Journal of Ethnobiology VOLUME |, NUMBER 1 MAY 1981 JOURNAL ORGANIZATION Co-DIRECTORS: Steven D. Emslie and Steven A. Weber, Center for Western Studies, Inc., P.O. Box 1145, Flagstaff, Arizona, 86002. EDITOR: Steven D. Emslie NEWS AND COMMENTS EDITOR: Eugene Hunn, Department of Anthropology, DH-05, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195. EDITORIAL BOARD BRENT BERLIN, Language Behavior Research Laboratory, University of Calif- ornia, Berkeley; ethnotaxonomies, linguistics. ROBERT A. BYE, JR., Department of Environmental, Population and Organismic Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder; ethnobotany, cultural ecology. RICHARD S. FELGER, Senior Research Scientist, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson; arid land ethnobotany, desert ecology. RICHARD I. FORD, Director, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; archaeobotany, cultural ecology. B. MILES GILBERT, Adjunct Research Associate, Division of Vertebrate Paleont- ology, University of Kansas, Lawrence; zooarchacology. TERENCE E. HAYS, Department of Anthropology and Geography, Rhode Island College, Providence; ethnobotany, ethnotaxonomies. RICHARD H. HEVLY, Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona Univer- sity, Flagstaff; archaeobotany, palynology. EUGENE HUNN, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle; ethnotaxonomies, zooarchaeology, cultural ecology. V. KUHNLEIN, Division of Human Nutrition, University of British Columbia, Vancouver; ethnonutrition. Gary P. NABHAN, Meals for Millions Foundation, Tucson; cultural ecology, plant domestication. A. Posey, Center for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh; ethnoentomology, tropical cultural ecology. M. REA, Curator of Birds and Mammals, San Diego Museum of Natural Sisixy- ethnotaxonomies, zooarchaeology, cultural ecology. © Center for Western Studies, Inc. Journal of Ethnobiology VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1 MAY 1981 MissOUR! BOTANICA® ALFRED FRANK WHITING, 1912-1978 INTRODUCTION The Journal of Ethnobiolagy i isa professional journal devoted to the interdisciplinary study of anthropology and biology which will of original research by Smemignveaney and other specialists. The — will consist of papers covering a broad range of topic , ethnobotany, ethnozoology, vated ecology, plant aaa zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, palynology, dendrochronology, and ethnomedicine. This ae which contains articles dealing with nearly all these subject areas, consists of pa resented at the Second Annual Ethnobiology Conference held in Flagstaff, Arizona, 6-7 April 1979. This conference was appropriately held in honor of 2 recently deceased prominent persieneeteata Lyndon L. rere and Alfred F. Whiting. This first issue of the journal is ated t to the ee men ll 1 bibliog of Alfred Whiting by Katharine Bartlett of the Museum of Northern. Arizona, F ‘oi Biographies of Hargrave have been published by Dick and Schroeder (1968), Emslie (1979), and Taylor and Euler (1980). The second article by Richard I. Ford was presented as the keynote address at the conference. The next 7 articles by Grayson, Hevly, Yarnell, Pulliam, Rea, Kuhnlein, and Berlin et al. comprised a special symposium of uiviied speakers to honor EErRrave and Whiting. The remaining papers in this i The Museum of Northern Arizona is acknowledged for their efforts in organizing this conference and for their considerable help and cooperation in allowing these papers to be published as the first issue of the Journal of Ethnobiology. These excellent papers are an ideal collection of research to begin a new journal. Proceedings of fut gy conferences will blished i i f the journal. The next issue, Volume | Number 2, will contain selected wapis presented at the Fourth Annual Ethnobiology Conference held in Columbia, Missouri, 13-14 March 1981. The journal will begin soliciting papers on original — for = firsts issue of 1982 (Volume 2 Number 1) in September 1981. Authors are the inside cover of this issue. By 1983, the journal may expand to a quarterly release and include book reviews and news and comments sections. Finally, this journal would not have been possible without the support and cooperation of 12 notable ethnobiologists comprising the Editorial Board; their experience and knowledge are what is required to ensure a successful and high quality journal. Steven D. Emslie Co-Director and Acting Editor Steven A. Weber Co-Director Journal of Ethnobiology LITERATURE CITED Dick, HERBERT W., AND ALBERT H. SCHROEDER. — EMSLIE, S.D. 1979. Introduction. Kiva 44 (2-3):77- Pp. 1-8, im Collected Papers in Honor of TayLor, WALTER W., AND ROBERT C. EULER. Lyndon Lane Hargrave (Albert H. Schroeder 1980. Lyndon Lane i 1896-1978. Amer. ed.). Papers Arch. Soc. New Mexico 1, hin. Antiquity 45(3):477-4 New Mexico Press, Santa Fe. J. Ethnobiol. 1 (1): 1-5 May 1981 ALFRED F. WHITING, 1912-1978 peer ee m of Nort Route 7 ‘hos 720, oa picts 86001 Alfred Frank Whiting was born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1912. After attending public schools, he went to the University of Vermont, located in Burlington, tite in 1933 with a Bachelor of Science degree.. He at once enrolled in the Graduate School at the University of Michigan and the following spring | received an M. A. in Taxonomic ee That summer he was included in a University Botanical E Potosi, Mexico, which may well have been responsible for arousing his interest in ethnobotany, the focal point of his career. In the summer of 1935, Whiting was appointed Curator of Biology at bey Museum of Northern Arizona, where he spent the first few month herbarium. In September he was joined by Dr. Volney H. Jones, ‘also from Michigan, and together they began a survey of Hopi Indian crop plants for the Michigan Ethnobotanical Laboratory. When the harvest was over, Jones returned to Ann Arbor, but Whiting stayed in Flagstaff to record with Edmund Nequatewa, a Hopi man on the Museum staff, the names and uses of cultivated and wild plants he and Jones had collected on the Hopi mesas. Al, whose title at the Museum had been ogee atc to Curator of Botany, continued: to collect and work on the wild plants of F At that time he entolled i in the University of Chicago to begin work on a Ph.D. in the combined fields of botany and anthropology. Whiting returned to Flagstaff in the summer Ethnobotany of the Hopi published as Bulletin 15 of the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1939. The school years of 1938-39 and 1939-40 were spent in Chicago working on his Ph.D. Here he married Dorothy J. West, whom he had met at International House at the ia ak ipine they both cl fo In September 1940, they came to F —— si ther next = £102aQ ad Ihe th on hee ethnobiology. He also continued to serve as Curator of eeany at the Museum. In the Se summer of 1941, Al was g y, unusual for that day and age, to be anthropological sehbicg to te " educational film psig rwon sl Coronet prtdbiclciee of Chicago, which , Navajo, Havasupai and Apache atari He assisted i in arrangements with the tribes for ‘Coronet to make the films and accompanied the photographers to the various reservations. This brought him in contact with the Indian people, their tribal governments, and Bureau of Indian Affairs personnel, altogether an enriching experience. The Coronet films completed, Whiting undertook a 6 month project, sponsored by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the U.S. Department of Interior and the Museum of Northern Arizona, to make an intensive survey of production and marketing problems of Hopi Indian arts and crafts. Although the films and the crafts survey were monetarily successful for the student with a wife and child, unfortunately, they diverted him from his Ph.D. dissertation, which he might have completed while still in Flagstaff. Due to World War II and other unforeseen circumstances, he never pee its Kgipewes or oe degree. In July 1942, the Whitings returned to the Mi work at Chicago until the fall of 1944 when he diced an Assistant Professorship at the University of Oregon, substituting for a member of the Anthropology Faculty who was serving in the armed forces in World War II. While at Oregon, most of Whiting’s time appears to have been occupied with teaching his first college classes and curatorial work at the Oregon State Museum. He published an article in American Anthropologist, ‘The Origin of Corn, an Evaluation of Fact and Theory,” based in part on his M.A. thesis at Michigan. a JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1 The winter climate in Oregon did not agree with either of the Whitings or their 2 young sons and they were frequently sick. ne this time - pane ae separated and she and the 2 boys returned to Chicago where her p followed. Al wrote to a friend that he longed to get back to the edry Southwest, and so, in the spring of 1947 when his teaching term was up, he moved to Tucson and Tumacacori in the southern Arizona desert to spend the next several years. At the University of Arizona, in association with the Arizona State Museum where he found many old friends, Whiting settled down to do what he most enjoyed in life: research. Based on the results of some historical studies, he wrote ‘““A Kino Triptych” and “The ae cigp i Census of 1796,” the latter published in The Kiva of the Arizona Archaeological Society. The cover of this issue of The Kiva was illustrated with a water color painting by sa (reproduced in black and white) of a reconstruction of the mission church of Tumacacori. During his years in Tucson he painted a number of watercolors of other missions and scenes in the area. A stay at Tumacacori inspired 2 delightful stories based on personal exp with some Spanish-Americans of that vicinity, ‘“The Happy Cemetery” and “Miracle in the Living Room.” A trip to visit the Seri Indians, on the west coast of Sonora and Tiburon Island, to collect and study ihe. plants they used, renee in his reviewing all recorded data on that tribe. A s Seri work, he collected several loose leaf binders of data. In 1950- 51, apparently feeling the a of some income, he took a position as a master in the Santa Cruz Valley School. In the summer of 1951, Al was a member of the Cornell University Cultural Seminar, initiated by Dr. Alexander H. Leighton, which was well described by Bunker and Adair in their book, The First Look at Strangers. His friends, John Adair of Cornell University and Edward H. Spicer of the University of Arizona, were field directors of the 5 week summer course, then in its third year. Adair and Spicer may nave enlisted PWhitng to introduce the international group of students to the Hopis, among y s. The students spent a week each among the Papagos, Navajos and Hopis of Arizona one ie Rio Grande Pueblos and Spanish Americans of Truchas, New Mexico. This was an unusual an especially } the imaginative and skillful techniques Baba ee by Adair and Spicer in introducing fee to the peoples of the Southwest. In learning how to communicate with American Indians with whose language and culture they were unfamiliar, the students of the Seminar were preparing themselves to exchange ideas and information with native peoples anywhere. Participation in the Cornell Crnee- Coluret eccamaips rem to have marked a turning point in Whiting’s career, for by th g p g ngt Chicago to complete his Ph.D. Early in 19521 lied f d da2 tas District Anthropologist for Ponape, Eastern Carolines, U.S. Trust Territory ‘of the Pacific Islands. While he was in Washington, D.C. being interviewed for this position, he renewed his acquaintance with Marjorie Grant, a nutritionist in the U.S. Public Health Service, who had been a member of the Cross-Cultural Seminar the previous summer. Within a few weeks they were married, and soon left for the South Pacific. As far as we know Whiting did not publish anything about his work on Ponape, where he was the third anthropologist for sc Gisiract after brhisbe we) II. A general description of the duties and headaches of such an by J.L. Fischer (1979). A brief statement indicates that Whiting. as wellas others, was often at odds with the policies of the district administrator. In spite of whatever problems he may have had, Whiting was intensely interested in every aspect of his work with the nave people of the island, as attested by his collection of field notes, papers, | hich he presented in 1975 to the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Pit te where they occupy 7 linear feet of shelf space. Included are diaries recording daily events, correspondence and official reports, answers to questions of persons in the government of the Trust Territory aries 0! economic conditions of the islands; a card file of notes arranged by subject covering forA dist t lands, May 1981 BARTLETT 3 everything from history through material culture, social and legal problems to census ae archaeology, maps, linguistics, negatives and prints; and a collection of books Micronesia in Japanese. A Ponapean language sia an was begun by Whiting wai’ on the island, and several game are in the Sones When their tour of duty on Ponape d Al and Marjorie decided toG for a year, Al to teach and Marjorie to make : a survey for the U.S. Public Health Service. Leaving Marjorie on Guam, Al returned to the States, visiting Saipan and Japan en route. He planned a brief visit in Vermont with his mother and then to return to the South Pacific. However, he — that his nenee wife was s hospitalized and he went to Denver to nes after their 2 young so and his sons went East and he sought a teaching position, which he found in rae High School at Rockport, Massachusetts. Marj d in August, and they rented a large old farmhouse near the school and close enough to Boston for Marjorie to work on her Ph.D. Whiting had at last found a position well suited to his interest and his talents, a museum where he could work with college students and where intellectual curiosity was highly When Whiting arrived at Dartmouth College Museum he found a vast quantity of material pertaining to his department in storage, and many of the specimens lacking documentation. He spent most of his time the first years in reorganizing the storage collections, researching the origins of the specimens, and preparing new exhibits. Soon he offered to guide the museum tours for beginning Sociology classes to introduce the students to physical and cultural anthropology. This led to a weekly lab course in the museum to expose students to the various sub-disciplines in anthropology and to teach museology. He enlisted students and others as volunteer curators, who not only helped in organizing and researching the museum collections, me prepared exhibits and major: shows. In 1961 Al was promoted to th but retained his utle, Curator of Anthropology; 5 years later he became Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology in addition to continuing as Curator in the Museum. He taught a course ae year, usually an advanced seminar, on a variety of subjects: Museum Methods, Africa Ethnography, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, Primitive Art (which included = development of jazz and blues in America), and Primitive Technology. He supervised students with individual projects covering cultures from the Andes to the Arctic. In all these courses each student was required to prepare an exhibit case, selecting the material, eee * ae _ sila labels, to final polishing of the glass. Whiting never seemed too busy to discuss advice whether on the preparation of an exhibit ora ppeurne matter. His enthusiasm for the work at hand, innovative methods and imaginative techniques of = Sa combined with his kindly manner and his wit, endeared him to students and collea During his years in Hanover, Whiting published a number of book reviews, articles on museology, and articles on Hopi life. Occasionally, he vigaseigien to igs aonwent to spenda summer or a brief vacation to renew old friendships. He made a survey of material culture in the pueblos of Taos and Tesuque for the Museum of New Mexico, purchasing specimens and recording copious notes. Sometimes one or both of his sons accompanied him, but not his wife for they had separated soon after he went to Dartmouth. When the summer of 1974 arrived Al was ready to retire after 19 very demanding years, and left Dartmouth for Arizona. He spent several months in Flagstaff where he renewed his association with the Museum of Northern Arizona where he was appointed Research Ethnobotanist. He purchased a small house with one acre of land at Cornville, in the Verde Valley, Arizona, where the winters are mild and the syeamaces bmi He especially wished to escape the Flagstaff winters, f g g in New England. 4 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1 He commuted to Flagstaff and the Museum once a week to work on a revision of Ethnobotany of the Hopi, the third printing having been sold out. During the summers of 1975-1977, he grew experimental plots of corn, beans, squash, and devil’s claw, with seeds he obtained from the Hopi, Havasupai, Apache, and Papago Indians of Arizona. He was studying the genetics of ene vane Bastian os to determine their Felationships: rom Dartmouth, Al brought capacity with notes and photographs containing the results of a considerable part of his research for the previous 45 years. He hoped to prepare for publication, during the pleasant Cornville winters, the numerous manuscripts he had accumulated. All his hopes and plans suddenly came to an end when he was taken il] in the late fall of 1977 and died a few months later. The publications of Whiting that appear in his bibliography represent only a small fraction of his interests. Before his death he arranged to leave his notebooks t to Dr. r. David Seaman of Northern Arizona University, with r the future. Al Whiting had a brithvant, active and creative mind, always far ahead of his manual dexterity. \ was written to his satisfaction, his agile mind leaped ahead to the next project. He simply could not endure the tedium of writing and ieee a text to suit an a ema r and so most of bis major research has never appeared 1 in print. I number of editors but all have given up in despair upon viewing the ‘ ‘completed” work. Al was constantly being lured away from one interesting project to another, although he was very thorough in conducting his studies and collected vast amounts of extremely valuable information which he planned to publish. Other notes were used for teaching and as the basis for museum exhibits. He hada Neneele a senate; which combined with a delightful sense of humor and a talent for words, | and contributed greatly to his success as a peoleasor and museum curator. He also wrote many scientific papers on a variety of subjec The anthropological profession lost a erie and versatile colleague when Alfred F. Whiting died. It is fitting that the Second Annual Conference on Ethnobiology was dedicated to him as well as to his former associate at the Museum of Northern Arizona, Lyndon L. Hargrave. