Large-Game Hunting, Gender-Differentiated Work Organization, and the Role of Evolutionary Ecology in California and Great Basin Prehistory: A Reply to Broughton and Bayham

Abstract

We are pleased that Broughton and Bayham acknowledge that there was an increase in large-game hunting during the Middle Archaic (ca. 4000-1000 B.P.) in California and the Great Basin that reached proportions greater than any other interval during the Holocene. They argue, however, that this was simply the result of changing climatic conditions, and that the larger social context of hunting plays little or no role in this development. The following discussion identifies several weaknesses in their environmental determinism, and shows how a more comprehensive analysis of genders differentiated fitness and work organization provides greater explanatory power than the narrow, fauna-based approach they advocate.

Evolutionary Foraging Models in Zooarchaeological Analysis: Recent Applications and Future Challenges

“…Because it is not possible to predict variability in prestige hunting, they argue that increases in large prey are still best explained by appeal to the diet breadth model. Broughton and Bayham (2003) argue that the patterns documented by Hildebrandt and McGuire (2003) can be explained more simply by climatic evidence for increasing mesic conditions that favored an increase in artiodactyl populations throughout most, but apparently not all, of the region (as discussed above).…”

“…Furthermore, Hockett's evidence does not disprove Byers and Broughton's argument; it only demonstrates that artiodactyl hunting shows continuity in some elevational zones from the Middle to Late Holocene. Hildebrandt and McGuire (2003) argue that while climate influenced human subsistence and settlement in that region, simplistic cause-and-effect models cannot explain increasing abundances of artiodactyl remains in the Late Holocene. They point out that the early Holocene (11500-7500 B.P.)…”

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

“…Initially build ing on ethnographic work by Hawkes (1991Hawkes ( , 1993 and others, McGuire (2002, see also Hildebrandt andMcGuire, 2003) proposed that the abundance of large prey varies through time in response to changes in social organization which alter the rewards associated with acquiring large prey. Later cast in the framework of Costly Signaling Theory (McGuire and Hilde brandt, 2005;McGuire et al, 2007;see Bliege Bird, 2007;Bliege Bird and Smith, 2005;Bliege Bird et al, 2001;Hawkes and Bliege Bird, 2002;Smith and Bliege Bird, 2000;Smith, 2004;Smith et al, 2000;Zahavi, 1975), the prestige hunting hypothesis predicts that an increase in group size or the frequency of social aggrega tions will lead to a synchronous increase in the benefits individuals gain from acquiring large game: as group size increases, a success ful hunters' audience increases as well, providing a greater poten tial payoff for signaling strategies.…”

Pronghorn Dental Age Profiles and Holocene Hunting Strategies at Hogup Cave, Utah

“…We pursue our study of pronghorn hunting strategies within the context of a current debate surrounding late Holocene increases in artiodactyl abundances relative to those of smaller, lowerranked mammalian prey in archaeofaunal contexts throughout western North America (Figure 1). Several different ideas have been offered to explain this pattern, ranging from late Holocene climate change to temporal shifts in the motivations of male hunters (Byers and Broughton 2004;Byers et al 2005;Hildebrandt and McGuire 2003;McGuire and Hildebrandt 2005). Hockett (2005) offers yet another explanation.…”