Human Behavioral Ecology and Historical Contingency: A Comment on the Diablo Canyon Archaeological Record

Abstract

Using data from a single site along the central California coast (CA-SLO-2), Jones et al. (2008) critique our use of human behavioral ecology to explain changing hunting and fishing adaptations in prehistoric California and the Great Basin. Instead, they argue that human adaptations tend to stay relatively stable over time until they are influenced by historical contingencies. We question the utility of using data from a single site, and expand the sample with information from several deposits along the south-central coast. This expanded sample documents a dynamic evolutionary sequence characterized by increasing residential stability accompanied by hunting and fishing in more distant resource patches. Access to these patches, both terrestrial and marine, was made possible by changes in social organization and technology. Many of these behaviors appear to have incurred high costs, and are potentially explained with reference to costly signaling theory.

The Morro Bay Fauna: Evidence for a Medieval Droughts Refugium on the Central California Coast

“…; NISP = 1075; 44.3 percent) and black-tailed jack rabbit (NISP = 196; 8.1 percent). Mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ), which was the most abundant species in the faunal collection from Diablo Canyon and figured prominently in debates about large game hunting strategies along the central coast (Hildebrandt et al 2010; Jones and Codding 2010), is decidedly less abundant at Morro Bay, representing only seven percent (NISP = 170) of the bird and mammal inventory. The low frequency of deer and the large number of rabbits and hares almost certainly reflect the abundance of sagebrush shrub vegetation at Morro Bay.…”

“…Coast live oak forest is only a very small component of the vegetative landscape. This differs significantly from the open coast to the south (the Diablo Canyon or Pecho Coast), where oak forest is much more extensive (Codding et al 2010; Hildebrandt et al 2010; Jones and Codding 2010; Jones et al 2008).…”

Explaining prehistoric variation in the abundance of large prey: A zooarchaeological analysis of deer and rabbit hunting along the Pecho Coast of Central California

“…1983; Delpech, 1998,2003;Grayson et al, 2001; Predictions derived from the resource depression hypothesis sug jochim, 1976, 1998), the Mediterranean Basin (e.g., Stiner, 2001 , gest that the prolonged acquisition of large prey negatively impacts 2006; Stiner and Munro, 2002 ;Stiner et al, 2008;Stutz et al, their populations (although, see Whitaker, 2008Whitaker, , 2009, leading for 2009) and Western North America (e.g. Bayham, 1979; agers to shift to smaller prey which is archaeologically identified by 2002 ; Broughton and Bayham, 2003 ;Broughton et al, 2008;Butler, (PI a) a reduction in proportion of larger prey to smaller prey (e.g., 2000; Butler and Campbell, 2004;Byers and Broughton, 2004;Broughton, 1994;Stutz et al, 2009) and (PI b) changes in age struc Byers and Ugan, 2005 ;Cannon, 2000Cannon, , 2003 ture oflarger prey (e.g., Stiner, 2006), both of which may either influ Codding and jones, 2007a;Hildebrandt and McGuire , 2002; ence, or be influenced by forager settlement and mobility, (PIc) Hildebrandt et al, 2010;Hockett, 2005 ;janetski, 1997 ; resulting in changes in the processing and transport of skeletal Codding, 2010;jones et al, 2008a elements from large prey (Cannon, 2000(Cannon, , 2003(Cannon, ). 2005McGuire et al, 2007;Whitaker, 2009).…”

“…The second hypothesis proposes that patterns in the proportion dealing with remains deposited by behaviorally modern humans, of large prey remains are driven by changes in the size of social groups and/or the frequency of social aggregations both of which are linked to the social payoffs of hunting McGuire, 2002, 2003;Hildebrandt et al, 2010;McGuire and Hildebrandt, 2005;McGuire et al, 2007, see also Aldenderfer, 2006;Cannon, 2009;Potter, 1997Potter, , 2000Plourde, 2008). Predictions from the prestige hunting hypothesis suggest that an increase in the social payoffs of large game hunting should lead to (P2a) a diachronic in crease in the archaeological visibility of large prey relative to small prey, accompanied (P2b) by an increase in the logistic mobility of foragers (sensu Binford, 1980) caused by hunters having to travel further to acquire large prey at higher costs.…”