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful to Dr. P. David Seaman of Flagstaff who obtained a copy of “Finding Aid to the A-F. Whiting Collection,’’ National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. April, 1976 Acknowledgment is made to Miss Mary E. Wesbrook, Administrative Assistant, Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, with thanks for her assistance in preparing this brief account of Whiting’s years in Hanover, N.H. LITERATURE CITED BUNKER, ROBERT AND JOHN ADAIR 1959. The First 252, in The Uses of Anthropology (Walter Look at Strangers. Rutgers Univ. Press, New Goldschmidt, se Amer. Anthropol. Brunswick, N.]. Spec. Publ. No. FISCHER, J.L. 1979. Government Anthropologists | WHITING, ALFRED ; eoneacuatinil In Harold in the Trust Territory of Micronesia. Pp. 238- S. Colton Papers, Mus. N. Arizona, MS 207-1. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ALFRED F. WHITING gees Ponape Indian agriculture: I, background. collection, Mus. N. Arizona. Mus. Notes, 10 (2): . Arizona, Mus. Notes 8 (10): 51-53. 5-8. Prose The small herbarium. The preparation, 1937b. Hopi Indian agriculture: II, seed source organization and use of a small botanical and distribution. Mus. N. Arizona, Mus. Notes May 1981 10 (5): 13-16. 1939. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, Mus. N. Arizona, Bull. 15. (Reprinted 1950 and 1967). 1942a. The bearing of junipers on the Espejo expedition. Plateau 15 (2): 21-23 1942b. Junipers of the Flagstaff region. Plateau 15 (2): 23-31. 1944. The origin of corn: an evaluation of fact and theory. Amer. Anthropol. 46 (4): 500-515. 1945. Review: Burbank among the Indians, as told by Ernest Royce and edited by F.J. Taylor. Pacific Northwest Quart. 36 (2): 177-179. 1948. John D. Lee and the Havasupai. Plateau 21 (1): 12-16 195la. ctw : Hopi kachina dolls and their eal by Harold S. Colton. Arizona eee ): 91-92 951b. “The apps cemetery. Arizona Quart. 7 ial 1951c. Mahe in ey living room. Arizona Game 7 (4): 311-31 952. A Kino ape Arizona Quart. 8 (3): 238- Bp 1953a. Nan-Madol en Madol-en-ihmw, mimeo Dept. Education, Ponape. 1953b. The Tumacacori census of 1796. Kiva 19 (1); 1-12. 1955. Review: Indian corn in old America, by Paul Weatherwax. Indiana Mag. Hist. June: 169-170 1958. Havasupai cieue « in the onina. Plateau 30 (3): 5 Review: The Upper retail Indians, by Robert A. McKennan. Dartmouth Alumni Mag., November: ib. Themuseum, ine student and the library. BARTLETT 5 Dartmouth College Library Bull. 3 (1): 1-8. 1959c. Letter to the editor: Abenaki celebration of Roger’s raid. Darmouth Alumni Mag., December: 2. 1960. Letter on Identification. Pract. Anthrop. 7 (5): 240. 1962. To see ourselves: Word from Me anthro- pologist. Pract. Anthrop. 7: 138-14 1964a. Hopi kachinas. ae 37 (1): 1964b. Havasupai. Jn Encyclopedia Britannica. (This was reprinted — the new Britannica format was adopted in 965a. Hopi nocturne. sige 37 (3): 99-105. 1965b. The bride wore white. Plateau 37 (4): 128- 130. 1966a. Catalogues: Damn ‘em -an inter-museum office memo. Curator 9 (1): 85-87. 1966b. The present status of ethnobotany in the Southwest. Econ. Botany 20 (3): 316-325. 1967. Voiceless music in the Dartmouth College Museum. Dartmouth College Library Bull. 7 (2): 58-59. 1970. The current problem of the American Indian and Dartmouth’s...attempt to help. Letter to the editor, Dartmouth Review (7): 16. aby Leaves from a Hopi doctor’s casebook. Bull. New York Acad. Med. 47 (2): 125-146. 1971. Father Porras at Awatovi and the flying nun. Plateau 44 (2): 60-66. 1974. Professor Child’s collection of cider m Dartmouth College Library Bull. 14. (2):54-61. 1977. Hopi textiles. Pp. 413-419, im Ethno- graphic Textiles of the Western Hemisphere: 1976 Proceedings of the Irene Emery Round- table on Museum Textiles, The Textile Museum, Wash. D.C. J. Ethnobiol. 1 (1): 6-27 May 1981 GARDENING AND FARMING BEFORE A.D. 1000: PATTERNS OF PREHISTORIC CULTIVATION NORTH OF MEXICO RICHARD I. FORD University of Michigan, Ethnobotanical Laboratory, Museum of Anthropology, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109 ABSTRA\ The ss cept of dchiierate plant fenanacad north of Mexico were not single oc. in the Eastern Instead there were several periods of contact with Mesoamerica which resulted in the diffusion of specific plants into these areas, and they can be grouped into agricultural complexes. The first was the Early Eastern Mexican Agricultural Complex (Gourd Agriculture Complex) arriving in the East before 3000 B.C., resulting in gardens of bottle gourds and pepo gourds. The Eastern Agricultural Complex developed before 1000 B.C. and consists of 2 domesticated plants outside their modern range of diswibution. The Upper Sonoran Agricultural Complex pind in the higher elevations re the Sou thwest arosind 1000. B. Cc. ba esis BOUNCE, Be slightly later with beans. C the East where they were added to gardens and corn fields respectively. The Lower Sonoran Agricultural Complex is found in the more arid regions of the Southwest by A.D. 500 and although it includes several species of beans and squashes, cotton, and amaranth, only Cucurbita mixta and cotton became important outside areas where irrigation was almost mandatory. By A.D. 1000 pacman | aseqanenee valcca? Mexico Fesuleed in ata Late Eastern Mexican Agricultural Complex henopod. In contrast to the East, the indigenous Southwest Agricultural Complex ‘ds after Spanish contact and to date only the devil’s claw is recognized. The Hispanic Agricultural Complex hen Spanish i Scr a transported native tropical domesticates throughout their empire. Chili, tobacc 1 wheat and many garden crops soon were grown a their pre-Columbian 1 range. Each complex was grown initially in different ecological situations and had differential impacts on recipient cultures and subsequent cultural developments. INTRODUCTION In 1944, when Al Whiting published ‘The Origin of Corn: An Evaluation of he = Theory” (Whiting 1944), the archaeobotanical record was i 1 theory. Whiting assessed - sie ie ideas s for the botanical and cultural beginnings P of verification than others, none was sufficient without archaeological plant evident At that time the recovery - prehistoric plant remains was mostly happenstance. In the Southwest, for example, , Jemez Cave by Volney Jones (1935), had been published only in summary form, and Edgar Anderson had just begun to systematize archaeological maize and ethnographic exampies in the Pueblo area (cf. Anderson and Blanchard 1942). Despite th beginnings, sufficient botanical evid as accumulating from archaeological contexts, at least i in the Southwest, that Carter (1945) was able 4 one hypotheses, too, th h ical d. Sites rae as Bat Cave ( NEE and Smith 1949) ee the maize that botanists required from archaeologists to test their ideas. In the ensuing 35 years the recovery of cata remains has become both sophisticated and commonplace. Whiting correctly em that the archaeological record is the supreme measure of theories of the ee of plants and as a consequence hypotheses proposed by Carter and others continue to be subjected to re-evaluation. i 3 May 1981 FORD 7 in place of an emphasi icul which typified the era when Whiting began his | field snaties, attention has turned 0 the intricate crop history of North America north of h a particular subsistence pattern. The intent of this paper, then, is to delineate ‘the crop complexes of the prehistoric United States based upon the ev record and to discuss the implications of their addition to sical. economies. DISCUSSION Prehistoric A “be hieaiee rig gravel + mf hh or crop f an apparent common geographic pein and a mutual association within particular environmental parameters in which the complex developed, although afterward an individual species may experience a separate geograhical distribution and history. The idea for geographical-based complexes originated with Linton (1924), but received continental application by Carter (1945), e Southwest, the Gila-Colorado and Plateau, each with separate origins and routes of diffusion. In addition he distinguished an Eastern Mexican Corridor as a source of agriculture in the East, which diffused to the Plateau, and a West Mexican Cormidor (Carter 1945:12). Although the importance of each area relative to Linton’s and Carter’s theories has changed, nevertheless their insights are apparent in the agricultural complexes previously identified by Ford (1973) and expanded and elaborated upon in this paper. 1) Early Eastern Mexican Agricultural Complex (Gourd Agricultural Complex). Present evidence suggests that the first neers ote F Sets in me United States originated in eastern Mexico, probably diffused across Tex d the major river systems of the Midwest. This complex consists a Lagenaria siceraria, Cucurbita pepo, and perhaps Cucurbita pepo var. ovifera 2) Eastern
A
i | 2 ae al
mad ele oe \
ee e Chenopodium berlandieri
var. nuttalliae
t Nicotiana rustica
® Phaseolus vulgaris
@ Cucurbita maxima
x Cucurbita moschata
@ Mexican Dent corn
Fic. 6.—Late Eastern Mexican Agricultural Complex: sites in the east with beans, ca. A.D. 1000;
Spanish introduced crops.
May 1981 FORD 21
A Southwestern spain memeies
L } ae | L
No indigenous southwestern plant sy
domestication in prehistory. Despite the possible domestication of the grain amaranth and
tepary bean in the Sonoran Desert region, all archaeobotanical remains are fully
domesticated and no antecedent developmental sages ave been excavated. A possible
candidate is the devil’s claw
cultivated or had its range extended by prehisvoric people.
Provosesdce parviflora Woot. and Standl. Rcotie’ a daw pods yield edible seed and
y Papago
and Moencopi villagers, but Canetwe note Bell (1942:113) argue that its domestication is a
historic response by the Pima and Papago to a commercial demand for baskets. Yarnell
(1977:872) is less certain because he feels a minimum of several centuries is required to
selectively breed plants with larger pods and white seeds. In this instance, no
archaeobiological data are available to support or refute either position, but it remains an
interesting possibility.
Helianthus annuus L. The H
for dye and food. Although sunflower seeds have been found in several archaeological
contexts, none exceeds an uncultivated, Native Helianthus in size. In the the absence ot
contradictory evidence, th I I was brought
to the Hopi in historic times.
Agave parryi Engelm. Minnis and Plog (1976) have noted the disjunct distribution of
agave north of its natural range is correlated with the presence of a nearby archaeological
site. They suspect that prehistoric people may have extended its range intentionally or
accidently. Archaeological evidence for its utilization at these sites has not been
forthcoming, but this does not negate the potentially active ae Southwestern Indians had
in spreading this and other species beyond their modern rai
Recently, ee wh has eounserated several native southwestern sone species,
includin which
z 1 Wao
tl} = ] 1, | eo > |
nee | VW + 4 J P | oe!
Ww aait ak
may have been encouraged through cae and even jot bea by them. No evidence
demonstrates the genetic changes and human dependency associated with plant
At present aS h Agricultural Complex has not been demonstrated beyond the
devil’s claw. However, additional field research combined with botanical analysis may
contribute additional species
Hispanic Introductions
Field, garden, and orchard crops derive their origin in parts of the United States from
Spanish contacts. Early Spanish traders, missionaries, and colonists brought several
domesticates native to the New World to regions where they were not grown in precontact
times. They also brought many European plants to the Southwest in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Wheat, barley, peaches, apricots, plums, walnut, peas, chick peas, and
melons are but a few of the crops adopted by the Indians.
Considering the contacts prehistoric Southwestern cultures reportedly had with Central
Mexican cultures, it is surprising that the chili pepper, Capsicum annuum L., and tobacco,
Nicotiana rustica, were unknown here until Hispanic times. No evidence of chili peppers
has ever been found in unambiguous precontact contexts, not even at Casas Grandes. The
history of tobacco in the Southwest is more complicated. The native western tobacco,
Nicotiana attenuata, pioneers disturbed habitats, arid Pueblo people still collect and smoke
it on ceremonial occasions. Archaeologists have shown that it had a number of prehistoric
usages, and plant parts an and seeds were collected and stored (Yarnell 1977:871), but
morphological analy di The Spanish brought Nicotiana rustica
2 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
early in the historic period. An important archaeological specimen has been identified as N.
rustica from the post-1680 reoccupation of the Bandelier cliff dwellings (Volney H. Jones,
personal communication). On the basis of this find it appears that rusticg was an early crop
accepted from the Spanish and that it continued to be grown and Pueblo
Rebellion. It still is planted and used corcmoninlls: in complementary relationship to
attenuata.
Prior to contact the tribes of the Missouri River drainage and the eastern United States
grew only Cucurbita pepo. However, shortly after contact their complement of cucurbits
was completed with the additions of C. moschata and C. maxima. A peduncle of Cucurbita
moschata was recovered in the early 1700s Historic Period at the Fatherland site in
Mississippi (Cutler and Blake 1973:37) and at the Historic Hidatsa Rock Village site in
North Dakota (Cutler and Blake 1973:53) (Fig. 6). Cucurbita maxima originated in South
America, and is assumed to have been an Hispanic introduction into Mexico, the American
Southwest, and the East where the only authenticated find is from Fort Berthold Village,
A.D. 1845-1874, in North Dakota (Cutler and Blake 1973:53).
The Spanish were also responsible for the introduction of new corn types from Mexico.
The large eared Cristalina de Chihuahua, which apparently evolved in northern Mexico
(Cutler 1960), was recovered from a probable historic context at Casas Grandes (Cutler and
Blake 1974) and northward in the historic Pueblos. Mexican Dent, an ancestor of the modern
Corn Belt dent, also first appears in Spanish contact situations at Picuris in the
Post-Rebellion deposits (Cutler me Blake ied Mexican Dent had a profound pmpat on
the maize of the Rio Grande Pueblos g are
a result.
The Hispanic Agricultural Complex achieved widespread distribution and was
continued during and after the Pueblo Rebellion. New maize types increased productivity
and the great array of new annual and orchard crops intensified Pueblo use of arable land
and brought relief from failure of prehistoric cultivars.
o
CONCLUSION
n assessment of crop caspase guides of crop association, and the geographical
distribution of d I isbandry an
future research activities. Th td f the ind lent i luction f Mexico of the
first cultivars in the East and the Southwest is less i important than their aod oak into the
prehistoric economies. In the East squash and gourd were grown n gardens and
supplemented gathered foodstuffs from the forest. In the major river ys starchy annual
seeds were collected, and the exogenous origin of agriculture led to the cee eiel of
a and sunflower at least. ue the West, into nie and squash and later gourd and
common beans Perhaps
1000 years passed before corn became an economic . stable.
Even with the establishment of sedentary communities in the Midwest and the spread of
corn from the Southwest, an agricultural field system did not evolve for many centuries.
Again, there is no evidence that any cultivated species or new race of corn immediately
changed the cultural patterns where they were introduced.
The sedentary villages of southern Arizona received a number of crops from Mexico, but
these were merely added to an established agricultural pattern which had diffused from
mountainous areas. What strategies were used for growing these crops and how they
system to be explained. To heed Whiting’s appeal to the
muerte record, evidence must be obtained to answer these and similar questions.
e importance of changing cultural adapations for understanding plant breeding in
prehistory i is conspicuous in North America. The achenes of sunflower and sumpweed, for
example, increased in size heli after they were oe domesticated, and they may have
under ergone their grea atest 1 g the b 54 f field agriculture, 2000
o
May 1981 FORD 23
years after their domestication began. Corn demonstrates a similar pattern in both the
Southwest and the East. The genetic variability and its adaptive potential was not
appreciated by the casual horticultural aoe of hunters and gatherers or even by the
Midwestern Woodland cultures with their large gardens. However, as cultural pressures
changed, the productivity and adaptability of maize was realized and new varieties were
developed in both areas.
-D. 1000, with the pone exception of the devil’ s claw, all | prehistoric agricultural
crops and complexes were in t
were well-established. It was not until the arrival of Europeans that new crops were
introduced and aboriginal economies underwent substantial change.
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A CRITICAL VIEW OF THE USE OF
ARCHAEOLOGICAL VERTEBRATES
IN PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION
ALD K. GRAYSON
University of nai goal Department of Anthropology
Seattle, Washington 98195
ALDI LI BRALL.
bd cake J lente ere c W
relied either up pie p or have
oe - oe 3 c J C. J hL T e
Ss a “2
© eee, a. 1 1 th sy nt< of
é ae & o
, p | 1, + = = | c. L 2. and
oOo
| 4 Le KR A. < 1 ye | > 1 £. 1
& a PIEKwMcostys t
collection, h ll 1 . l L l Sr hae se Se
t b
1 7 hd ~~ 2 L LL t if J 4 LK | Me an nd 2) we
ora if ever, have any notion of the relationship between the quantitative structure of ite
inferences, aA th .. 1 eee. | = Poe ae fae , eo eae er | ly studi rs hich treat
taxa as attributes, and not as cabbies can routinely be treated as valid. Other major
difficulties presented by archaeological vertebrates in paleoecological reconstruction are
reviewed, with special emphasis placed upon hazards encountered in presence/absence
studies.
INTRODUCTION
During the past few decades, b ins f haeological sites have b an
increasingly popular source of information about past environments. It is easy to demon-
strate this i ICC aRIIN popularity. Assuming mina the sample of paleoclimatic | literature, i
Grayson (197.
paleoclimatic ‘literature are representative of trends within the Sea anit
literature as a whole, this bibliography may be used to assess the changing role of
archaeological vertebrates in the analysis of past environments in North America. The
bibliography lists no archaeological vertebrate faunal studies conducted for paleoclimatic
purposes prior to the 1931- 1940 decade. Between 1931 and 1940, 2; 8% of the published paleo-
climatic studies mad to 1.0% between
1941 and 1950, then increased to 4.0% between 1951 and 1960, increased again to 4.3% between
1961 and 1970, then i y years of the 1970’s to 10.7% (Table 1).
While these data are North American, paleoclimatic literature from other parts of the world
seems to exhibit the same trends, although the use of archaeological vertebrates in
paleoenvironmental reconstruction began much earlier in the Old World.
