Prevalence of feral swine disturbance at important archaeological sites over a large landscape in Florida

Abstract

Feral swine are globally known as one of the most destructive invasive vertebrates, damaging native habitats, native plants and animals, agriculture, infrastructure, spreading diseases. There has been little quantification on their disturbance to archaeological sites across a broad landscape. Over 6 years we inspected 293 significant archaeological sites for swine disturbance across a vast area. We found a 42% prevalence of swine disturbance among all sites, with prevalence not distinguishable among prehistoric sites, historic sites, and sites with both components. The areas of disturbance mapped within three historic homestead sites showed 5–26% of total site surface area rooted. Disturbance was not evident upon re-inspection of one of these sites after 18 months, indicating how evidence of disturbance can be obscured in this environment. Thus, our observed 42% prevalence of disturbance should be considered a minimum for disturbance occurring through time. Artifacts depths were <10 cm of the surface at 85% of the sites and <20 cm of the surface for 90% of the sites. Feral swine rooting commonly exceeds 20 cm in depth, especially in soft sandy substrates typical of Florida, making the great majority of the studied sites highly vulnerable to artifact damage or displacement.

Feral swine harming insular sea turtle reproduction: The origin, impacts, behavior and elimination of an invasive species

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“…Globally, feral swine also are one of the world's most destructive invasive species, thereby earning their inclusion as one of the 100 "World's Worst" invaders by the IUCN Invasive Species Specialist Group (Lowe et al, 2004). They are infamous for their damage to native plant and animal species, habitats, as well as archaeological sites (Choquenot et al, 1996;Engeman et al, 2007Engeman et al, , 2013aEngeman et al, , 2016Engeman et al, , 2017Seward et al, 2004;U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1999, 2016.…”

Locating and eliminating feral swine from a large area of fragmented mixed forest and agriculture habitats in north-central USA

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