The Mantle Site by Birch Jennifer;Williamson Ronald F.;

Author:Birch, Jennifer;Williamson, Ronald F.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Animal Resources: Hunting, Fishing, and Clothing

While the agricultural field systems would have required the expenditure of significant effort at clearing forested areas by men and planting, tending, and harvesting crops by women and children in addition to gathering wild plant stuffs, the subsistence system of the site inhabitants also included the exploitation of animal resources for meat protein, hides for the manufacture of clothing, and bone for making tools. The faunal sample consisted of 37,542 specimens, most of which were recovered by manual soil screening with 6 mm mesh (95%) while the remainder was found through flotation using 3 mm mesh (5%). It should be noted that the sample examined, while constituting all of the bone recovered from our excavations, does not represent the entire village sample due to previous destruction of hillside midden deposits along the west side of the village and the fact that portions of the middens on the slope have been preserved in situ.

The sample includes a few shells of bivalves and gastropods, the exoskeleton of a crustacean, the bones of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, and the bones, teeth, and antlers of mammals. From among these, sixty-seven separate taxa were identified. Bone identified to species represents 16% of the assemblage. A full description of the analysis of the assemblage, including recovery techniques, site taphonomy, and species habitat and habit descriptions, can be found in Needs-Howarth (2012), from which much of this summary is drawn.

Both number of identified species and minimum number of individuals (MNI) estimates were determined and are reported below in some cases; MNI was calculated conservatively using element duplication, side, size, and age. Moreover, in the case of Mantle, for small-sized taxa, it is unlikely that bones from the same individual animal would have been distributed among multiple refuse contexts or houses. Alternatively, for large animals or animals used during feasting, sharing of the carcass might have occurred between individuals and houses; since this is difficult to define, Needs-Howarth chose to aggregate the assemblage at the site level. While the faunal assemblage is a sample of the animals taken over time and the MNI is only a fraction of the number of animals that must have been consumed, all bone recovered from the excavation was examined and the assemblage from the site is thought to be generally representative of the hunting and fishing pursuits of the site inhabitants.

Mammal bones dominate the assemblage (87%) with fish making up 6%, birds 2%, and all other classes making up 1% or less each. The minor categories included 167 frog and toad elements, one burnt and one unaltered piece of a probable crayfish recovered from the midden, a few shell fragments from locally available freshwater taxa, and both thin-shelled terrestrial and thick-shelled aquatic snails, a few of which appear to have been modified, suggesting that they were not intrusive. Reptilia remains also constituted less than 1% (n=174) of the identified specimens and include snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) and painted turtle (Chrysemis picta); a few carapace and plastron fragments were beveled or modified.

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