Given the increasing interest in the use of archaeological vertebrates as a source of
information about past environments, it is interesting to note that the critical literature
concerning ones studies i is quite small. While vertebrate paleontology has had a critical
literature on j for well over a century (e.g., Dawkins 1869:
Owen 1846), and this literature is rapidly becoming quite large (e.g., Behrensmeyer 1975;
Shotwell 1955, 1958, 1963; Voorhies 1969; Munthe and McLeod 1975 and references
contained therein), examination of the principles and processes of serene
reconstruction g see
Findley 1964).
The lack of such a critical literature might suggest paleoenvironmental reconstruction
using archaeological vertebrates i is aeonenenery straightforward, and can be conducted with
little concern for y g the truth, as this
paper demonstrates.
oS 4
May 1981 GRAYSON 29
DISCUSSION
Basic Approaches
Of the several approaches to paleoenvironmental reconstruction which have been
employed using archaeological vertebrates, 2 characterize the vast majority of the
literature. In the bcd of _ bes aysouteneee the toa present in =n archaeological fauna are
identified, and th I
environments of th i th he f Guilday and Adam 1967;
Guilday and Parmalee } 1972; Parmalee and Oesch 1972). In the eae approach, each taxon
is treated not as an attribute which can be either present or absent, but as a variable whose
abundance can vary discretely. In studies which treat taxa as variables, some measure of
taxonomic abundance is employed to derive quantitative statements about the relative
abundances of all taxa present (e.g., Bate 1937; Butler 1972; Grayson 1976, 1977b; Harris
1963). These 2 approaches are examined in detail here.
Taxa as Variables
It is not hard to see that treating taxa as variables holds a greater potential for providing
paleoenvironmental information than does treating them as attributes. Let us say, for
instance, that we are studying ore history of : Move owired ecosystem heise includes — 2
mammals, taxon A and taxon B. T b and only with
fluctuations in temperature: when it gets hotter, A increases while B decreases, and vice
versa. Let us assume we have a fauna which contains a sample of A and B which i is } Fepre-
sentative of th g g
the past 1,000 years. Analysis of this fauna shows both A and B have been p during thi
entire period of time (Table 2a). All that can be inferred f his ob ion is th
ature minima and maxima have not exceeded the tolerances of either taxon during “the
period represented. Further analysis, however, shows the abundances of taxa A and B have
fluctuated widely through time. Because the sample is representative of the environment
when the sample was accumulating, and because abundances of these animals vary with
temperature fluctuations, some fairly detailed statements can be made about temperature in
the sampled area during the past : ,000 years — for instance, time periods 4 through 8 were
much warmer than th li d (Table 2b). Clearly, treating taxa
as variables holds the promise of providing much more detailed information on past
ale ieacoe ieee than treating taxa as attributes, for the simple reason that presence/absence
“i ] c . L a ri
é
3 Sa hd 4q }
anominal scale. When , only
basis of paleoenvironmental inference. When taxa are treated as variables, fluctuations in
abundances of each taxon, or of groups of taxa, become an additional target of aay.
It can be argued, therefore, tl
taxonomic abundance are preferred over those which treat taxa as presence/ absence
attributes. Unfortunately, one can argue even more forcefully that paleoenvironmental
Studies based upon counts of taxonomic abundance are not likely to provide demonstrably
valid data about past environments (and here I use the term valid in its statistical sense: are
we measuring what we think we are measuring?). There are 2 reasons for this: the nature
of counts of taxonomic abundance, and, the nature of the faunal sample itself.
There are only 2 measures available for quantifying the abundances of taxa represented
within an perhecnnen: site: counts # mcaaaceia Specimens per taxon (NISP; in earlier
publicati
taxon (MNI; see Casteel 1978 and pt 1979 for a discussion of meat weights as
abundance measure). I have treated these units at length elsewhere (e.g., Grayson 1973,
1978a, and esp. 1979), and will not repeat those discussions here. Ati is, however, necessary to to
point out that NISP and MNI are similar in an i
number provided by either measure and the actual number of animals which contributed
30 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
1.—Numbers of paleoclimatic studies in North America using vertebrate remains from
archaeological sites (data from Grayson 1975)
UDIES EMPLOYING
DECADE ALL STUDIES (a) ARCHAEOLOGICAL VERTEBRATES (b) b(100)/a
1881 - 1890 2 0 0.0
1891 - 1900 ] 0 0.0
1901 - 1910 2 0 0.0
1911 - 1920 7 0 0.0
1921 - 1930 $2 0 0.0
1931 - 1940 144 4 2.8
1941 - 1950 200 2 1.0
1951 - 1960 302 12 4.0
1961 - 1970 559 26 47
1971 -.(*) 149 16 10.7
TOTALS 1398 60
(*): while the | fe in Gray (1975) dated 1974 g bl i decad tends only to 1973.
TABLE 2.—An example of an archaeological faunal analysis in which taxa are treated both as
attributes (Table 2a) and as variables (Table 2b). See text for explanation
a: TAXA AS ATTRIBUTES b: TAXA AS VARIABLES
(numbers represent absolute abundances)
TAXON TAXON
A B A B
1 x x 1 10 90
Z x x 2 10 90
=) 3 x x 3 10 80
g 4 x x 4 40 30
| 5 x x 5 60 20
6 x x 6 80 10
= 7 x x 7 50 05
ram 8 x x 8 40 05
9 x x 9 10 60
10 x x 10 10 80
(x - taxon recorded as present)
G7 eT ee
bones to the collection neem study i is, in all but trivial instances, unknown. That is, the
meaning of both th y clouded because the relationship
between estimated and actual abundances must always be unknown.
For example, time period 4 of the site presented in Table 2b eee abundances of “40”
for taxon A and “30” for taxon B without mention of wh e is being
used. This is clarified by noting that th ini f individuals
defined from 450 identified specimens ory A and 550 identified specimens of B. Knowing
this, it is no longer clear what the actual abundances of A and B really are. It is possible to
consult the voluminous literature on this point (see Grayson 1979 for areview), and recount
the ——— for and against NESE and MINT as abundance measures. Instead, " can be
counts
and the number of animals which originally contributed to the collection is unknown and
unknowable. Unfortunately, it is the original number which is the target of our estimates:
May 1981 GRAYSON 3]
There is, for i a 08 reason ragies the er number of animals deposited i in our. site
could not have been B.C
“60” and “80” are an accurate soso of the abundances of these taxa in the environment
surrounding the site, andt ,it
is not hard to see how misleading are the NISP values (450 for taxon A and 550 for taxon B),
or the MNI values (40 for taxon A, 30 for taxon B). Because there is no way of working back
from an excavated collection of bones to when it was deposited, and because there is no way
of relating counts of identified specimens or minimum numbers of individuals to the
number of animals which contributed to the faunal sarin neither NISP nor MNI isa
reasonable quantifier of taxonomic abundance in t & case. We simply « do not oe and
cannot know, what the counts they provide mean in t nce there
are no other ways available for counting abundance in this setting, it is clear ore one of the
bases for analyzing the taxonomic abundances of archaeological vertebrates is very weak
indeed
But there is another, even more damaging, problem involved in the paleoenvironmenta!
use of archaeological vertebrates. In the example above, it has been assumed the sample of
animals deposited in the site was representative of what was living in the area at the time the
sample was accumulating. Unfortunately, the relationship between the archaeological
collection and the actual population — the set of animals living in the area 6 chen time the
archaeological sample was being deposited (the Boyais population”) — is own, except
that the animals in the collection probably ca efrom tha kane: As with ‘ihe relationship
rains as anal MNI and acta abundances, the rela p between which
population is usually unknown and
unknowable. This presents an insurmountable " difficulty for using ind Gang
abundances of taxa within an archaeological site as a key to past environm
The problem seems an obvious one. To continue with the example etal. I shall
drop the unrealistic assumption that the collection under study accurately represents the
abundances of taxa A and B in the surrounding environment at the time the fauna was
accumulating, and note instead that the num bers g the site probably had
more to do with the mechanism of accumulation than with the actual abundances of those
taxa in the sampled area. The abundances of taxa A and B may have been in the ratio of 100 to
1 in the sampled environment, bese if the acc comnslatieiee tnechanisen sampled taxon B almost
to the exclusion of taxon A, then taxon A and
80 individuals for taxon B (as noted above) are entirely possible.
Is it unreasonable to emphasize that the risesiicuren ee the target population and
the archaeological fauna is unknown? Can that that
it becomes inappropriate in most cases to derive paleoenvironmental information from
taxonomic abundances? A simple example serves to demonstrate the problem is, in fact, a
severe one.
People are just one in a set of mechanisms which accumulate vertebrate remains in
pete tay sites. Other organic accumulation mechanisms include a variety of non-
an predators and scavengers (see, for instance, Butler 1972; Guilday and Parmalee 1972;
pratt 1960; Mellet 1974). It = obvious that predators and es, including
people, cannot be relied on to
environment. The saabnc introduced as a result of these varied accumulation
mechanisms may be seen by examining the behavior of nin a class of predators whose
peaepere a behavior seems simple compared to that of human
e predation patterns of owls have been particularly well rida Maser et al. (1970),
for instance, studied the food habits of 3 aires ot owls i <4 — Oregon eho = Horned
)
Owl (Bubo virginianus), Short-earedO ong-ear 1
These authors gathered and analyzed 24 sets of ont pellets from these Species between
February and July, 1969. With the e om areas adjacent to o springs
(one each from B. virginianus and A. otus), ll coll were tats “similar in all
areas’’ (Ibid. 1970:4).
32 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
TaBLe 3.—Mammalian contents of pellets from 3 species of owls (from Maser et al. 1970).
BUBO VIRGINIANUS ASIO OTUS ASIO FLAMMEUS
MNI % MNI % MNI %
Peromyscus maniculatus 43 32 20 20 65 19
Microtus montanus 25 19 4 4 37 1]
Thomomys talpoides 21 16 6 6 94 27
Perognathus parvus 19 14 64 63 101 29
Reithrodontomys megalotis 10 8 3 3 22 6
gurus curtatus 7 4 4 14 4
Neotoma ciner 3 F 4 0 0 0 0
Dipodomys ordii 3 2 1 1 16 5
Spermophilus beecheyi 1 1 0 0 0 0
S. townsendii 1 1 0 0 0 0
Totals ‘ 133 100 349 99 102 101
TABLE 4.—Modern ow! pellets as archaeological strata. Data from Table 3; see text for explanation.
STRATUM
1 2 3
Microtus montanus and Thomomys talpoides 46 10 13]
Perognathus parvus and Dipodomys ordii 22 65 117
Stratum 1 = Bubo virginianus (from Table 3)
Stratum 2 = Asio otus (from Table 3
Stratum 3 = Asio flammeus (from Table 3)
x2 values: | - 2: 44.15 (p 01)
2 - 3: 36.20 (p .O1)
Some of the data from these 24 pellet collectidns are presented in Table 3, which displays
the number lian individuals f h owl speci Iculated identified skulls
and mandibles (C. Maser, personal communication). Rather than treating these data as
synchroni i las havi lated time, the lets f B. virgimianus
accumulating first, then those from A.otus, and finally
situation is not far-fetched; several species of owls can be f y given pa
(Bent 1938; Marti 1974), and shifts in the use of roosts by owls can be readily observed today.
A stratified faunal collection from the pellets of 3 species of owls, all of which hunt the
same habitat, has now been constructed. Using this collection of pellets as the basis of
; ues fp ‘ ee ee
inferencec
p
those from A. flammeus. Such a
di : h of habitat
following the lead of the archaeological literature (Butler 1972; Grayson 1977b; Harper and
Alder 1970), and by considering the Montane Vole (Microtus montanus) and the Norther?
Pocket Gopher (Thomomys talpoides) as indicators of mesic environments, and the Great
Basin Pocket Mouse (Perognathus parvus) and Ord’s Kangaroo Rat (Dipodomys ordii) aS
indicators of xeric environments.
}
‘
-
a
4
q
‘4
May 1981 GRAYSON 33
[es | pO Hake fe ee t ] i h .. q ra
é
4 H r) Lh sg:
y between strata, with greater numbers of xeric rodents
in stratum 2 than can n be accounted for by chance, a fewer number of mesic rodents
than any hypothesis of randomness would allow in that stratum (Table 4). The conclusion
of such an analysis would be: stratum 1 accumulated during a time of relatively high
effective fies qononnere! producing a greater abundance of mesic habitats, while stratum nz
abundance of xeric ¢ habitats. Stratum ree in turn, saw a return to conditions eatin
those of stratum | times. Yet, all that has happened is that I have constructed a fauna using
modern data under the reasonable assumption that different species of owl -_ ———
time, use the same roost. That is, it is assumed th hange
through time. What this analysis has detected is not environmental change through time,
but different predation eis “9 a set of sympatric owls. It is perhaps, one of the reasons
why these owls can be sympatr
The relationship between owl pellet
forced one. It i
of vertebrates from ow! pellets. But more important is the fact that owls, and other non-
human predators and scavengers, represent one of a myriad of accumulation mechanisms
which account for the deposition of bones in archaeological sites, and that changes in the
accumulation mechanisms lead to changes in composition of the fauna which faunal
auahynte iienately aay Clearly, any prlonememommenae analysis of archaeological
the taxonomic abundances
wees characterized ieee living community at } the time a fauna accumulated, and: the
Tt .. 1
I faunas is not a
and
f. eee RE
upon the accumulation mechanisms. Because those mechanisms are rarely known, ihe
relationship between the population of animals in th
be known with any precision. This is true even when problems relating to \oagargsem
preservation of deposited materials are set aside. As a result, the validity of an
paleoenvironmental reconstruction based on counts of abundance must always be in
question.
There are 2 reasons, then, why paleoenvironmental reconstruction based u
quantification of azardous. First, the units available
for counting eenenrsanig ee — ~ understanding of € processes w
transform a d
that the numbers provided by those units have much relationshi h ber of animals
in the original pile. Second, we rarely, if ever, have any notion of the relationship between
the quantitative structure of the target population, from which the sample was drawn and
about which we are trying to make inferences, and the archaeological sample. Because of
these problems, it is rare that counts of taxonomic abundance can tell us anything about
known environmental parameters. If this is the case, taxa should be treated as attributes
which can be either present or absent, rather than trying Pp
eee ; .
as if they necessarily p ning r
This position is very similar to that taken by Sir Richard O ( ) y
ago:
Th Receiasle cit me ng dee ey, Pe eo as ok e eee ity of
hi ‘+. + em 3 1
= a mel een —_ from the quantity of human bones in its oo
RK
ensmeyer
Wolff 1973). ci si accept i as a working eae that the solution oe snesscoher
34 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
problems is logically prior to the use of archaeological and paleontological vertebrates for
the extraction of paleoenvironmental information
It is difficult to disagree with this principle. Vinee it would be optimistic indeed to
think that taphonomic approaches will ipa ane ‘sufficiently refined to allow the easy
Returning to the modern
owls, and the fauna which they provided, makes this point more forcefully.
As Maser et al. (1970) point out, fresh owl pellets from their study area were easily
recognized as they were whole, held together by shiny mucous covering. After about a
month, the pellets were rapidly disintegrated, in part because of the activities of a tineid
moth which feeds on — sonar dante: on the pellets, and what pines is not = owl
pellet, but th pe
archaeological sites, there are 2 immediate difficulties: firstisa a need to recognize bones that
were once part of an owl pellet; second, in order to establish continuity in accumulation
mechanisms, there is a need to recognize that all owl pellets did, or did not, come from the
same species of owl. [f these difficulties could be solved and bones could be separated from
pellets of different and known species of owls, there would still be no usable information
about taxonomic abundances except that a given taxon was present. This is true because
owls take non-random samples of what is in the environment (Errington et al. 1940; Marti
1974). In the study examined here, Maser et al. (1970: 5-6) note that “although the deer mouse
is generally the most in central Oregon « « -. the owls s caught farn —
pocket mice than deer mice.” In other words, iti
Maser et al. (1970) to the abundances of the captured mammals i in the hunted environment.
Since that is the case, if would clearly be impossible to do so _ the archaeological eer
Indeed, it may even be difficult to use th
to the number of individuals which were eaten to produce that pellet (Raczynski aa
Ruprecht 1974). The only reliable information about the local mammalian population in
either the modern or the archaeological setting is the simple observation that since a taxon
was present in the faunal collection, it was Ce present in the immediate. vicinity.
Owls have been used are well-studied. The behavior of other
raptors (Craighead and Craighead 1956), and of carnivores, wood rats, streams, and other
mechanisms — including people — which accumulate faunas are no less complex. “4
matter how become, th W hich th ycan no
answer: what i is the relationship between the abundances of taxa in an accumulating fauna
and the abundances of those taxa in the surrounding environment? This is no criticism of
the taphonomic amu as taphonomists do not have this goal in mind. It is, however, 4
pain din ae ia f. om fe PE : L ie : 1 1 * 1 faiinas
which requires something be known of the relationship between those abundances and the
abundances of the animals in the area from which those faunas were derived.
