, Society of American Archaeology, Memoir 26.
49.
WilleyG. R. and PhillipsP.1958Method and Theory in American Archaeology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
50.
YesnerDavid1981Archeological Applications of Optimal Foraging Theory: Harvest Strategies of Aleut Hunter-Gatherers, in Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies, WinterhalderB. and SmithE. (eds.), pp. 148–170, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
