With National Science Foundation support, Dr. R. Lee Lyman will evaluate the alternative hypotheses concerning the subsistence strategies practiced the earliest human inhabitants of North America. Some archaeologists believe that these early groups were specialized hunters of mega-mammals and only occasionally exploited small game; others argue that they were dietary generalists who opportunistically exploited an occasional mammoth or bison. Previous statistical analyses of published data by different researchers have produced conflicting results, but all researchers agree that the only way to choose the correct hypothesis is to analyze data newly derived from faunal or paleozoological remains.
Appropriate paleozoological remains were excavated in the 1960s from Marmes Rockshelter in southeastern Washington State. The Marmes site's stratigraphic column spans the PHT and many faunal remains were collected from 1-mm mesh sieves, making the collection unique in the western U.S. The small sample of remains that have been studied to date suggest that the entire collection will consist of about 4500 identifiable bones and teeth distributed across six stratigraphically distinct assemblages. Initial paleoamerican subsistence practices and shifts in subsistence pursuits as people learned about their newly colonized landscape will be documented with fine-grain temporal resolution and notably large samples. Further, paleoecological responses of resident fauna to the environmentally dynamic PHT in the form of shifting phenotypes and taxonomic abundances will be revealed. Knowing these responses will assist with answering the focal questions: How did paleoamerican colonists who were initially ignorant of local landscape ecology survive? And how did their subsistence practices shift as they learned local ecology? Related questions include: Which of the available faunal resources did early humans at Marmes exploit? In what proportions were they exploited? How were prey carcasses butchered (e.g., for immediate consumption or delayed consumption)? At what seasons of the year were species exploited (based on age at death of species with seasonally limited birth seasons)? Precisely these questions underpin the alternative hypotheses about paleoamerican subsistence. Further, learning the nature of the ecological landscape (including climate) that paleoamericans encountered and adapted to will assist with ascertaining the why of paleoamerican subsistence pursuits.
Broader impacts of the research are that two to four graduate students will receive training in zooarchaeological methods. Several of them will develop their own research projects using the Marmes faunal collection. Further, the collection very likely contains human remains that will be sorted out and returned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (that administers the collection) and made available for repatriation. Finally, the value of curation of such collections (in this case, > 40 years) will be demonstrated.