Taxa as Attributes
Since the paleoenvironmental meaning of taxonomic abundances from single
archaeological faunas can never be known, presence/absence studies become the only
arson approach to the paleoenvinoliniental analysis of those faunas.
studies are actually quite simple; in fact, it is this simplicity which accounts for
aoe of their value. In presence/absence faunal studies, one simply identifies what is
present in a fauna and interprets the paleoenvironmental meaning. Even if abundances ar
calculated, as they usually are, they are not interpreted (e.g., Guilday and Adam 1967;
Parmalee and Oesch 1972). Instead, the attributes of the represented animals are used as the
basis for statements about ition at the time of
deposition. Guilday and Adam (1967) provide a good exmple of Ae | a study. After noting
the presence of the collared lemming, Dicrostonyx, at Jaguar Cave, southern Idaho, they
note this animal is “an obligatory tundra form with a long evolutionary association witha —
May 198] GRAYSON 35
boreal climate’’ (1967:29), whose presence in the Pleistocene deposits of Jaguar Cave *
indicative of a former tundra biome’”’ (1967:29).
It would be hard to disagree with Guilday and Adam's statement. In fact,
presence/absence studies (which are asymmetrical in that the interpretive emphasis is
usually placed on presences) are usually quite sound. However, these studies are not trouble
free. There are hazards in conducting presence/absence paleoenvironmental analyses of
archaeological vertebrates, most of which are shared with approches that treat taxa as
variables. Among these hazards are:
1) Assuming that the present ecology of specific mammals is the same as the ecology of
those mammals in the past. It is extremely difficult to reconstruct the ecology of ancient
mammals, though there have been attempts (e.g., Shotwell 1955, 1958, 1963; but, see also
Grayson 1978b). If faunal analysts had to demonstrate the present ecologies of mammals
were the same in the past for each time and place they conduct a pac study,
they would not get very far. The ecologies f I
this proble m can in part b d if suites veh taxa, which ne the same relationship
dire ectly knowable, but
tra
today,
parameter in the past. While habitat preferences of a single taxon might change through
time, it is less likely that all members of a suite of taxa would change, and that all would
change in the same direction. Findley (1964) has discussed this issue as well.
2) Assuming that ecological relationships remain stable across space and competitive
settings. However, these relationships are not stable. In Oregon, for instance, the
White-tailed Antelope Squirrel (Ammospermophilus leucurus) is an inhabitant of “the
open, barren valleys far from timber, but usually where tufts of greasewood, sagebrush, and
low desert shrubs furnish cover, protection, and food” (Bailey 1936:142). Not far to the south
in central Nevada, they are seen in a different eT pinyon-juniper woodland well above
valley floors (Hall 1946). To infer an area “‘treeless”’ or “‘treed”’ from these squirrels would be
lous. Such adaptational plasticity may a be due to changing competitive
relationships. As Cody (1974: 131) noted, “often no compelling innate-genetic or physio-
but rather
i ‘its position is flexible, and is determined by the restraints of its competitors.” Thus, on
Bear Island, Iceland, Brunnich’s Guillemot (Uria lomvia) nests on cliff ledges, while the
Common Guillemot (U. aalge) rests on flat ground. To the south, in Europe, where only U.
aalge is present as a breeder, this species nests on both cliff ledges and flat ground (Lack
1968). Such examples of competitive release are common and well known. Much of what
animals do is determined by competitive relations; and this lability in adaptation must be
recognized in paleoenvironmental studies. Again, the danger of error from this source
decreases as the number of animals used as the basis of inferences concerning some
should be used as the basis of any paleoenvironmental argument.
3) Stratigraphic mixture. Any study based upon analysis of presence/absence data from
archaeological sites must be conducted with the realization that such studies are extraordin-
arily prone to error as a result of stratigraphic mixture; i.e., a single element identified for a
given taxon carries as much weight as a thousand of those elements. Although it is
appropriate to point out that only careful excavation can prevent such difficulties, it is also
true that many sites are so stratigraphically complex that even the most careful excavations
may not be able to detect all instances of mixture. Once again, the use of suites of taxa can
help avoid errors due to this source.
Ahi aoe 3 £
ed Poor stratigraphic resolution. g m originally sep
stratigraphic resolution. I liffi h
made which require finer stratigraphic resolution than was present or documented. This
issue is becoming more important and increased attention is paid to the argument that
P climates were more equable than Holocene climates (Axelrod 1967; Dalquest
36 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
1965; Hibbard 1970; Slaughter 1967), since one of the arguments used to support this
hypothesis is that currently allopatric animals were sympatric during the Pleistocene. For
example, Pleistocene sympatry of boreal and deciduous forest species has been argued to
support the hypothesis of Pleistocene climatic equability (Graham 1976; Graham and
Semken 1976). Yet, it is extremely difficult to argue that “‘stratigraphically sympatric”’ taxa
in a single stratum of an archaeological or paleontological site were truly sympatric
animals, and not actually allopatric or allochronic. A convincing demonstration! of
sympatry in this setting would take remarkably fine
is rarely encountered in either archaeological or ‘paleontological ates.
5) Long distance transport of skeletal remains. T b ds with
examples of animals transported by humans to areas outside of their natural range. Other
forms of long distance transport are also possible: movement by water provides one obvious
mechanism. Although some instances of transport are readily detected (as the transport of
Haliotis from the Pacific coast of North America to interior localities as Arizona [Haury
1976]), others will not be. The use of a — of taxa, all of which inform on a single enviraa
mental variable, provides one means his difficulty,
application of the principle of parsimony. For instance, it is far simpler to suggest that
Guilday and Adam’s Dicrostonyx was a local resident than it is to argue that long distance
transport was involved. In many cases, however, the local presence of a taxon whose historic
range was not far removed from that area might be of concern ea jaan biogeograhic
reasons (e.g., Grayson 1977a). Here, it might b more It to convincingly
argue that long distance transport did not play a role in bringing the animal to an area in
which it would not otherwise have occurred (see, for instance, the discussion by Alcorn
[1940] of the introduction by man of Spermophilus townsendii into areas outside of its
natural range).
Clearly, these and other potential difficulties demonstrate that paleoenvironmental
analyses of archaeological faunas which depend only upon presence/absence data are not
trouble free. Nonetheless, the hazards associated with these studies are of a lesser magnitude
than those which necessarily accompany studies which proceed by quantifying taxonomic
ataundances, atike the latter, the memo unit with which analyst deals i in aaas abern
studies Ity
Stucics 7
CONCLUSIONS
Two approaches to the paleoenvironmental analysis of vertebrate faunas from
archaeological sites are in common use. In one of these approaches, the abundances of.
taxa in the fauna are quantified using either counts of identified specimens or minimum
numbers of individuals, and changing abundances through time are examined for
paleoenvironmental meaning. This approach, while seeming to offer great precision in
paleoenvironmental analyses, has 2 debilitating attributes:
1) The relationship between the abundance measure (NISP or MNI) and the actual
numbers of animals which contributed skeletal remains to the collection is always
unknown; asa result, the meaning of , with trivial exceptions,
always unknown;
2) The relationship between t ic abund <— oh . ding the
site at the time of fauna accumulated and the abundances of the animals present in an arch-
aeological fauna is always unknown. As a result, even if the relationship between NISP oF
MNI and the number of animals originally deposited in a site were known, the meaning of
changes in these ahauaances through time would not be interpretable. This i is because che
rarely } i gy
in the surrounding environment, or if these abundances are reflecting changes in
which are unrelated to th g alyst is
attempting to monitor.
May 1981 GRAYSON 37
Because of these sh i it is diffi have faith in the validity of th dies. As
a result, analyses which 1 depend only ‘upon the t taxa recorded as p ithina f
be preferred. While e by ll iated
with all paleoenvironmental studies Sune ‘with ene or F utiboesil remains. Most
importantly, presence/absence studies are not characterized by the 2 major and seemingly
insurmountable shortcomings associated with vertebrate faunal studies which treat taxa as
variables. Until
wl ill be be possible to impro
proceed simply on the fedis. of treating vertebrates as belonging to taxa which o can neither he
present or absent, but whose abundance cannot be meaningfully counted.
>
1 etindiec af h
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Th . rR L r Ty. =e) . L - a
srayson, R. Lee I yman,
is gratefully acknowledged.
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Maser, C., E.W. HAMMER, AND S.H. ANDERSON.
1970. Comparative food habits of three owl
species in central Oregon. The Murrelet 51-
3:29-3
53:29-33.
MELLET, J.S. 1974. Scatological origin of micro-
rlgtonans fossil accumulations. Science
185:3
eee K:, AND S.A. McLEOD.. 1975. Collection
of taphonomic information from fossil and
recent vertebrate specimens with a selected
bibliography. PaleoBios 19
NoE-NYGAARD, N. 1977. Butchering and marrow
fracturing as a taphonomic factor in arch-
aeological ae Paleobiology 3:218-237.
OwEN, R. istory of British fossil
mammals, eer birds. J. Van Voorst, London.
WwW
PARMALEE, .W., AND R.D. OkscnH. 1972.
Pleistocene and recent faunas from the
Brynjulfson Caves, Missouri. Illinois State
Mus. Reports Inves ;
CZYNSKI, J., AND A.L. RUPRECHT. 1974. The
effect of digestion on osteological
composition of owl pellets. Acta Ornithologica
14(2):25-28.
SHOTWELL, J.A. 1955. An approach to the paleo-
ecology of mammals. Ecology 36:327-337.
. 1958. Inter-community relationships in
Hembhiltian (mid-Pliocene) mammals.
mage 2 271-282.
3. The Juntura Basin: studies in earth
aay and paleoecology. Amer. Philosopb-
Soc. Trans. 53(1).
SLAUGHTER, B.H. 1967. Animal ranges asa clue to
late-Pleistocene extinctions. Pp. 155-168,
Pleistocene extinctions: the search for a caus€
(P.S. Martin mea E. Wright, eds.), Yale Univ.
Press, New
a
Hav
“MR. "1968. ie page and
eTte-
ocene ¥
brate fauna, ‘Knox County, Nebraska: Univ.
13:91-101.
J. Ethnobiol. 1 (1): 39-54 May 1981
POLLEN PRODUCTION, TRANSPORT AND PRESERVATION:
OTENTIALS AND LIMITATIONS IN
ARCHAEOLOGICAL PALYNOLOGY
RICHARD H. HEVLY
Northern Arizona University, Department of Biological Sciences,
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
ABSTRACT.—Within the past quarter century palynology has become an increasingly
tm re t = L 1 . 1 } A 7° * L 4 ae ee PP | ee f
site and room functions, ceremonial and medicinal practices, prehistoric diet and food
preparation, correlative construction and chronologies, human modification of the local
part ticularly
as related to human demography and subsistence strategies. Apprehension concerning the
nature and magnitude of palynological bias related to human activities, particularly as
reflected by the sources of pollen hanvonatesd employed in nach stuaes, is ) justified but
remained saptiid unexplored. E
€a hat once the probability and magnitude of limitations me assessed,
the,
tney p } PI ens 5)
ws ae
INTRODUCTION
Fossil pollen oe in carly studies of paleoecology was usually obtained from lacustrine
sediments because ation of pollen in such environments. It was through
such studies that me potential of palynology to yield paleoecological and paleoethno-
botanical data was recognized (Clark 1954; Deevy 1944; Dimbleby 1955; Faegri 1944; Godwin
1956; Iversen 1949; Jessen 1935, 1949; Sears 1937, 1952; Troels-Smith 1956, 1960). ~
Non-lacustrine sediments were considered unsuitable for palynology due to low pollen
concentration and poor pollen Paes despite the demonstration by Sears (1937) of
their actual potential in the Am n Southwest (Dimbleby 1957, 1961). Modified
extraction procedures finally vines a number of palynologists to recover deine
preserved pollen in suitable quantities from aeolian and al
application of palynology into archaeological sites where often mnure oon a
control was available than in non 955; Leopold et
al. 1963; Martin 1963; Martin and Byers 1965; Schoenwetter 1960, 1962; ea 1952, 1961;
Sears and Roosma 1961).
Within the last 20 years, palynology ha has become an
ical research. A lucidation ot site and room functions (Berlin
et al. 1978; Hevly MSa, 6; Hill and Hevl 1968), ceremonial and medicinal Practices (Hevly
1964; MSa; Hill and Hevly 1968), prehist
1964; Kelso 1970, 1976; Martin and Sharrock 1964; Ward 1975), correlative construction tod
chronologies (Hill and Hevly 1968; Ward 1975), human modification of the local
environment (Martin and Byers 1965; Wyckoff 1977), and the nature, magnitude and
duration of climatic perturbations particularly as related to demography and subsistence
strategies (Bohrer 1972; Dickey 1971; Euler et al. 1979; Hevly et al. 1979; Schoenwetter and
Dittert 1968; Schoenwetter and Eddy 1964; Ward 1975; Weber 1981; Zubrow 1971).
Increasing concern has developed about the potentials and limitations of these new
applications in paleoethnobotany, particularly in regard to the production, transport and
preservation of pollen (Bradfield 1973; Hevly 1964, 1968a; Bohrer 1972; Kelso 1976; Lyttle-
Web 1978; Potter 1967; Solomon 1976). This concern is justified because the nature and
magnitude of palynological bias related to human activities, particularly as reflected by the
sources of pollen commonly employed in such studies, (e.g., room and ramada floor
human coprolites, trash deposits, burials and artifacts) has remained largely unexplored.
‘: “ a ee i ]
40 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
MATERIALS AND METHODS
In an attempt to provide at least partial answers to some of the expressed concerns, data
from a number of sites in Arizona, Sein and New Mexico have been re-examined. The
samples providing these data w d from ground tifacts, mummies, human
coprolites, various pits and cists, ceramic bowls, floors and midden deposits as well as
modern and prehistoric soils outside the archaeological structures. The pollen data from
these sites were obtained by standard extraction procedures (Gray 1965). Pollen was
identified using standard illustrations, keys and a small reference collection (Faegri and
Iversen 1975; Erdtman 1952; McAndrews et al. 1973; Kapp 1969; Martin and Drew 1969,
1970). When possible a sgaeive was made of the first 200 pollen grains encountered while
lly scanning th Records were also obtained of the
number of grains per aliquot of pollen rich residue scanned, pine pollen preservation and
ratios of AP/NAP (tree pollen/non-tree pollen), pine/juniper, and large/small pine (mostly
referable to ponderosa and pinyon pines respectively). The fossil data were compared to
modern pollen samples obtained from the plant community in which the site was located.
DISCUSSION
Pollen Production.—Pollen is produced in vastly different numbers by different kinds of
plants. Anemophilous (wind pollinated) plants usually produce large numbers (e.g. 500
million per shoot of Cannabis; 350 million per 10-year branch system of Pinus) of generally
small, smooth non-sticky pollen, while zoophilous (animal pollinated) plants usually
produce low numbers (100s to 1000s per year per inflorescence) of generally large, rough,
sticky pollen (Faegri and Iversen 1975).
Production of pollen is influenced by both climatic, edaphic and biotic factors and
consequently varies from stand to stand and from year to year within a stand (Faegri and
Iversen 1975). Cone (both male and female) production i m cemilerty for exainpre, cer?
parallels climate influenced growth, and even after th f cones
both seed and pollen can be aborted by climatic factors such as relative available moisture
(Daubenmire 1960; Leiberg et al. 1904; Lester 1967; Roeser 1942; Shoulders 1967).
Many of these factors are manifest as individual plant variations rather than stand
characteristics and hence are not reflected by pollen data from soil samples which
incorporate the accumulative pollen of many years or several decades (Faegri and Iversen
1975). To be manifest in the pollen record, the effect must extend toa major portion of i
stand and the effect must be either frequent or f long , g
density of the p hi he ak f flowers
Ecological factors which meet these criteria may y be limited to fire, climatic change, edaphic
modification (e.g. volcanism and altered drainage patterns or water tables) and biotic
exploitation, including disturbance by man and grazing by livestock or insects. Presented
below are some data which provide evidence that these effects can be detected in the pollen
records of archaeological sites.
Citadel Sink is located in Wupatki National ene on a. tbe poner edge of the
Sunset Crater ash fall area. S pollen analysis perm arious envir
onmental known toh 1 tl eleventh
veolcibain eruption,
an eleventh-thirteenth century rise and fall of prehistoric agricultural population and the
twentieth century grazing and juniper chaining (Fig. 1). The aboreal pollen (AP) 1s
composed of 2 principal types, Pinus and Juniperus. Pine does not occur locally and its
pollen is therefore a long distance transport type. High proportion of pine pollen therefore
reflect poor local pollen production, while low pine proportions reflect good local pollen
production (Solomon 1976). Pine proportions (relative to locally occurring juniper) do
increase twice in the pollen record (during the eleventh and twentieth centuries) at times
atypical for such phenomena in the Colorado Plateau pollen chronology (Euler et al. 1979)-
Disruption of the local juniper population (which results in higher pine proportions in
ara
May 1981
HEVLY 41
= § i :
+ 3 > aes 3
z 32 y H Ze i al [ i
Perse | 28) PCIE a oa 2358 He H hi
% 50% 50% 50% 20% by ike 3s be
8 ¢ 3 3
; §
ara
eeyeoe | ©
t and pollen from Citadel Sink, Wupatki National Monument, reflecting the
aating sat Seblex, anal mere MS). The abrupt i increase of cinder at a ‘depth of 31.75 cm resulted
ter about A.D 1066 (Colton 1962). The cinder contains little pollen, few
stem and leaf fragments, but wt Said ea indicating that it is an original air fall rather than being
secondarily deposited. ate deposition of pela initially favored the grow of desert shrubs, but
increasing f
The change i in pollen preservation, i 8 d relati hee [Cc 4h me
ee ‘aid oo sine bly refi historic agricul The e changes in pine-juniper,
pine-grass and j
uniper-grass ra ratios in the upper ‘¢ 35 cm probably reflect twentieth century floristic
modifications esta with chaining of juniper and grazing of livestock.
pine-juniper ratios) in the twentieth century is probably due to local chaining operations.
