Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Gender, Small Game, and Resource Depression on the Northwest Coast of North America

在唐纳德·k·格雷森博士的指导下，菲比·安德森女士将分析来自华盛顿州圣胡安群岛英国营地和沃特莫夫湾考古遗址的数据。这些遗址被大约150-1450年前的狩猎采集者用作季节性村庄，并提供了丰富的贝壳、动物骨骼和人工制品的分层样本。安德森的分析重点是确定狩猎采集者对贝类的利用如何以及为什么会随着时间的推移而变化，以及这些变化表明了这一时期贝类和其他动物的可用性。关注长期生存策略的研究，可以让我们深入了解人类对猎物种群的影响，以及人类如何调整这些策略以应对环境挑战。考古学家已经记录了许多史前狩猎采集者导致猎物数量下降的例子，然后通过在他们的饮食中加入更多的小型动物来应对这种下降。本项目研究了考古组合中小动物相对于大型动物相对丰富度增加的另一种解释。众所周知，在小规模社会中存在着普遍的性别分工，在小规模社会中，男性追求大型猎物，而女性捕猎小型猎物并收集其他资源。因此，考古遗址中小动物相对数量的增加可能表明妇女维持生计的努力有所增加，而不是大型动物数量的减少。本项目以贝类开发为例，提出了区分雄性和雌性小猎物觅食策略的假设。这些假设将通过鉴定考古组合中所代表的考古贝壳物种，量化这些物种的相对丰度，分析这些丰度随时间的变化，并检查贝类大小随时间的变化来验证。由于环境变化也会影响贝类物种的可用性及其生长，因此本研究通过氧同位素分析、Mg/Ca比和配对碳壳放射性碳定年来控制过去海面温度的变化和深海水的上涌。这项研究的结果将有助于了解人类狩猎如何影响动物种群，以及狩猎采集社会中的男女如何应对不同动物资源可用性的波动。除了社会科学家感兴趣的研究问题之外，这项研究将通过为西北海岸发展长期的贝类历史产生更广泛的影响。生态学研究表明，人类活动极大地减少了几种贝类物种的丰度。人们普遍认为，这些下降是现代实践的结果，如商业采伐、栖息地破坏和外来物种的引入。然而，在假定这些下降是现代实践的结果之前，必须表明这些下降并非源于更深层次的过去。本项目获得的贝类和环境数据将确定贝类丰度在过去如何因人类捕食和/或环境变化而波动，从而为理解现代丰度提供背景。

Under the supervision of Dr. Donald K. Grayson, Ms. Phoebe Anderson will analyze data from the archaeological sites of English Camp and Watmough Bay, San Juan Islands, WA. These sites were used as seasonal villages by hunter-gatherers from approximately 150-1450 BP and have provided rich, stratified samples of shell, animal bones, and artifacts. Ms. Anderson's analysis is focused on determining how and why hunter-gatherer exploitation of shellfish changed over time and what those changes indicate about the availability of shellfish and other animals during this period.Research focused on long-term subsistence strategies provides insight into the impacts that people have on their prey populations and into how people adjust those strategies to meet environmental challenges. Archaeologists have documented many instances in which prehistoric hunter-gatherers caused the decline of prey populations and then responded to such declines by including greater numbers of smaller animals in their diet. This project examines an alternative explanation for increases in the relative abundance of small animals to large ones in archaeological assemblages. It is well-known that there is a general sexual division of labor among small scale societies in which men pursue large prey while women hunt small game and gather other resources. As a result, it is possible that increases in the relative abundance of small animals in archaeological sites indicate an increase in women's subsistence efforts rather than a decrease in large animal availability. This project develops hypotheses to distinguish between male and female small game foraging strategies, using shellfish exploitation as a case study. These hypotheses are to be tested by identifying archaeological shell species represented in the archaeological assemblages, quantifying the relative abundances of those species, analyzing those abundances through time, and examining changes in shellfish size through time. Since environmental change can also affect both the availability of shellfish species and their growth, this research controls for changes in past sea surface temperatures and upwelling of deep ocean water through oxygen isotope analysis, Mg/Ca ratios, and paired charcoal-shell radiocarbon dating. The results of this research will contribute to an understanding of how human hunting effects animal populations and how men and women in hunter-gatherer societies respond to fluctuations in the availability of different animal resources. Beyond research questions of interest to social scientists, this research will have a broader impact by developing a long-term shellfish history for the Northwest Coast. Ecological studies have shown that human activities have dramatically reduced the abundances of several shellfish species. It is commonly believed that these declines are a result of modern practices, such as commercial harvesting, habitat destruction, and the introduction of exotic species. However before it can be assumed that these declines are the result of modern practices it must be shown that these declines are not rooted in the deeper past. The shellfish and environmental data derived for this project will determine how shellfish abundances fluctuated in the past due to human predation and/or environmental change, thus providing a background for understanding modern abundances.