Intensification Mechanisms Driving Dietary Change among the Great Plains Big Game Hunters of North America

Abstract

Boresup's Theory of subsistence intensification is that as human populations grow, they give up "efficient" food-producing behaviors to increase the total food yield over a given unit of time or space. Anthropologists have vigorously debated this concept during the latter part of the twentieth century. They have proposed that dietary specialization and dietary diversification are two mechanisms responsible for subsistence intensification trends over time. On the North American Great Plains, archaeologists attribute the observed record of human dietary variation of at least 13,000 years, partially to the effects of human agency, temporal and regional variability in environmental conditions, and human and prey population dynamics. Despite this variation, an apparent big-game hunting specialization persisted in this region alongside more diversified strategies, until much later than in adjacent areas. This interpretation of specialized bison hunting proposed by early archaeologists likely fueled two widespread hypotheses: A) that prehistoric Great Plains indigenous people's lives were highly contingent on the vast herds of bison that roamed the region, and B) that through time, a simplified progression of subsistence intensification took place. This progression begins with highly specialized big-game hunters during the Paleoindian period (13,500–9,000 BP) and culminates with a much more diversified economy during the Late Prehistoric period (1000–300 BP) that included foraged and domesticated resources. However, these inferences remain unevaluated across the Great Plains' vast geographic range and its complete cultural chronology. To assess them, we employ a large dataset of dietary remains and investigate the broad patterns of dietary specialization and diversification used by Great Plains indigenous people over the past 13,500 years. Our analyses led to a twofold conclusion: 1) we find that even though prehistoric indigenous people of the Great Plains maintained a way of life associated with bison over time, bison was not the dominant hunted species in their diet; and 2) the hunting strategies and dietary variation that we observed on the Great Plains, through time, does not support a model of progressive resource intensification from hunting and gathering to farming. Instead, the data support a model of constant diversification of hunting strategies from the Paleoindian through the Late Prehistoric periods. In this model, hunters on the Plains (and elsewhere) maintained a consistently high resource diversity. We propose that this highly flexible and diversified portfolio of dietary strategies enabled the Great Plains people to successfully adapt their approaches to procuring food across different habitats and periods.

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“…Livelihood diversification means drawing on various resource streams 18 , increasing mean return for a given level of variability. Diversification can apply to diet breadth 19,20 , crops planted or animals raised, locations where crops are planted or animals are kept 21,22 , or income streams, often realized by performing different tasks 18,23 .…”

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“…EBAs have both the theoretical framework and the data to make predictions about how individuals will maintain this access in the face of anthropogenic climate change. For example, EBAs often study how individuals protect against the downsides of risk by diversifying their resource portfolios (Otárola- Castillo et al, 2020;Scaggs et al, 2021). Pastoralists who raise animals that are more resilient to drought have greater resource security when precipitation falls (Hazel et al, 2021).…”

“…Pastoralists who raise animals that are more resilient to drought have greater resource security when precipitation falls (Hazel et al, 2021). As predicted by foraging theory, foragers who are generalists, rather than specialized in a particular resource, are better able to maintain resource access across different climatic conditions (Otárola-Castillo et al, 2020). Importantly, for individuals to effectively reduce the impact of climate change on their resource access, they must be permitted to use the behavioral adaptations they have for maintaining access.…”