The eleventh century disruption of juniper is not likely to have been the direct result of
mage from volcanic eruption considering the 22.5 km distance to the crater and the
relatively shallow deposit of ash in the study area. Instead, the disruption of juniper is more
ely to reflect the cutting of juniper for construction purposes by the prehistoric
inhabitants whose local | I
fr
}
7
ais oO
Lm 2 £ } 7
their Ormer
by lava and cinder Ciesla « et al. 1978; Hevly et al. 1979; Pilles 1977).
While j Juniper rerowered from this coeupGon, other plant types did not fair ” well due to
the pe
ft
= |
tyUyeicu
Tt
nen f this site Cheno-
Am group ites Araerehehee) diminished in relative abundance as grasses
€ more abundant. A second modification of the floristic composition of this site
(increased proportions of Compositae) appears to occur coincident with cultivation and
probably reflects disturbance not unlike that detected at the nearby prehistoric cornfield
where also the effect of man’s activity has persisted to the present (Berlin et al. 1978). The
diminished proportions of Gramineae pollen in the latest twentieth century (surface) level
could likewise reflect man’s activity, in this case grazing by domestic livestock which has
resulted in a local deterioration of rangelan
While the above examples appear to reflect charter of pollen production due to generally
Persistant ae of the floristic community resulting from —— eruption or
one by man, it nged pollen production with very little, if
any, change of the local plant comenonity. For example, the proportion of pine in a pine-
Juniper ratio (where both pine and juniper co-occur) parallels as expected the average
rai Biwisti-- composition involving establishment and growth of trees to sufficient
maturity for cone production (Fig. 2a
The significance of the local Givirontoett relative to pollen production and transport is
also manifest in the arboreal pollen proportions, particularly those of pine composition.
42 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
When local growing conditions were favorable, locally produced pinyon pine pollen
exhibits high proportions in the fossil pine data (Fig. 2b). However, when local growing
conditions were not favorable, a larger proportion of yellow pine pollen transported a
pe eS of km Bee nearby paE PeCHIneS ai C eaatde scape pine RS Likewise, the
i weeay succes-
sonal diferent taxa predominating from year to year in response to seasonal changes of
temperature and moisture availability (Hevly and Renner In Press; McDougall 1967;
Solomon id Hays 1972). Persistant changes of their proportions over many ieee like
those of pine-juniper ratio, probably reflect altered climatic conditions, such as seasonal
distribution of moisture or succession within the local plant community coincident with
abandonment and altered edaphic conditions. Incidentally it should be noted that the
species composition of the flora of some areas of northern Arizona as well as the phenology
of these plants is such that the seasonal indicator roles of Cheno-Ams and Compositae as
described by Schoenwetter (1962), Martin (1963), Solomon and Hayes (1972) for southern
Arizona are reversed in northern Arizona (Hevly and Renner In Press).
In final analysis, changes in pollen production do occur in response to physical (e.g.
edaphic or climatic) and biotic modification of the environment. Such alterations may be
essentially permanent (e.g., deposition of volcanic cinder or depletion of soil minerals
chreniets cropping); eee most are — t term resulting from such phenomena as
climatic p and b Distinction of the particular ecological
factor(s) ‘responsible ithe observed nature, magnitude and duration of palynological
é
f
8
3
is
:
3
:
5
g
ee ip eeeraes rol oe a
¥
E Eso
Eas
i sig
5 3 \
Pb \
254 \
Sa T oF os ear aT ay T T T rt
g 3
25
a LA A Nall J
so" of a im fl Il /\
Email wa wv yee rv Wr
z2| 6
ce
8& %
'
dia
O Hav Hollow
fe} 5 7 le
eg Bother
if
E27
Site Code w OUT R SOm GOP OK Ot oO O 7; NNT vaaare” J YX GOFG YXGGC
FiG..2.—Comparisons of the d hi d and poll is f m Hay Hollow Valley eer
1972; Dickey 1971; Hevly 1964; Ward 197 1975) with tr ds f h )
and the White Mountains of California Senne 1974). Each site code letter reflects a pene site
— leseets reflect diferent rooms as mee same ae )
Bahl» reflect
— pollen production of these 2 genera locally, pine proportions declining during drought
episodes as demonstrated in a study of historic allen (Hevly et al. 1980).
Bg eh ah ae lel
May 1981 HEVLY 43
a
ie
{>
18
g
3
g
8
Fl
3
i
5
POPULATION DENSITY
* vi ahs ceded
oe
T
|
|
|
T U T q qT T eo
ef
us
E54
zo Of
0 XN
5: Le SN
. Egy | 2 aS. le £\, an
at <3 = VW ba
us PO eae -——
we 4 ~ See Se ole
£ = Saad
<<«
we
Se >
crive dillea on oral
U T T T T T SRSA, 5 3
tures
Pine Pollen Depar
®
o
-
<
«
u
=
<
w
So
«
<
a
$
=
os
=<
=
a
Re waoP OK OL 0 OL J NNNI MNHIWKLI'J J YX GFG YxGGC
f lie! ML . 4 A
2b. Departures of small pine proportions from th Be pine}
Study area probably reflect local versus regional production of pine pollen and long-term trends of
effective moisture.
change(s) in the fossil pollen record can often be accomplished by evaluation of additional
biological, geological, and archaeological data. Such analysis | i pal
environmental reconstruction in which the relative effects of climatic perturbations, fire,
biotic impacts by man and insects, as well as volcanism can be derived (Hevly et al. 1979).
Pollen Transport and Deposition.—The majority of pollen does not travel far from the
plant producing it. Even in wind pollinated taxa most of the pollen falls immediately
beneath the canopy (Silen 1962; Wright 1953). Nevertheless, wind transported pollen travels
further (10s-100s km vs. 10s of cm to 100s of m)than i ported pollen which app
in very low concentration in soil samples from open situations, being recovered most
frequently in close proximity to the plant producing it or where it may on occasion have
pped by insects transporting it. In archaeological sites or caves entomophilous
Pollen can be more abundant than in modern soils (Fig. 3a) and is most likely to have been
introduced there by man or rodents (Briuer 1977; Hevly 1970; Hevly et al. 1979; Kelso 1970,
1976; Lyttle-Web 1978).
_ The majority of the pollen found in features wit icted openings (€.g., caves shelters,
fissures and man-made structures) is transported into such features primarily by wind but
also by man and rodents. Pollen and sediment transport into such features should be slower
in open sites, but pollen will enter more freely than the larger and heavier inorganic
sediment. Hence, if sediment accumulation is slow and a given sample reflects the
accumulation of many decades or centuries, its pollen concentration should be high
compared with that observed in open sites. These trends appear to be observable in the
Poller concentration data available from Southwestern archaeological sites (Table 1).
Continuously open sites such as rock fissures, caves and shelters have high pollen
concentrations for individual samples, while man-made structures such as pithouses and
44 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
~
— insect pollinated types i
- ——-— Population
ia
-_——
_-
-_—
3
ig
ec
~
Ee Se
~~.
Relative Population Estimates
_~—
~—
_-—
——_—
Cultivated or Native Economic Pollen Percentages
800-4 fae
400- 5
»
eens
wi
A.D. 800 900
tr &l pi
CI Gramineae
1600-4 CC i posit
ei Population
o J
J
: ;
E z
21200 4 °
: r4
$ §
a é
a 2
“ban :
3 :
o w
Ke 2
=
400-
T T
AD. 800 900
ann a proportion of non-arbo
a
cultivated plartts and
llen
lin
of ech plants acti reflects the relative agricultural success of the local human
community, some change of environment is suggeste
3b. Change in melating propartions of ‘pollen: from other largely annual non-arboreal taxa whose
germination, largely controlled by the seasonal distribution
of moisture and emnperanue The proportion of late-spring and early summer flowering Cheno-Am
and Low-spine Compe tae pollen in the ae non- arboreal poles 4 sum is shown by the long, open
bars. € proportu { Gramineae p igh-spin e Compositae and
Artemesia (late-summer and early-autumn wanaata is ae by the shorter bars and shorter scale at
right. The data suggest replacement of Cheno-Ams and Compositae by Gramineae and could reflect
secondary hess = faced site, recaps ati ees abandonment and sre cent
nal
however
distribution of moistur re. The latter i interpretation could | provide at least a partial explanation for the
putative diminishment of agriculture inferred from pollen data of cultivated plants shown abov
May 1981 HEVLY 45
pueblos with limited duration as a space within which to trap sediment have floor samples
with more limited pollen content. Objects such as a small storage jar with a small hole open
for centuries has accumulated a high concentration of pollen. Objects such as storage pits
d cists open only for limited times during the ia aed of the site and sealed for
centuries by burial have low pollen concentrations. Com
soils in an open situation with the pollen content of floor sediment ofa pithouse or pueblo
room and of storage pits or cists manifests
This phenomena is called qvenyacon, and Probably 5 reflects progressively smaller target
openings for pollen f
content of soils on or in which man- Naud Heels structures are o buile appears to be diminished by
oxidation and mechanical breakage during construction (i.e. fossil soil, floors, cists, pitand
subfloors in Table 1).
Since wind transported pollen can travel so far it might be anticipated that pe sae
would enter structures with restricted apetures en sali facility; however, contrary t
expectations, different wind transported types appear to be transported differentially
(Currier and Kapp 1974; Hevly 1970; Hevly et al. 1978. Tauber 1977). When the sediments o
rock fissures are compared with outside soils, not only does the concentration of pollen
change, but there is also an increase in the proportion of some wind pollinated types and
decline in others (Fig. 4). The increase in pine pollen and decrease of other types is most
noticeable in the Grand Falls Fissure, which has remained open for centuries collecting
pollen. The magnitude of differential transport appears less in the structures occupied by
man where pollen collected for more brief periods of time. Pine pollen 3 is slightly under
represented, while the NAP types, which were g Pp
TABLE 1.—Pollen concentration and Preservation in Archaeological Sites. Preservation is expressed
as the percentage of entire pine pollen. Concentration is expressed as mean numbers of grains per
aliquot of pollen rich residue, numbers of grains per gram of exfencien es end & sth carat ed
rains counted while counting 150 grains from p ypt
Concentration Pollen/ 150 Preservation Spores/
Provenience aliquot gram Eucalyptus aliquot
Fecies (Sheep) | 1094 41,572 547 98% 210
Fecies (Human) 2 1050 53,200 315 ie -
Mummy Alimentary
Canal 8 1128-2198 43,050-55,650 itn 100% —
Grand Falls: 4
Rock Fissure Floor 10,000 11,000 oe 84% 17
Storage Jar 20,000 i — 100% 518
Rock seine Shelter 5 500-1500 506-1520 pees 70-80% =
Modern Soi 1061 1075 135 87% 275
Fossil Soil 7 2250 =e 75% a
Pithouse Floor 7 332 336 —— OR sich
Pueblo Floor 7 658 666 nas 66% see
Hogan Floor | 212 214 eee 84% 300
Metate 1,7 297 BH srs Pe aes ee a
Mono 1 127 oer nets =e ae
Fire Pit 8 207 210 —— 87% -——
Storage Pit 8 116 17 cen 93% ~—
Cist 8 50 50 eae, 90% is
Subfloor 3 47 47 — 65% me
eerie
I, ag etal. 1980; 2. Hevly and Hudgens MS; 3. Hevly MSa; 4. Hevly 1970; 5. Hevly et al. 1979; 6. Hevly unpubl. data; 7. Hevly 1964 and
Unpul
ta; 8. Hevly MSb-d
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48 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
frequently over-represented in the structures occupied by man, particularly when
comparisons are made with modem rather than ancient soils (Fig. 4). Such over-
representation reflects natural or human (Fig. 5) disturbance favoring growth of pioneer
species at least in part (Diggs 1979; Gish 1979; Halbirt MSa; Scott 1979).
Macroscopic evidence from human feces and food storage and preparation features
suggests that such pollen over-representation may also reflect the introduction of wild (or
even encouraged or semi-cultivated) plant parts bearing pollen into the occupation areas
(Bohrer 1972; Cutler 1964; Hevly MSc; Hill and Hevly 1968).
Recognition that the pollen record of archaeological sites is not identical to that of con-
temporaneous soils due to differential transport of pollen might seem a critical if not fatal.
blow to all attempts of However, selection of indicator
species least affected by such differential transport and using samples from proveniences
exhibiting minimal transport bias such as small sites may obviate such problems.
Furthermore, when the general patterns of transport capability are recognized, various
statistical procedures may be used to correct for over or under representation of particular
types (Mosimann 1963).
Comparison of various man-occupied structures and non-archaeological sites permits
recognition of general patterns in pollen transport and deposition, departures from which
can be interpreted as changed modes of transport (Fig. 6). In archaeological contexts such
changed modes of transport, which often are cflected by: significant over-representation of
particular types (Fig. 4), provides i g g activity (e.g., storage, food
preparation and medicinal or ceremonial).
Pollen Preservation.—Different pollen ty t equally d, being subject
to chemical, mechanical, and biological degradation (Having on It has been suggested
that juniper pollen is less well d th i llen (Bradfield 1973; Potter 1967). This
is contrary to experimental studies of relative pollen. preservation and has not been
substantiated in modern pollen studies of soils (Havinga 1971; Hevly 1968a). The
explanation for tiese Boeiny results may relate to the different seasons of pol
dispersal in pine (ear
the depositional Liaiewei If j juniper calle were to lie on an pai Se soil surface for
several months prior to burial by wind mixing of sediments or secondary transport into a
cistern with the onset of summer rains shortly after the pollination of pine, it would be
expected that differences of preservation might be manifest. If, on the other hand, junipet
and pine pollen are both buried shortly after their wind transport and deposition,
preservation would be about equal as found in the experimental studies. The problem is
worthy of much further examination since no one has checked the relative preservation of
pine and juniper in diff Preliminary studies would suggest
that differences might occur since pine pollen is not equally well preserved in wet vs. dry
sediments of different plant communities (Fig. 7
Preservation of pollen could be an juan factor in fossil pollen studies of
archaeological sites, since relative abundance of a pollen type such as pine appears to
negatively correlated with the percentage of broken grains in both modern and we
samples (Fig. 7). Fortunately, th
samples is about equal (except i in | samples from a bumed structures) despite the jt
lower pollen pared with that of modern soils
from open environments (Table 1; Fig. 7).
The variability of pollen preservation might also seem a fatal blow to environmental
reconstruction; however, the types critical for environmental reconstruction appear to be
about equally well preserved. Preservation of pollen in different depositional situations is
also variable, but archaeological sites, particularly in grassland or woodland situations,
seem to provide best preservation. In fact pollen often provides the only record of plants
whose macroscopic record is totally lacking in archaeological context having bee?
posed by bacteria or fungi, eaten by animals or destroyed by fire (Bohrer 1972;
Schoenwetter 1962; Hevly 1964, 1968b, MSc; Martin and Byers 1965).
NAP Ratios
May 198]
HEVLY 49
2545 O
®
2.0—
a
1.55
104 O
3
8)
1@)
e
0.5= re)
a
3
o 3
1°) e O
e o
° s
=e
ee cette
0 y i 1
50 100 150
Rooms/Site
® Graminae/ Cheno-Am
O High Spine/ Low Spine Compositae
{data after Halbirt 1978)
Pig Gis : ’ .
rede A comparison of non-arboreal pollen ratios with the size of archaeological sites (rooms/site).
sai 1 Sites are - : sé y = igh prop : —— . ae ligh spine Compositae pollen,
eu € larger sites are characterized by higher proportions of Cheno-Am and Low-spine Compositae
n. Fin :
The latter plants are characteristic pioneer plants favored by disturbance.
50 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
Pollen Pollen
AP Departures % Pine Departures %
Alluvium Arc ical Alluvium Archaeological
hasolog
4p) ~ -30 - + 1 >. PIS -15 0). 4155 3+
py spe | -F, +P |e
AAA MAA
waa aS
ie a 4 4
NE
Fic: 6.—Comparisons of the arboreal pollen dat ll d arch in the
same locality (Black Mesa, Hevly, unpubl. patie acai departures of arboreal pollen from the
an of the study area are negatively correlated between alluvial and archaeological sites,
sefiesiee sentin ne differences of mode of pollen transport into such environments. Departures of
pine in pine-juniper fatios sites the modern ap big the pay area exhibit generally parallel i
Le iy ~ © ols ff.
Afic tCW Gir
su ae pe pine-juniper ratios can reasonably be substituted for AP/ NAP ratios in
pine Hittin reconstructions if the latter ratio is biased, for example by NAP over-representation.
