Frozen bison and fur trapper's journals: building a prey choice model for Idaho's Snake River Plain

Should we expect large game specialization in the late Pleistocene? An optimal foraging perspective on early Paleoindian prey choice

“…Late Pleistocene bison (B. antiquus) are modeled by increasing size and handling time estimates for modern bison (after Ref. [47]) by 50%. This scales extant bison into a size range generally consistent with that demonstrated by the mean difference in horn core measurements between early and late Holocene specimens [107].…”

Holocene cold storage practices on the eastern Snake River Plain: A risk-mitigation strategy for lean times

“…Recent investigations at Baker Cave, Idaho, support this picture of bison use on the SRP (Breslawski, 2014;Breslawski and Byers, 2015). Unlike Henrikson's (1996Henrikson's ( , 2002Henrikson's ( , 2003Henrikson's ( , 2004 findings at cold-storage sites, Baker Cave did not contain evidence of storage features. Rather, it appears that hunters procured bison at a distance from Baker Cave during the late winter/early spring and transported them to the site for later processing and consumption.…”

“…Accordingly, we multiply the return rate of 368 kcal/h by Binford's (2001, Table 7.07) mean dependency ratio of 1.68 individuals to arrive at a value of 618 kcal/h, as a higher and more conservative estimate for a caloric survival threshold on the SRP. Return rates for SRP resources (Table 2) were calculated using the data presented in Byers and Ugan (2005 , Table 7), with the exception of bison, whose values were adjusted downward by 50% to match those in Henrikson (2004).…”

“…Between 1987 and 2004, seven ice caves on the eastern SRP were discovered to contain sagebrush features designed to keep bison products insulated and frozen (Henrikson, 1996(Henrikson, , 2003(Henrikson, , 2004Henrikson et al, 2006). These caves are scatted across the sagebrush steppe in Pleistocene-aged lava flows buried by a relatively thin layer of aeolian sediments (Fig.…”

“…Moreover, such studies often speak to diet breadth and have recently done so for the SRP and nearby northern Great Basin (e.g. Byers and Broughton, 2004;Henrikson, 2004). However, encounter rates and return rates in such contexts are viewed as averages, while in the real world, these rates can vary around a mean value, and at times do so considerably.…”