Dissertation Research: Is There An Altithermal? Holocene Climate and Human Adaptation of the NW Plains

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Under the direction of Dr. Donald Grayson, MS Susan Hughes will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will examine faunal remains recovered from the archaeological site of Mummy Cave to address the question of human response to climatic change. Mummy Cave is situated in the North Fork River Valley in Wyoming and it's 8.5 meters of deposit preserve 38 different occupational strata. A large suite of radiocarbon dates indicate that these span a 9,200 year period, beginning ca. 10,000 years ago. Thus they document human behavior over most of the time since the last ice age. Twenty two of these levels contain faunal remains which result from purposeful human hunting and consumption as well as from natural deaths from rodents and other small animals which burrowed into the deposits. This faunal sample provides a valuable data source which allows both the reconstruction of human behavior as well as environmental change. Many small mammals have specific habitat requirements and their presence or absence provides insight into climate and vegetation during their lifetime. Carbon, oxygen and nitrogen isotopic ratios in animal bone are also influenced by environment and provide information on temperature, precipitation and ground cover. Through analysis of a large series of bones MS. Hughes will reconstruct these variables. She has employed optimum foraging theory to predict how human behavior will change in response to environmental variation and she will analyze differences in prey age and species to determine how subsistence adaptation varies in relation to climatic change.Archaeological data offer an excellent window into human environment relationships because they allow interactions to be traced over long periods of time. With faunal remains it is possible to reconstruct aspects of both variables and this research will provide increased understanding of how humans adapt at a simple level of technology. The Mummy Cave data will be of interest to many archaeologists. This project will also assist in training a promising young scientist.