Forest
% Pine Pollen
Pinyon- Juniper Woodland ®
204 e
104
T T , > cee T
° 1 2 3 6 ? 8 9
© science % Broken Pine Pollen
® aquatic site
FiG. 7.—Preservation of pine pollen (data from Dickey 1971; Hevly 1964; Ward 1975).
7a. A comparison of the preservation of pine pollen with th n different
depositional environments within mttovens plent communities. Generally, the penne of pine
increases as expected in the higher elevation con owever, pine also
er and cor cease? low pollen
prides ds high oe production (compare
savanna)
conifer forests. Within the Pi inyon- Juniper Woodland and Grassland or Savanna pce
preservation was generally better than in the pine and mixed conifer forests except in aquatic sites.
May 198] HEVLY 51
rr
a ry
z
$
Ss e
©
= 50-
2 :
&
3 40- 5
2
; , <
$ 30- 4 . 8
a o
§ eo ol a
ie 204, ¢«e ) e H £
- re J
e ° e a / ®
: see j «
Rae, SMa ST ec Bae sf *
a, ee
; * * ¥
) 80 100 140 200 300 400+
Pollen Concentration Pollen Preservation
( of pollen/aliquot) (%pine breakage)
® fossil ® fossi! pine
% modern *% modern pine
“ss A comparison of pine pollen preservation and total pollen concentration. Pollen concentration is
ower than in modern soil samples, however, the range of preservation is about the same except in
burned sites where more than 50% of the pine pollen is broken.
preg een f.3. eee Rh 4 oe 1 2 eee
G lly the relative
abundance of pine pollen diminishes as the breakage of pollen increases.
CONCLUSION
The pollen record contained in archaeological sites, like that of any other depositional
h W ee | = 4 1 3 Ld
1 In: ° Dy ‘ ry
pollen record of archaeological sites is not identical to that of contemporaneous soils
due to differences of mode of pollen transport into different depositional envi d
€ven of differential capability of pollen to enter archaeological sites due to location, size and
Seasonality of openings. Comparisons of pollen taxa with other previously demonstrated
sensitive environmental indicators reveals that some pollen types are useful for purposes of
Paleoecological reconstruction. Comparisons of pollen taxa within and without
archaeological sites indicates that other pollen types are probably more useful as indicators
of human behavior.
Different pollen types are not equally well preserved and the preservation of pollen in the
. ological record may not be assumed to be similar for all time periods. Experimental
Studies are badly needed in the American Southwest, but data which are at hand suggest the
52 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY
i=
Vol. 1, No. 1
polle nt h utility for p ]
foetal ‘aliinit equally well preserved. Thus, if preserved by incorporation in soil soon
after dispersal, such pollen types should retain their utility as paleoecological indicators.
Thus, in final analysis, the potential limitations posed by improving understanding of
pollen production, dispersal and preservation are real but not so limiting as to pre
reasonable
reconstructions.
eclude
inferences of human behavior and attempts of paleoenvironmental
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(st ke eee
J. Ethnobiol. 1 (1): 55-60 May 1981
INFERRED DATING OF OZARK BLUFF DWELLER OCCUPATIONS
BASED ON ACHENE SIZE OF SUNFLOWER AND SUMPWEED
RICHARD A. YARNELL
University of North Carolina, Department of Anthropology
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514
ABSTRACT.—Samples of cultigen sunflower and sumpweed achenes recovered from
archaeological sites in eastern North America gradually increase in average size during the
lact 2h , es Ee Alsth ae | > L W = D3
be * ¢ oe re fr
the same general time period fall within a relatively restricted mean size range. Achene
samples of both sunflower and sumpweed have been recovered from several Ozark Bluff
Shelters, but the dating is highly problematical. The pweed ples fall into 2 disti
size categories which indicate that they derive from 2 separate time periods, one during
Mississippian ti d the other during early Late Woodland times. The sunflower samples
display a more continuous mean size variation and seem less reliable as chronological
indicators.
INTRODUCTION
Seeds and achenes of cultigen sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus Ckll.) and
sumpweed (Iva annua var. macrocarpa Jackson) have been recovered from many archae-
ological sites in eastern North America ranging in age from about 1500 B.C. to late
prehistoric times. Sunflower husbandry has continued to the present, but there are no
reports of historic sumpweed husbandry. The prehistoric record of these plants has been
extensively reported by Asch and Asch (1979), Black (1963), Heiser (1951, 1955), Struever and
Vickery (1973), Yarnell (1972, 1979), and others. What is of concern here is the gradual
sumpweed.
DISCUSSION
Sunflower achenes apparently increased in mean size from approximately 6 x 3mm up to
about 12 x 7 mm, while sumpweed achenes increased from 3.5 x 2.5 mm up to 7.5x 5mm.
Taking into account an apparent doubling of thickness, the overall increase in sumpweed
achene size was approximately eight-fold, while sunflower achene size increased twice that
much. Overall increase in sumpweed achene size from the wild progenitor appears to have
been approximately twelve-fold, which again is only half the comparable increase for
sunflower,
These increases can be interpreted as having been more or less regular and continuous
through time even though the available data are stil] less abundant than preferred, even
though there are exceptions to the expectations. The summary data portrayed in Table |
Present a preliminary indication of the patterns of size increase of sunflower and sumpweed
achenes. (See Yarnell 1972 and 1979 for more detailed data and sources.) It shows that the
average of means of achene length times width gets progressively larger from Terminal
Archaic through Early Woodland, Middle Woodland, and early Late Woodland to
Mississippian times.
unflower and sumpweed achenes from the Ozark Bluff Dwellings and from Newt Kash
Hollow shelter in eastern Kentucky are not clearly placed chronologically. Neither are the
sunflower achenes from the Mammoth Cave vestibule or the sumpweed achenes from
Cloudsplitter and Hooton Hollow shelters in eastern Kentucky. In addition, sample size is
(00 small to be reliable for 8 sites with sunflower and 4 sites with sumpweed. This leaves 17
sumpweed samples (N = 1] to 879) and 11 sunflower samples (N =9 to 1000) which were used
AL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
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May 1981 YARNELL 57
in order to derive an average achene size for each of 3 broad perhistoric periods: Terminal
Archaic and Early Woodland, Middle Woodland and early Late Woodland, and
“Mississippian” (including Fort Ancient). The number of usable sarepiee is rege but
the results are generally supported by data from the smalle sch
and Asch (1979) and Andrea B. Shea. In addition, Gaver are indications ant the
reconstruction factors for estimating original achene size from carbonized sumpweed seed
and achene size tend to underestimate the mean size of larger achenes (Asch and Asch 1979;
A.B. Shea, personal communication). It is suspected that the same is true for sunflower.
The product of length and width in mm is taken to be a reliable indication of achene size
for purposes of comparison. For sumpweed these figures are 13, 21, and 35 for the 8 broad
periods from earliest to latest. The comparable figures = sunflower — are 24, 31, and
70. Two sunflower samples from the Yazoo Basin in western Mississipp
small for their age. Achenes from the wai Site with an coins date ee A. D. 500 Ub
Connaway, personal communication) average th
same site (see Table 2), and achenes from dei Miskiaisiplon period Wilford Site have a mean
length times width of only 41. It appears that these sunflowers, grown at the southern
margin of the prehistoric sunflower belt, perhaps in damp soil, produced smaller achenes
than those produced elsewhere at the same time. If we delete these 2 samples, the size
progression for sunflower becomes 24, 35, ds. This seems nearer to
the reality of prehistoric evolution of sunflower schene size under domestication. It alsoisa
better indication of the vast increase in sunflower achene size during Late Woodland and
Mississippian times.
If we compare the sizes of sumpweed and sunflower achenes from Newt Kash Hollow (21
and 29; see Table 2) to the size progression portrayed in Table 1, they seem to fit best into
Middle Woodland to early Late Woodland times; but they may have a mixed composition.
S age seems about right for the Hooton Hollow sumpweed also, but the initial
Cloudsplitter sumpweed collection fits well into the Early Woodland size category. The
Mammoth Cave Vestibule sunflower, collected by Nelson and measured by Heiser, is much
too large for an Early Woodland assignment but accords well with a Late Woodland
designation.
On the basis of a limited series of measurements, I had assumed until recently that all of
the sunflower and sumpweed from the Ozark Bluff shelters were Mississippian in age,
Probably not earlier than A.D. 1100 to 1200. Early in 1978 the University of Arkansas
useum graciously allowed access to collections there in order to select samples of Arkansas
TABLE 2.—Sumpweed and sunflower from the same source.
SUMPWEED SUNFLOWER
f
no. of eics mean —_s
ee size achenes
309 3.7x2.7=10 Salts Cave J IV: 4-11 ee - er 80
40 4.0 x 3.1 =12 Mammoth Cave cadaver ses sata . ay 1000
879. 42x32- 13 Salts Cave feces 7.4 . : hs nt
744 5.5x39=21 Newt Kash Hollow, KY pes 10
20. 6.1x42=26 Boyd, MI eee 36 4
13 5.7 x 3.9 = 22 Hooton Hollow shelter, KY od ae ry, 2
74 6.0 x 4.2 = 25 Haystack shelter, KY o - ny " - "
8.6 x 4.1 =;
19 6.2 x 4.2 = 96 Rogers shelters, KY
7 2
300 55x39=21 Edens - | 7 ewes 17
300 -5.5%3.9=21 Craddock 66 - 380 Se res
19 70x 4.5=32 — Paul’McCulloch, MO 12.6 x 6.6 =
58 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
Bluff Dweller sunflower and sumpweed achenes for study. With the generous assistance of
museum personnel I was able to locate 6 collections of sunflower achenes and 6 of
sumpweed, only 2 of which contained both species.
Measurement of the sumpweed achenes revealed ior the sien die fall distinctly into rks size
categories. Four samples from Craddock, Alred and E 3x 4.9mm = 36.
This is approximately the size expected for all of the Ozark Bluff Dweller r samples. Howeie:
2 samples from Edens and Craddock 66, both of which have mean sizes of 5.5 x 3.9 mm =
21, are clearly outside of the expected Mississippian period size range. In fact, they are the
same size as the Newt Kash Hollow sumpweed and fall between the Middle Woodland and
early Late Woodland expected sizes. This suggests that they should date to around the fifth
century A.D. Yet, data included in Tables | and 2 indicate that the mean sizes of sunflower
achenes from these collections occupy intermediate positions between ae arhy Late
Woodland size, on the one hand, and the f good Mississippian period collections
and the other Ozark collections, on the other hand. Thus it would appear that the 2 Ozark
samples with smaller sumpweed and sunflower achenes should date to approximately the
seventh century A.D. This assumes that there was no contamination of the sample by larger
sunflower achenes from a later deposition.
Two collections of sunflower ek ot ~~ Craddock 66 ahelaes whued AVCTARS 10.8 x 6.3
= 68 may be early Mississippian in till larger achenes
ae Craddock 67 and Brown Bluff a should date to well within the Mississippian
period. In fact there is a radiocarbon date of A.D. 1110 + 110 (M-1711) on materials with the
same collection number (BR - 78) as the Brown Bluff sunflower (Crane and Griffin 1968: 92).
These achenes have a mean size of 11.9 x 8.1 mm = 96 which is the largest of any prehistoric
collection on record. Mean thickness of achenes in the Ozark sunflower collections 1s
consistent with mean size as determined by length and width.
There is one additional sample of 10 sumpweed achenes, measured by Richard I. Ford
(personal communication), with a mean size of 7.0 x 5.2 mm = 36. This is from the Proether
shelter in southern Missouri and clearly falls in the Mississippian period size category.
Heiser (1953) has measured 2 samples of sunflower achenes from unidentified Ozark
shelters. A sample of 9 achenes recovered by! M. R. Harrington (Heye Museum No. 11/7265)
has a mean size of 9.3 x 4.8 mm = 45 the early Late Woodland size. Another
sample of 10 achenes (University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology No. 13250) witha
mean - 11.4 * F fi 0 7 Rael is sale hcl in ‘Size.
Th
¢ 1 ™m nureRd
achene size in the Ozark shelter collections are that carly Late Woodland sleet Mississippian
occupations are represented, possibly with an early Mississippian component as well,
occuring within an inferred time range of the seventh century A.D. or earlier to the twelfth
century A.D. or later. These estimates are based exclusively on sunflower and sumpweed
achene sizes and are presented with somewhat limited confidence. They were derived
independently of the available radiocarbon dates which can be interpreted as providing a
chronology that differs in some respects from the chronology based on achene size.
Crane and Griffin (1968: 88-93) have xpportess 17 dates from 8 Ozark — ranging from
40 B.C. to A.D. 1950. Since there i the 3 latest
dates of A.D. 1670, A.D. 1810, and A.D. 1950 should be of no eolicern, certainly not the last Zz
Also it seems unlikely that the date of 40 B.C. (M-1694) from Red Rock shelter is relevant to
the sunflower and sumpweed remains. Except for an Edens shelter date of A.D. 630, the
remaining dates form 2 clusters. The earlier cluster includes dates of A.D. 200, A.D. 360, and
A.D. 370 from Edens, ap es hota —_ men Bluff cues The latter 2 dates might be seen
to indicate the age of the coll Edens and Craddock shelters
were it not for the size of the associated sunflower achenes: The later cluster includes 9 dates
1080 to A.D. 1350. It is likely that the collections with large sumpweed achenes and thos€
RI seme
Ta RRO eRe:
May 1981 YARNELL 59
with large sunflower achenes date from this period. In fact, as noted earlier, the Brown’s
Bluff collection containing large sunflower achenes has been dated to this peri
The single early Late Woodland date of A.D. 630 + 120 (M-1703 A) seems most likely to
represent the age of the samples of smaller sumpweed achenes from Edens and Craddock
shelters, but their actual age may be between this date and the e date of A.D. 1080 + 110 (M-
cere pich wa was determined on other materials from th (Burial E-
TOM
Sie and Newbridge i in the lower Illinois Valley and some of the vodkihelieri i in eastern
entuc
CONCLUSIONS
To summarize, conjecture, and conclude, I suggest that in general we can reasonably
expect that the product of mean length times mean width in mm for sizeable collections of
sumpweed and sunflower achenes to be approximately:
Sumpweed Sunflower
8tol2 and 20to24 for Terminal Archaic samples
12tol16 and 22to26 for Early Woodland samples
16t020 and 251035 for Middle Woodland samples
20t0 26 =and 35to60 for early Late Woodland samples, and
25to40 and 50to100 for Mississippian period samples
These estimates are densi on the earaee ares and only aero take into account the
expectation that a be encountered because of
laa of a variety of influencing factors. Currently a data indicate that ante
an be menecied for sunflower, which might further indicate that greater varietal
diversity had developed in sunflower. In any case, it appears that continuing increase in size
of achenes took place more uniformly sumpweed and that this species should be a better
chronological indicator than sunflow
sit ante - accuracy of the eee size ranges of achenes for each period will
ah Reale etermined when we have an adequate set of measurements for additional
aay of archaeological sumpweed and sunflower achenes which have been reliably
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Valnah 1
| iby the k of Nancy and David Asch i in Illinois, by eer i
among their sellin s.
LITERATURE CITED
CRANE, H.-R. AND JAMES B. GRIFFIN. 1968.
Asc, Davip L., AND NANCY B. ASCH. 1979. The
University of Mic sep radiocarbon dates, XII.
€conomic ‘iced! of Iva annua and its
aaa importance in om eae Illinois Radiocarbon 10: 6
alley. Pp. 301-341, in The Natureand Statusof HEISER, CHARLES - . 1951. The sunflower
Ethnobotany (Richard I. Ford, ed.), Univ. among the North American Indians. Proc.
Michigan, Mus. Anthrop., odiecpol. Papers Amer. Philosoph. Soc. 95: 432
No. 67. 1953. The archaeological record of the
cultivated sual ouiek with remarks concerning
the origin of Indian agriculture in eastern
North America, MS, files of the author.
B
eae MEREDITH. 1963. Fhe distribution and
ological significance of the marsh elder,
va annua L. Papers Michigan Acad. Sci., Arts
and Letters 48: 541-547.
60 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
1955. The origin and development of the
cultivated sunflower. Amer. Biol. Teacher 17: 161-
167.
STRUEVER, STUART, AND KENT D. VICKERY. 1973.
e beginnings of cultivation in the Midwest-
Riverine area of the United States. Amer.
Anthropol. 75: 1197-1220.
YARNELL, RICHARDA. 1972. I; macro-
carpa: extinct ey edaae felt aig Amer.
Anthropol. 74: 335-
1979. Gerald of sunflower and
apiece I. Ford, ed.), Univ. Michigan, Mus.
Anthrop., Anthropol. Papers No. 67.
J. Ethnobiol. 1 (1): 61-68 May 1981
ON PREDICTING HUMAN DIETS
H. RONALD PULLIAM
State University of New York, Department of Biological Sciences,
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, New York 12222
ABSTRACT.—Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT) has helped animal ecologists understand
the dietary preferences of animals. This paper addresses the question ‘Can OFT shed light on
the food choices of humans?” In its simplest form, OFT predicts the diet which maximizes
Lh f, T = } = fh vd }
net energy gain tot g y be forced
t nd hg , ae bd 1 ; ie L he
LO TMAGAALILTLIZE COelr Cnersy ’ ’ I y Seer
dab iti lly bal d diet th b gy-rich one, OFT theory can
predict nutrient-contrained diets but the theory b plicated and the requi
information on the nutrient contents of wild foods is usually lacking. Nonetheless, some
evidence does suggest that humans often choose food so as to meet their nutrient
requirements.
