Archive | 2019
Optimal Foraging and Population Dynamics: An Archaeological Investigation at the Birch Creek Rockshelters, Idaho
Abstract
Optimal Foraging and Population Dynamics: An Archaeological Investigation at the Birch Creek Rockshelters, Idaho by Samuel H. M. Yeates, Master of Science Utah State University, 2019 Major Professor: Dr. David A. Byers Department: Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology This thesis aims to integrate the study of population dynamics with the expectations of the optimal foraging models, and to test whether expectations resulting from integrating these two bodies of theory have greater predictive power than the prey model alone. To compare these models, I monitored prey age, processing intensity, and prey rank in five prehistoric occupations of the Birch Creek rockshelters of Idaho. I modeled hunting pressure (top-down abundance limitation) with a summed probability distribution of radiocarbon dates from Idaho archaeological sites, and modeled carrying capacity (bottom-up abundance limitation) with an archaeoclimate model of effective moisture. Both models predicted lower prey age, lower average prey rank, and greater processing intensity when human hunting pressure is high and when prey carrying capacity is low. However, unlike the prey model the Forager-resource Population Ecology (FPE) model predicts that similarly-ranked taxa with different rates of intrinsic increase should show different degrees of resilience to top-down abundance limitation. Contrary to FPE model predictions, statistical analyses of the Birch Creek archaeofauna did not detect a greater top-down limitation effect on taxa with slower rates of intrinsic