Tiffany C. Clark, Ph.D. - US grants

With National Science Foundation Support, Dr. Katherine Spielmann will lead an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and software developers in the analysis of the factors that led to the over-hunting of large game (principally antelope and deer) in the American Southwest between A.D. 1200 and 1500. This period of time is characterized by large-scale migrations, and aggregation of people into towns of 500-1000 residents. During this time some archaeological animal bone assemblages indicate a decline in the availability of large game. There is currently no regional-scale understanding of the factors that promoted over-hunting in some areas but not in others. The two primary factors to be investigated are 1) population size, concentration, and persistence on the landscape, and 2) environmental variation. The team will then investigate the contexts in which people chose to intensify turkey husbandry in response to declining access to meat from wild game. Although domesticated turkeys are known from the Southwest by A.D. 500, until the 1100s they were largely raised for feathers. After that time some populations intensified turkey production for consumption, while others did not. Why this variation existed is a target of the project. From this perspective the project is important because it will provide insight into long term interactions between a society at a relatively "simple" level of social and subsistence organization and the environment within which it existed. The results will be generalizable to many other cultures and regions of the world.

The project is innovative in the scale at which animal bone data from a diversity of prehistoric village sites across the Southwestern US will be integrated to address the issue of human impacts on the environment. Although in the past researchers have undertaken synthetic analyses at smaller scales, these have generally used animal bone data presented in summary form in the published literature. Rather than depend on published data, these syntheses will rely on analyses of an integrated composite of original faunal datasets. The PI's approach to synthesis using the original datasets is made possible through use of tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record; http://tdar.org), a repository for digital archaeological data. Members of the project's Southwestern Faunal Working Group are uploading their datasets into tDAR. The software development team will then work with the Faunal Working Group to streamline tDAR's groundbreaking analytical tool that allows the integration of datasets (or spreadsheets) that were recorded by different investigators using inconsistent analytical protocols. This integration brings the animal bone data into a single classificatory scheme, thus making it possible to analyze faunal datasets in a manner that allows the research team to address anthropological questions in ways that have not heretofore been possible.

The intellectual merits of the project lie in demonstrating the scientific value of large-scale dataset sharing and integration for addressing a diversity of anthropological questions. The project will significantly enhance the anthropological understanding of long-term interaction between people and their environment, and will improve research using archaeological animal bone data. The broader impacts of the project include training of undergraduate and graduate students through internships and research assistantships, and workshops on tDAR for cultural resource management communities. In addition, scientists in other fields will be able to access these archaeological data and use this project's tools and protocols to address broader issues of biodiversity and environmental change.