Collaborative Research: Isotopic Signatures of Social Transformations in the US Southwest

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As human populations grow and settle in formerly remote regions, questions about how hunting can be managed to provide long-term access to animals for local people without loss of biodiversity are becoming increasingly urgent. This project is an opportunity for archaeology to contribute to this important current issue. The project will investigate how human populations in the US Southwest (AD 750-1280) adapted their hunting and raising of animals in response to changes in population density and the environment. The investigators will chemically analyze animal bones from a number of archaeological sites in the Mesa Verde area to see where the animals that people ate came from and to understand what people were feeding those animals. This will allow the investigators to examine whether farmers traded domesticated turkeys with other villages or raised their own birds for meat, whether the amount of domesticated maize (corn) people fed their turkey flocks changed as villages grew and as food became harder to produce in the face of documented climate fluctuations, and whether people responded to local declines in large game abundance by getting animals from more distant places. Understanding the balance between human demands and animal populations in this study will provide valuable information about how different patterns of hunting and raising animals are sustainable at different spatial and temporal scales. These patterns therefore have important implications for modern-day wildlife management and conservation of species. The project will also include support and training of a graduate student in stable isotope analysis and significant public science education and outreach efforts.In the Mesa Verde region of the US Southwest, increasing human population aggregation and shifting settlement locations from AD 750 through 1280 were accompanied by growing pressure on local food resources that are thought to have led to heightened social tensions, episodes of violence, and subsequent regional depopulation. This project uses strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotope analysis to examine the extent to which transport of fauna took place and whether animal source areas changed over time. The analysis of local rodents, plants, and water samples will establish spatially diagnostic isotopic signatures for a large region that will allow archaeological faunal samples to be linked with likely procurement regions and assessment of whether source-sink dynamics (an important component of hunting sustainability in some modern cases) operated archaeologically, allowing sustainable long-term access to large game despite centuries of localized human impacts on these animals. Understanding these processes will provide valuable insights into the sustainability of certain patterns of hunting, animal provisioning, and transport.