Late Holocene Human Impacts on Pacific Coast Bird Populations: Evidence from the Emeryville Shellmound Avifauna

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Jack Broughton博士将分析从位于旧金山湾海岸线的Emeryville Shellmound考古挖掘中发现的动物遗骸。这个深度分层的遗址最早出现在大约2600年前，它记录了大约2000年期间人类的居住和对当地资源的使用。史前美洲原住民住在这里，他们丢弃的动物遗骸为他们的狩猎和生存实践提供了详细的洞察。这些材料既丰富又保存极为完好。在同样由NSF资助的博士论文工作中，布劳顿博士分析了鱼类和哺乳动物的动物群。在这个目前的项目中，他将把他的研究扩展到鸟类材料。从先前的工作中可以清楚地看出，人们广泛地猎杀鸟类，考古收藏品中存在大量的个体和物种。布劳顿博士将在物种层面上鉴定材料。他还将开发一种方法来确定Corcorats被收获的年龄，从而能够检查种群的年龄结构。考虑到场地的分层性质，将有可能确定收获做法随着时间的推移发生了怎样的变化。考古学家和土壤生态学家都希望了解美洲原住民狩猎采集者对他们猎杀的猎物的影响。古生态学家想知道第一批殖民者观察到的环境是否是自然的，基本上不受人类的影响，或者实际上，相对较低的人口密度的狩猎和采集者是否有显著的影响。考古学家希望确定这些种群是否受到人类造成的资源稀缺的影响，因此需要随着时间的推移改变他们的生存策略。布劳顿博士的研究应该会为这个问题提供重要的见解。通过使用最优觅食理论得到的模型，人们可以预测当鸟类种群受到压力和数量减少时，物种组成和年龄结构如何变化。因此，这一分析将直接洞察人类对环境的影响，进而了解这种变化对随后人类行为的影响。

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Jack Broughton will analyze faunal remains recovered from archaeological excavation at the Emeryville Shellmound located the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. This deeply stratified site was first occupied ca. 2,600 years ago and it records human habitation and use of local resources over a roughly 2,000 year period. Prehistoric Native Americans lived at the site and the faunal remains they discarded provide detailed insight into their hunting and subsistence practices. Such materials are both abundant and extremely well preserved. In his doctoral dissertation work, also funded by NSF, Dr. Broughton analyzed fish and mammalian faunas. In this current project he will extend his study to avian materials. From prior work it is clear that people hunted birds extensively and large numbers of both individuals and species are present in the archaeological collections. Dr. Broughton will identify materials to a species level. He will also develop a method to determine the age at which cormorants were harvested and thus be able to examine the age structure of the population. Given the stratified nature of the site it will be possible to determine how harvesting practices changed over time. Both archaeologists and paeloecologists wish to understand the effect of Native American hunter-gatherers on the prey they hunted. Paleoecologists wish to know whether the environment which the first colonists observed was `natural` and essentially unaffected by humans or whether, in fact, hunter and gatherers at relatively low population densities had a significant impact. Archaeologists want to determine whether such populations were affected by human-induced resource scarcities and thus needed to change their subsistence strategies over time. Dr. Broughton's research should provide important insight into this question. Through the use of models derived from optimum foraging theory one can predict how species composition and age structure change when bird populations are stressed and their numbers decrease. Thus, this analysis will provide direct insight on human impact on the environment and, in turn, the effect this change had on subsequent human behavior.