The area of OFT known as Central Place Foraging Theory may be directly applicable to
Stationary, hunter-gatherer societies. The theory predicts that people should be food
generalist when hunting and gathering near home but should become progressively more
specialized in foods they choose to bring home when they forage farther and farther afield.
The evidence for and against this prediction is discussed.
Finally, the evolutionary mechanisms which might result in optimal human foraging
behavior are discussed in some detail.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, animal ecologists have become increasingly int the criteria which
animals use to select their diets. Many ecologists believe that animals do not select food at
random, but rather select food according to criteria that have evolved by natural selection
(Pyke et al. 1977; Schoener 1971). More precisely, ecologists argue that the neural] and
sensorimotor mechanisms which, in large part, determine food choices, have evolved by
natural selection to maximize Darwinian fitness. This viewpoint has led to a body of ideas
known collectively as Optimal Foraging Theory. The purpose of this paper is to ask whether
Or not this theory might be useful to human ecologists studying human diets. ;
The usefulness of Optimal Foraging Theory to animal ecologists has largely been that it
has allowed them to organize their thoughts and to ask new questions. Ecologists have long
argued that food selection is, in some ill-defined way, adaptive. Optimal Foraging Theory
has focused the adaptation picture by forcing i ig t precisely what they een
by adaptive behavior. The result is that, for tl ul logi f lating testa
hypotheses about food selection. These hypotheses are being tested in laboratory and field
a
DISCUSSION
Mechanisms of Evolution
Even in the case of non-human behavior, ecologists have usually avoided the difficult
Questions of mechanisms. Ecologists have argued that adaptive foraging behavior results
om natural selection working on heritable variation, but they have avoided the questions
62 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
of how, in learning animals, behaviors are transmitted from generation to generation.
Pyke et al. (1977) state, without further elaboration, that ‘‘the selection that has so far been
considered, either implicitly or explicitly, is Darwinian natural selection coupled with
genetic inheritance, but the evolution could also be cultural and yet gaverned by selection.”
In the present paper, I consider 3 possible mechanisms of evolutionary change. These are:
1) Genetical evolution of learning mechanisms,
2) Cultural retention of individually adaptive behavior, and
3) Cognitive evaluation and retention of beneficial customs.
The first 2 mechanisms are variations on the old theme of natural selection. The third
requires no differential fitness yet pees adaptive behavior. a er present my personal
view of the relative importance f human diets.
Genetical selection is the change in gene frequencies accompanying the differential
survival and reproduction of individuals. A coherent viewpoint of the genetical evolution of
behavior has been developed by ethologists and, more recently, by sociobiologists (see
Wilson 1975 and Tinbergen 1951). This viewpoint, in my opinion, reveals little about the
behavior of learning organisms, particularly humans. a basic tenet of sociobiology has been
that genes may cause animals to behave in certain ways which propagate those genes in
future generations. Human genes do not cause humans to behave; however, genes do
influence how humans learn. No doubt, some ways of learning are more adaptive than
others. The real problem is to specify how genes influence learning (see Pulliam and
Dunford 1980).
The likelihood that an animal repeats a particular behavior depends, in part, on the
reinforcement it experiences. The sensory and neural mechanisms of reinforcement may
have evolved by genetical selection in 2 ways (Pulliam and Dunford 1980). Ens, genes
specify certain primary reinforcers which guide early learning. Second, g y certain
learning programs which control how experience with reinforcers i is integrate ed.
For example, the taste of mother’s milk is a positive primary reinforcer. That is, the genes
specify certain connections between the sensory elements which detect this taste and the
central nervous system mechanisms which evaluate experiences as positive. A child learns
that certain behaviors increase its likelihood of access to this reinforcer, and that the other
be
stimuli consistently sabctasc with the primary reinforcers shall become secondary
reinforcers. Thus, the visual image of the child’s mother become a secondary reinforcer by
association with mother’s milk. Once this association is perceived, the child will work for
the reward of access to secondary reinforcers just as it will work for access to primary
reinforcers.
The relevance of primary reinf food selection is tk i inf ide the
learning of food habits. Certain tastes, such as from low concentrations of salt and inter-
mediate concentrations of sugar, positively reinforce the eating of certain foods. Similarly,
the taste of ae compounds negatively | reinforces eating — ane Circumstantial
evidence for
from a variety of studies. For RES C.M. Davis (1928, 1939) found that human infants
grew normally and maintained good health on a diet they selected for themselves. More
carefully controlled experiments with naive rats have shown similar results. (For a revieW,
see Nachman and Cole 1971).
If ov mechanisms of reinforcement have evolved b Iselecti daptive
g, then the reinforcing properties of food should change as the nutritive needs ¢ of the
individuals change. The t evidence in favor of this view of abits
comes from studies of specific hunger in laboratory animals. Numerous animal coal
support the idea that = with a particular nutritional need “learn to develow .
preference or aversion t
(Nachman and Cole 171: 340). For example, rats given a diet deficient in thyamine ae
a preference for any food containing thyamine. Similarly, after several days © salt
a
—
-_—
May 1981 PULLIAM 63
deprivation, sheep aocept previously rejected, salt-rich foods.
The evidence for in humans ial. For example, a
3.5 year old boy with a severe adrenal deficiency maintained himself by eating salt by the
handful (Nachman and Cole 1971). Th tly after hi
by physicians who thought that such high salt intake could not be good for the child. The
specific cravings of pregnant women have also: been interpreted as specific hungers for
required ae All inall, very little is
food selec
“Although Li and | specific hungers are surely important to human food selection, their
social learning. Parents not only can control what
ch their children hee available to eat, but they also use many forms of persuasion to
influence their children’s eating habits. P by the
selective presentation of reinforcers. This process of strong parental influence leads toa
second ane of evolutionary change: selective retention of adaptive behavior.
in recognized the ¢ importance of social rancid to human behavior when he wrote
that facial Pita ‘serve as t ther and her
infant; she smiles approval and this encourages her child on the right path, or frowns
disapproval” (Darwin 1896: 364). Darwin’s viewpoint is echoed by the modern theory of
social exchange. According to George Homans, an eminent sociologist, human values are
“learned by being linked with an action that is successful in obtaining a more primordial
value” (Homans 1974: 27). Homans (Ibid:27) goes on to say:
uppose a mother ofteri hugs her child and getting hugged is probably an innate value - in
sie aay in which the child has behaved ere wien other children, and, as _
er says, ‘better.’ The ‘behaving better’ than othe
to become, as we say, ‘rewarding in itself.’ By va a processes of — men may learn
ane maintain long chains of behavior leading to some ultimate reward.
The important point that I wish to draw from Homans is ie parents can control what
their children learn by manipulating their social experience. Some of the ‘values’ acquired
by social learning are what I call ‘ideas’ about behavior. An idea about behavior is what a
Person perceives as the relationship between behavior and access to rewards. Children learn
ideas about behavior during the socialization process because adults, particularly their
Parents, control their access to positive “we nenatiee: reintorcets.
What does social | lear ning have to do ior? Parents tend to teach
their children the same ideas that they once 4 from their own parents. Thus, acquired
ideas may be passed from generation to generation. Since ideas are perceptions about the
relationships between behavior and rewards, ideas motivate behaviors (Pulliam and
Dunford 1980). Some behaviors affect individual fitness, i.e., they affect an individual’s
chances to survive and reproduce. Ideas that motivate behaviors which affect individual
fitness ie affect the likelihood that those same ideas will be acquired by the next
8eneratio
As iebicesonty stated, a basic tenet of sociobiology has been that genes can cause people to
have in ways that increase or decrease the likelihood that those genes are replicated in
future generations (Dawkins 1976). I argue that ideas can motivate people to behave in ways
that affect the likelihood that those ideas are replicated in subsequent generations.
Furthermore, I argue that such cultural selection of i
evolution of human behavior during the past million years than has genetic selection.
umans have many ideas about what to eat and what not vi eat. Decisions to avoid cating
certain
is or to eat beans w ith ri rice, ea to eat insects
yO
decisions which p | poter atially aff tion. The ideas which motivate
tions of the a between feeding behavior and
iii _ o> welfare. Some i ideas about food selection! have no doubt been “‘weeded
out” of hu Other ideas have been
selectively + retained, i.e., replicated: in subsequent generations, because they motivated
adaptive behavior (see Durham 1976 and Ruyle 1973).
64 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
ening: enough, — ee ideas which evolve by selective retention are
percep ween behavior and welfare, they may be misconceptions and
yet lead to adaptive aa ome For example, an herb may have been added to the pa” to
appease the gods. The idea to do this may have b 1 from generation t
because the herb contained a rare vitamin i d inf, hip Parents who
defied the gods were unlikely to have children who survived long enough to learn their
parents’ non-orthodox beliefs. The point is that cultural retention of an adaptive behavior
may be based on misconceptions about physical reauity.
p= fs} Lildren of
parents who had maladaptive ideas. Cultural evolution need not be such a blind If
people correctly perceive the relationships between their behavior and their own welfare,
adaptive behavior may evolve without any selective deaths. This is what I refer to as the
cognitive evaluation and retention of beneficial customs.
Cognitive evaluation and retention of new ideas (i.e., of the relationships between new
behaviors and welfare) depends on both individual perception of the welfare of others who
have already evaluated the new ideas and individual perception of the consistency of new
ideas with those already personally evaluated. The way in which these 2 factors influence
food habits can be better understood by briefly considering the sociological theory of
cognitive balance.
How I decid kind of food? The evaluation of the
new food can be analyzed using the P - On X cycle of balance theory (Davis, C.M. 1939 and
Heider 1958). P is the person making the evaluation and X is the new food being ve
(more precisely, X is the idea that eating the new food is beneficial). O is a si
sed in making the evaluation. In this case, O is another person, institution or idea. orThe
evaluation of the new food (X) depends on the person’s previous evaluation of O and the
person’s perception of the relationship between O and X. For example, if a person's
respected friend accepts a new food, then the person P is more likely to try it too. On the other
hand, if a new food is sanctioned by the church O, then the person will try it if the person
evaluates the church positively, and may reject it otherwise.
he purpose of bringing up a cognitive balance theory is that I think it sheds some new
light on the question of when human behavior will be adaptive. I have argued that humans
have genetically-inherited learning mechanisms which also play a role in the evaluation of
new foods. If cognitive balance leads a person to try a new food, the food may be reevaluated
according to its taste. A person will only accept a new food that “‘tastes bad” if the person b:
evaluation of the significant other (e. g., church or friend) outweighs the negative
reinforcement of the taste. For example, the behavior of eating a noxious-tasting medicine
when ill, because the doctor recommends it, will only persist if evaluations of doctors =
very pasate’: Furthermore, the pe enim - “doing what the doctor says is best”
will b leads, on average, t0
an increase in individual fitness, or, at least, toa perception of increased welfare.
I am proposing that the initial evaluation of new ideas depends on their own consistency
with older, more established ideas, but that new ideas must also lly pass the tests of
individual reinforcement and cultural retention. Primary reinforcers are genetically-
inherited guides to behavior that slow down the acceptance of potentially dangerous aie
ideas even if the new mesiee are ‘Consistent with established ideas. Furthermore, seas even
once totally accepted, may b y ptive
behaviors. This is lividuals who have learned maladaptive ideas are less ms es!
pass their ideas on to children of ie next sie tence: Asa result, many more or less neu
ideas may be retained from generation to generation but those which truly lower the
Darwinian fitness of the idea bearers will be gradually “weeded out” (Durham 1976).
The atlective sieve of cultural retention can aa be expected to operate efficiently phe
_ Pp
i den ile Oo riwree ye 1, ° Cc
’
g ideas mail be more saad more likely to ee
May 1961 PULLIAM 65
h s = rape = 3. = taut = ae |
A society whose ideology is well
adapted can quickly adapt to minor changes in conditions. rman it conditions
7 t
] i ee lad 1 h “4 1 ee | ‘
s a é s
_ “¥ * ry 52% 1 kh 4
iaening yet other ideas. For is only
in stable cultures of people that have inhabited the same region for many genera eratio ons.
Optimal Foraging Theory may help human ecologists predict what foraging behavior is
adaptive in a particular environment. The question of how well behavior is adapted to an
environment can then be resolved empirically.
u Citic,
-
Optimal Foraging seit
Optimal Foraging Theory consists of a set of i which can be made
precise and which are, therefore, testable. For example, it seems reasonable that energy-
Stressed animals might make foraging decisions so as to maximize their net rate of energy
intake while foraging. An optimization model turns this general supposition into a set of
precise predictions hes can be vinteg or eee his igiene to real data.
Energy not mea much as they can, whenever they
can. As applied to humans, the as states that when energy-stressed,
1) people choose food so as to harvest as much energy as possible during the time they
devote to hunting or gathering, or
2) people hunt and gather in sucha manner ast inimize the ti juired tth
energetic requirements.
f course, minimizing foraging time also maximizes the time available for other activities
(Smith 1979).
The theory makes both q itati d ive predictions. I expect that, in general,
the quantitative predictions will oaks be veel for human societies during periods of
€xtreme food shortage. Nonetheless, the qualitative predictions of Optimal Foraging
Theory are likely to predict trends in the foraging behavior of all hunters and gatherers.
No doubt, during some periods food is abundant and people are not so much energy-
limited as they are nuntrient-timited. During such periods, models of protein maximization
Or energy maximization with nutrient constraints (Pulliam ngs might be more
appropriate. Of course, the theory is only as g its nd
for any particular study must be based on uid field studies. aaaie most of the
qualitative predictions are the same for energy maximization models and nutrient
Maximization models. It is these robust, qualitative predictions that are most likely to
Predict trends in human foraging behavior.
In the case of energy-maximization, the value to a forager ofa particular prey item is
defined as the ratio of its energy content to its handling time. Handling time is the average
total time required to pursue and capture a food item ane it has been encountered. - the
case of human foragers, handling time would ist mostly of g I g
for a hunter, and digging and picking time for a gatherer.
A forager that maximizes net rate of energy intake, pursues prey with the highest value
€very time they are encountered. The decisions to pursue or ignore prey of lower value
depend only on how frequently the higher-value prey are encountered. One of the most
robust predictions of the theory is that when high-value prey are rare, the diet expands to
include more low-value prey, and, conversely, when high-value prey are common the diet
contracts.
A number of animal studies have tested qualitative and quantitative predictions of
Optimal Foraging Theory. For example, Werner and Hall (1974) offered bheee —— a
choice of prey of 3 different sizes. They n “= ae ne
available in the aquarium and siitionel when the fish should eat and when t ey shou
ignore the 2 kinds of lower-value prey. They found that not only did the fish diets expand
66 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
when the highest-value prey were rare, but hat the fish b hel value prey
at the abundance of highest-value peey tha was predicted by the e theory.
Krebs etal. an presented Great: g 1] ]
They varied th the prey a bundanc by putt belt h d
prey by the des at sdjtiaeoe saan The ask as ta that the nace to eat or ignore
the small mealworms was independent of the abundance of small prey and dependent only
on the abundance of large prey. As expected, when mealworms were common, the tits ate
only large ones, but when mealworms were rare, they ate both large and small ones.
However, the theory predicted a specific abundance of large prey at which the tits should
quite suddenly change their behavior and eat every mealworm presented. Instead, Krebs et
al. (1974) found that the small prey were only gradually added to the diet. The results of this
experiment support the qualitatiave predictions of the theory but not the quantitative
predictions.
A few investigators have tried to test Optimal Foraging Theory under more or less natural
conditions in the field. For example, Goss-Custard (1977) studied Redshanks foraging on
invertebrates on a natural beach. He found that whether or not these birds accepted small
prey depended only on the abundance of large prey and not on the abundance of the small
prey themselves
In a study of Fee ee Sparrows in a natural oak woodland (Pulliam 1980), I found that
these sparrows preferred seeds of high energy value and expanded their diets when high-
energy prey were less abundant. However, I also found that the prey were not eaten in the
same frequencies as predicted by theory. So again, the qualitative but not the quantitative
predictions of the theory were supported.
How close animals come to matching the quantitative predictions of the theory seems to
depend on how energy-stressed they are. This is shown dramatically by the experiments of
Caraco etal. (1980) on risk aversion by Yellow-eyed Juncos. The theory of risk aversion is an
extension of classical optimization problems to the situation where an animals must choose
between food of high-value and high-risk and food of lower-value and lower-risk. The
theory predicts that animals will be more likely to maximize energy intake even if a risk 1s
involved when they are energetically stressed.
Caraco and his coworkers gave selow ers] Jun hoi ne side ofa
ther side to receive 7 seeds half of the time, but
no seeds the other half. The expected reward was then 3 seeds on hcg cow reward a vane Ci
side and 3.5 seeds on the “high reward, high risk”’ side. As predi gh-
risk strategies when ‘energetically stressed and low-risk strategies ‘when not cereal
stressed. I PAC Cases We bese vv ill Spry tv SaLGALLY CASALL
humans
A final 1i hich 1 eo ae ee £ shat iS
known to ecclogists as Central Place ee Theory, Many foragers start from a central
place such as a nest, a den, or a village to which they return with food. The theory predicts
how prey choices will vary as a function of prey abundance and how far the foragers will go
from the central place.
