Resilience of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) to human hunting in precolonial New England: The faunal remains from the Morgan Site (6HT120), Rocky Hill, Connecticut
Resilience of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) to human hunting in precolonial New England: The faunal remains from the Morgan Site (6HT120), Rocky Hill, Connecticut
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103913
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发表时间：
2023-04
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通讯作者：
Elic M. Weitzel
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作者：
Elic M. Weitzel
复原力——系统承受扰动并从扰动中恢复的能力——已成为考古学家的一个重要概念，研究复原力自然资源的利用和管理对于理解可持续性具有重要意义。在殖民前的北美东部，有人认为白尾鹿（Odocoileus virginianus）能够抵御人类的过度捕猎，但这一假设只得到了最低限度的检验。在这里，我分析了康涅狄格州中部摩根遗址的一个动物考古组合，其历史可以追溯到公元 11 世纪至 14 世纪，以评估当时的鹿群是否经历过任何明显的狩猎压力。这些数据表明摩根遗址的鹿并未遭到过度捕猎。鹿骨骼成分因油脂和骨髓而碎片化与密集开发相一致，但对鹿等高度偏好物种的强烈饮食依赖、在该地点附近狩猎鹿的证据以及最低的幼鹿死亡率都表明鹿没有被过度开发。此外，这些鹿大多数体型特别大。鉴于缺乏狩猎压力的证据，这里观察到的鹿的大体型可能是由于人为生态系统工程促进了鹿种群的增长并有助于该物种对捕食的明显恢复能力。
Resilience – the ability of a system to withstand and recover from perturbation – has become an important concept for archaeologists and investigating resilient natural resource use and management has important implications for understanding sustainability. In precolonial eastern North America, it has been argued that white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were resilient to overhunting by humans, but this hypothesis has been only minimally tested. Here, I analyze a zooarchaeological assemblage from the Morgan Site in central Connecticut, dating to the 11th-14th centuries AD, to evaluate whether deer populations at this time experienced any perceptible hunting pressure. These data suggest that deer at the Morgan Site were not being overhunted. Fragmentation of deer skeletal elements for grease and marrow is consistent with intensive exploitation, but the strong dietary dependence on a highly preferred species like deer, evidence for hunting deer in proximity to the site, and minimal juvenile mortality all indicate that deer were not overexploited. Additionally, most of these deer were especially large-bodied. Given the evidence for a lack of hunting pressure, the large body size of deer observed here may have resulted from anthropogenic ecosystem engineering facilitating deer population growth and contributing to the apparent resilience of the species to predation.