| This study illuminates structural variability in hunter-gatherer diet and subsistence behavior under conditions of low population density and rapid ecological reorganization and, thus, is of general anthropological relevance to understanding and explaining change and stability in cultural systems. More specifically, it explores several unusual aspects in the diet and subsistence behavior of post-Clovis Paleoindian hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Northwestern Great Plains of North America during the late Pleistocene-early Holocene (ca. 8–11,000 years ago). Explanation is achieved through analytical meshing of relevant paleoenvironmental variables, an understanding of how modern hunter-gatherers operate in roughly analogous conditions, and behavioral inferences extracted through taphonomically-oriented zooarchaeological analysis of three bison kill-butchery archaeofaunas and a sample of bison and pronghorn remains from a residential occupation. Two of the kill-butchery archaeofaunas are from Agate Basin (10,430 ± 570 B.P.) and Hell Gap (10,445 ± 110 B.P.) geocultural components at the Agate Basin site, eastern Wyoming, while the third is from the Clary Ranch site, southwestern Nebraska, and is Late Paleoindian in age (ca. 8500–9000 B.P.). The residential archaeofauna is from the Folsom (10,780 ± 120 B.P.) geocultural component at the Agate Basin site.; Patterned variability in the archaeofaunal records is consistent with expectations signaling the presence of collector-type settlement-subsistence systems relying primarily on logistical mobility tactics for procuring food resources. Hunters provisioned small residential consumer populations throughout the year with small food packages acquired via planned logistical forays. Short-term subsistence stress was countered by including nonbison prey species into the diet and utilization of low ranking bison skeletal parts. This behavioral orientation ‘locked-in’ through time due in part to greater spatio-temporal fluctuations in resource abundance linked to the emergence of seasonal Holocene climatic regimes. Late Paleoindians may have relied to some extent on stored foods to maintain subsistence security through the winter-spring resource bottleneck. Evidence for similar, future-oriented subsistence activities is absent in earlier Paleoindian archaeofaunas from the region. |