Optimization models of central place foraging predict that as prey abundance declines
and foragers go farther from the central place, they prey they
choose to bring back. This is because once the forager has travelled far from a central place,
any extra time required to select a better prey may be small compared to transit time to and
from the central place. This prediction holds regardless of whether the foragers are eneTgy-
maximizers or nutrient-maximizers.
CONCLUSION
During much of the history of mankind, leh i by | d gathering
During periods of food shortage, individual survivorship has, ne doubt, often “depended
critically on individual decisions about which foods to hunt and gather. These decisions
-
—_
May 1981 PULLIAM 67
Asés YY 1 ] kK s ee! I 2
have been made, in part, by reference tot
techniques, favored hunting grounds, alternative foods, e
Traditional knowledge about hunting and ee consists of culturally-inherited
ideas about the relationship between Ranging behavior and individual welfare. If ideas
leading to adaptive behavior have been more likely to be culturally retained as part of
traditional knowledge, then nara trends of foraging behavior should be predictable by
Optimal Foraging iota ory
Among the litati ici f Optimal Foraging Theory as applied to
Stationary human hunters wits gatherers who have inhabited the same region for many
generations are the following:
1) Human foragers should become more selective in their prey choices as the abundance of
preferred prey increases;
2)Decisions to Aeagiaa or generalize the diet should be independent of the abundance of
less preferred p
3) During hl ne food shortage, prey pref hould roughly be ordered ding
the ratios of energy content to handling time;
4) Human foragers solanaine be more willing to take risks for high energy gains during
periods of food shortage
5) People should be food generalists — hunting and ae near home (a central]
place) and become p g =
they forage farther ‘afield. .
Probably, human foragers never exactly maximize their rate of energy gain while
foraging. Nonetheless, their behavior is probably much closer to this ideal than it is to
well the behavior of hunters and gatherers is adpated to their energetic requirements. If the
qualitative predictions listed above are supported, the quantitative predictions should also
be tested
LITERATURE CITED
Caraco, T., S.P. MARTINDALE AND T-S. Brace, es vich.
WHITTAM. 1980. A empirical demonstration of | KREBS ascend AND ER; CHARNOV. 1974.
risk sensitive foraging preferences. Anim. Hunting b 5 A
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weaned infants. Amer.J. Diseases of Children © MAYNARD ean een Optimization theory in
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rive J.A. 1963. Structural balance, mechanical PULLIAM, H.R. ‘ee Diet optimization with
solidarity and interpersonal relations. Amer. J. nutrient constraints. Amer. Natur. 109:765-768.
Soc. 68:444-462. 1980. Do chipping sparrows forage
Darwin, C. 1896. The Expansion of Emotions in optinaally? Ardca 68:75-82.
Man and Animals. D. Appleton and Co. AND C. DUNFORD. 1980. Programmed to
Cai, R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford Learn: An Essay on the Evolution of Culture.,
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DurnAM, W.M. 1976. The adaptive significance Pyke, G-H., H.R. PULLIAM AND E.L. CHARNOV.
of cultural behavior. Human Ecol. 4:89-121. 1977. Optimal foraging: a selective review of
Goss-Custarp, J.D. 1977. Optimal foraging and theory and tests. Quart. Rev. Biol. 52:137-154.
€ size selection of worms by redshanks RvyYLe, E.E. 1973. Genetic and cultural pools:
(Tringa totanus). Anim yeas 25:10-29. some suggestions for a unified theory of bio-
HEIDER, F. 1958. The Psychology of Inter- cultural evolution. Human Ecol. 1:201-215.
Personal Relations. John Wiley and Sons. SCHOENER, J.W. 1971. Theory of feeding
Homans, G.C. 1974. Social Behavior: Its strategies. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 11:369-404.
Elementary Forms. Revised ed. Harcourt, SmirH, E.A. 1979. Human adaptation and
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energetic efficiency. Human Ecol. 7:53-74. WILSON, E.O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New
TINBERGEN, N. 1951. The Study of Instinct. Synthesis. Belknap Press of Harvard Univ.
Oxford Univ. Press. WINTERHALDER, B.P. 1977. Foraging strategy
WERNER, E.E. AND D.J. HALL. 1974. Optimal adaptations of the boreal forest Cree: an
foraging and size selection of prey by the evaluation of theory and models from evolu-
bluegill sunfish (Lepomis mochrochirus). tionary ecology., Unpubl. Ph.D. Dissert.
Ecology 55:1042-1052. Cornell Univ., Ithaca, New York.
— ae
a 2 ARR rere
J. Ethnobiol. 1 (1): 69-83 May 1981
RESOURCE UTILIZATION AND FOOD TABOOS
OF SONORAN DESERT PEOPLES
AMADEO M. REA
Curator of Birds and Mammals, San Diego Museum of Natural History,
San Diego, California 92112
ABSTRACT.—Resource utilization and food taboos of 8 Sonoran Desert cultures (Riverine
Pima, Papago, Sand Papago, Pima Bajo, Seri, Colorado River Yumans, Maricopa and
Western Apache) are compared. Taboo (or dietary prohibition) herein i ding l
(species banned to the entire community) rather than specific sense (species banned to a
particular age and/or sex class at specific times). The purpose is to compare nutritive
resources (plant and animal species) available to 2 or more cultural groups exploiting the
moran desert. Western Apache, with the greatest number of taboos, had access to more
ecotone resources and to more than one major life zone. Within the Pima-Papago cultural
complex there is a probable underlying adaptive (ecological) basis for the fact that most
restrictions were found with Riverine Pima (resource-rich ecotone habitat) and the fewest
restrictions with Sand Papago (most harsh habitat of groups considered). There is a probable
i. Pie re. Gast Bes, jp } * £ a: PRES rey ry i ma
and no. agricultural resources). Speakers of mutally intelligible languages, even though
disjunct geographically, tended toot I imal taboos if t —
impoverished. Plant use was cross-cultural. Tab y &
INTRODUCTION
A number of factors determine the dietary items any heterotrophic organism utilizes as
food, including its own anatomical mechanism for obtaining the food, its physiological
ability to assimilate the food, and the availability of the prey items themselves. All these
factors play a major role in the dietary of man, an omnivorous animal. But we cannot stop
there. Several factors radically alter the dietary categorization of man‘as an “omnivorous
animal” and these are culture and language. It is almost an anthropological maxim that
man’s diet is not simply determined by his anatomical and physiological ability to handle
prey items (both plant and animal) that happen to be available in the environment. All
humans that we know live in a cultural context, speak at least one language, and practice
dietary selectivity. (Our own culture provides examples of rigorously observed but
unwritten, perhaps even unconscious, rules specifying dietary selectivity; see appendix.) In
addition to culture and language, man, especially in “archaic” societies, differs from other
i inadi i ight call a sense of the sacred (Eliade 1959; Rappaport 1971). All
3 modify diets.
Dietary selectivity has been discussed for a number of areas of the world, but to my
knowledge there has been no intercultural comparison made of the aboriginal peoples
living in the Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest (Fig. 1). ee
A number of questions came to mind when I decided to look at the variation in dietary
resource utilization and taboos in desert peoples:
1) Did the utilization of plants as well as animals differ from one group to another?
2) Insofar as there were shared resources, were there dietary differences between groups
Speaking closely related (even mutually intelligible) languages, as between the Riverine
ima, Papago, Pima Bajo, and Sand Papago or between the Maricopa and the Colorado
River Yumans?
3) Does agriculture-modify the range of wild foods hunted and gathered? )
f 4) Do dietary restrictions arise because of ecological determinism or do they arise and
unction as symbols of group identity? age
és relatively greater Besse of a ate subsistence data is available on Amerindians
living in tropical areas (Carneiro 1968; Ross 1978; Chagnon and Hames 1979; others) even
70 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
q
Approximate Ranges
.
1 Colorado River Yumans
2 Maricopa
3 Riverine Pima
4 Western Apache
5 Sand Papago
6 Papago
7 Seri
8 Lowland Pima Bajo
ee Sonoran Desert
Fic. 1.—Localities (ca. 1850) of 8 groups discussed. (After Rea 1979a).
May 1981 REA 71
though considerable investigation remains (cf. respondents to Ross 1978). Tropical
situations are characterized by high species diversity but low population numbers (i.e., there
are more species but fewer individuals per species than in temporate forest communities).
Relatively little is known of resource utilization in New World deserts where human cultures
might be thought of as marginal. More is known of subsistence in Old World deserts (e.g.,
Kalahari, Australia). Even though absolute quantitative intercultural data from the
American Southwest are now no longer retrievable, the comparative qualitative data
presented here are probably largely valid and useful. (We must realize in any comtemporary
study that the Sonoran Desert today is an artifact; community structure since the
Pleistocence has been radically altered due to | f megaf d iated animals([e.g.,
Rancholabrean birds] and, more immediately, a century of disastrous overgrazing by
Eurasian herbivores. No matter how hard we try to close our eyes to the facts, Southwestern
deserts have been radically altered by the last century of abuse!)
Some philosophical debate surrounds the topic of the origin and function of food taboos.
That taboos are cultural inventions is incontestable. But do they function as cosmological
symbols in a culture, maintaining as orderliness and structural indentity? Are they
understandable as daily, visible projections of values emanating from a common
metaphysics? Or can they be reduced to some evolutionary fitness factor, fulfilling
(unknown even to the adherents) a sanitary or hygenic function, or perhaps an ecological
function of sustained yield or predator strategy theory? Can why man eats what he eats be
understood in terms of nutrition and calories? Can what people hunt, gather, or grow be
reduced to terms of cost-benefit? The dietary restricitons of Sonoran Desert cultures might
Suggest some answers.
METHODS
eh eee . id dh
For comparative purposes onl p sins ;
more cultural groups had access (see Table 1). Hence, Prairie Dogs (Cynomys spp.) ’
Western Apach ttaken int here t =o
Comparisons are not to be taken in an absolute sense because (1) relative’ abundances of
various prey items aboriginally are unknown, and there i devid eee ae
of plants or animals are now decimated or locall irp t iinet 7
the desert habitat (Hastings and Turner 1965; Rea 1977); (2) the relative importances of
Specific taboos are unknown; (3) the coverage of even absolute taboos weiss il ca
of the data (specifically for Westen Apache and Yumans) are from the literature at st
been verified. Literature citations are sometimes limited by the investigator's incomplete
understanding of his own Linnaean taxonomy and the ethnotaxonomies of his native
informants, and (far too often!) incomplete interrogation. Also, Senna ened —
have had varying, usually long periods of contact with Europeans. This — “— .
technologically dominant culture has resulted in ag labandon aE
ways. Of the groups considered here, only the Seri preserve a viable native subsistence
pattern (though all the others preserve parts). Data for the Riverine Pima, Papago, and Pima
Bajo are based on my own field work. Table 2 gives the life zones and ecotones that the 8
8toups exploited.
oe
t te,
DISCUSSION
Kinds of Taboos—Food taboos are equivalent to dietary prohibitions. Food taboos
Considered here are only general taboos, that is, those imposed on the enure € thnic group at
all times. Excluded from discussion are specific taboos that restrict a particular food species
for a specific age/sex class of the population at a particular time. Such prohibitions may
affect, for instance, only men while hunting, or women while nee tiie lig RE
menstruating. (A study of these taboos here now would take us too far ree this
Practical restriction is not to imply the lack of importance, either symbolically or
ecologically, of specific or temporal taboos.)
72 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
TABLE 1.—Resource utilization by desert tribes.
RIVERINE PIMA PAPAGO SAND SERI MARICOPA YUMAN WESTERN
PIMA BAJO PAPAGO SPEAKERS APACHE
Grasshoppers ag ? dy ? — 49 T ?
Acrididae
+ ? ? ? eee ? ? ?
idae
Caterpillars + + + + + + * *
Celerio lineata
Mullusks 0 0 0 + + 0 + 0
Mull
Fish a > 0 - + + -
Mud Turtle + T T + aoe ? z ?
mos
Desert Tortoise + + + + + + 4% +?
h agassizi
Gila Monster gt ? i ? ~ ? ? ?
Helod pectum
t Ig T 0 + wv ? + 0
Chuckwalla 0 0 #8 + + 0 + +7
uromalus obesus
Small lizards T gi +. bs ty ? + T
Iguanidae, Teidae
Snakes (all) tr T 8 ? +/T* T E T
Colubridae, Crotalidae
ks & Geese Zs ? 0 ? + + + +
iformes
wks & Eagles ui ? T i + ? ? zt
Accipitridae
Vultures a _ zy i i ed ? ? T
Turkey 0 + 2 0 0 3 0 3
Meleagris gallopavo
Quai + + + + s s: . +
Odontophorinae
Herons & Egrets T ? 0 ? + ? ? T
Ardeidae
+ + + + * ry + sd
Colum
Roadrunner 7 ? T 2 T ? ? ?
fen life
Great H 1 + T? T ? + ? ? T
Bubo virginianus
Is ry ? ? ? + ? ? T
Strigiformes
? ? £3 ? T ? ? t
Corvus spp.
Other Songbirds + ? ? 2 + + + i
Passeriformes
Birds’ eggs + + H is ? +* T* + +*
Cottontail & Jackrabbit + + + + + + + i
lvilagus, Lepus
Ground Squirrel - + + ? - ag + 7
Otosperma, Citellus,
Ammospermophilus
Gopher _ + ? 0 T 2 +
T
Small mice + + ay + eee ? + %
Perognathus,
Peromyscus
t T 0 T ? 7 4 ? + .
Di:
Beaver + + 0 0 0 + - £
Castor canadensis
May 1981 REA 73
| TABLE | Continued
i RIVERINE PIMA PAPAGO SAND SERI MARICOPA YUMAN WESTERN
. PIMA BAJO PAPAGO SPEAKERS APACHE
Muskrat. + + 0 + 0 ? + ;
Ondatra zibethicus
pine rT 0 0 ? baie! T Fi +
Erethizon dorsatum
le a § > i a ? i ad a +? T?
Canis latrans
i -_ s ? ‘i ¥ Es sy
‘anis familiaris
Kit & Gray Fox E ? T ? + vg + i
Vulpes macrotis,
7 Deore M
Black Bear + 0 T ? 0 y iy ? 1%
Ursus americanus
Raccoon + + 0 0 + + + +
q Procyon lotor
: Badger +? + T ? + T + +
Taxidea taxus 7
; Skunk F + 5 ? t yi yy +
Mephitis spp
Puma + * + + + = ‘ +
| Felis concolor
i Bobca: ¥ +? + + + z ss +
Lynx ru
“pd + + + ? + + ¥ Y ‘%
’ Mule & White-tailed Deer + + + + + - . bi
j hemionus,
O. virginianus
. + Fs < ’ + + + +
: Antilocapra americana
Bighorn + 0 + 7 + - + 7
Ovis canadensis
Cauail + ? 0? 0 eee + +
Typha spp ‘ P P
Grasses + ? + +
' Palin 0 i 0 ~ 0 + 0
vm 0 ? + + + + +
; Yucca baccata,
> Y. arizonica A A
. Century Plant + + + + .
Agave
cn Spp. oe 0 0 vo) +
q Quercus spp. > >
Mistletoe ¥ ? + + +
; Phoradendron
californicum .
ter Greens + +? ~ 0 ?
. 7 Monolepis, Atriplex
tri,
Pic > > + + + 0
Allenrolfea occidentalis ‘
+ + > > *
Amaranthus,
Trianthema, etc P . >
Velvev/ Honey Mesquite - + + i
‘Osopis velutina
© P. juliflora 0
Screwbean + 0 0 0 = 7
Prosopis pubescens ? . 0
Palo Verdes + + + ™
Cercidium >
Hog-Potato send + 0 . 0 Ai r
Hoffmanseggia
oo + + + ?
+ + +
74 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1
TABLE 1 Continued
RIVERINE PIMA PAPAGO SAND SERI MARICOPA YUMAN WESTERN
PIMA BAJO PAPAGO APACHE
PEAKERS
Graythorn + + + + Ps + 0
Condalia lyctoides”
Saguaro + + + rs + “e +
Carnegia gigantea
Organpipe cactus 0 ‘ + + 6 0 0
Lemaireocereus
Barrel cactus + + + + + ? 0
Ferocactus spp
Prickley Pear + + - * ep + +
Opuntia spp
Cholla bu + + + + + + +
Opuntia spp
food 0 0/+ . 0 0 + 0
Ammobroma sonorae
lfberry + 0 + + + + 0
Lycium spp.
Chiltepin +o + + +98 ? 0 +
Capsicum annuum
Broom-Ra # 0 + + + ? 0
Orobanche spp.
Wild gourds * Be + 0 ¥ + T+
tee: bot, ft, Osas: .
& C. digitata
Sunflower tal 0 ae 0 ? + *
Helianthus spp.
KEY TO SYMBOLS:
0 ism d i
z explained in text
? no information trade item
+ utilized
T absolute taboo
low a tili
conflict in literature
ie Se a
field FE, 1OTA-U