10.3: Activity 2 - Reconstructing Diet and Subsistence- Comparing Foraging and Farming

Jenna Santy, University of California, Santa Barbara

The two data sets provided for this activity are based on actual archaeological excavations and have been modified for the purposes of this activity (see the citations for more information). Each data set contains information about plant and animal remains found in an archaeological assemblage—one from the Owens Valley in eastern California and one from Veracruz, Mexico. The two sites date to about the same time period.

The study of archaeological plant remains is called paleoethnobotany and the study of archaeological animal remains is called zooarchaeology. For this activity, you will compare and contrast the two data sets and make some inferences about how the residents of each site made a living. Here’s a big hint: one group obtained much of their food from farming and the other did not.

Online Resources:

• Google Maps or Google Earth
• Calflora.org

Use Google Maps (or Google Earth) to look up Bishop, California, and then zoom out so you can see both the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west and the White Mountains to the east.

Next, look up Lago Catemaco in Veracruz, Mexico, and zoom out so you can see the Gulf of Mexico to the northeast.

Site 1: INY-1384

An ancestral Owens Valley Paiute site located near Bishop, California, at the foot of the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, near McGee Creek, and south of the Owens River. The assemblage was radiocarbon-dated to 1750 +/– 40 BP (AD 160 to 240) and came from a single excavated house deposit that included four associated features.

Site 2: Bezuapan

A terminal formative period Olmec site located in Veracruz near the Gulf of Mexico, along the Bezuapan River in lowlands near the Sierra de los Tuxtlas Mountains, and west of Lago Catemaco. The assemblage was radiocarbon-dated to 1790 BP +/– 80 years (AD 80 to 240) and came from two partially excavated house deposits and three associated features.

What was the environment like at each site when it was occupied? How are the sites’ environments different?

The data sets (provided at the end of this activity) represent spreadsheets of subsistence data, one from each site, that contain data on plants and animals, providing a relatively full picture of the resources the residents of the sites at the time used.

This is a relatively full picture but not a complete picture. Why not?

What is preservation bias, and how does it skew our interpretation of these assemblages?
Hint: be sure to read the following important notes.

Important Notes:

• All of the plant remains counted by the paleoethnobotanists are carbonized (charred, burned) because other types of plants were not preserved.
• Think about the process by which food becomes burned. In what context or during what activities do you think the plants were burned? Have you ever accidentally burned something? What were you doing?
• Most of the identifications include the genus and species name (the genus name is capitalized and the species name is lower case). When you see Genusname sp., only the genus of the specimen could be identified. It can be difficult to tell several different but closely related species apart.

Go to https://www.calflora.org and search for “Chenopodium.” Be sure to limit the search county to Inyo and check the “Native to California” box.

How many species (including subspecies) of Chenopodium are there in Inyo county?

“Taxa” is the plural version of taxon, and both are inclusive terms that can be used to refer to families, genuses, and species. For example, if three specimens are identified to the species level, two to a genus, and one to a family, six taxa are represented. There are eleven plant taxa represented in INY-1384 and seven in Bezuapan.

After reviewing each data set, answer the following questions.

Question for INY-1384 and Bezuapan

How many animal taxa does each assemblage have?

Questions for INY-1384

1. What is the most abundant plant taxon? What is the most abundant animal taxon?

2. What environments (mountains, deserts, rivers, lakes, etc.) did the animal resources come from? Are they the same environments as the site or would the occupants have had to travel some distance to hunt them?

3. What environments did the plant resources come from? Are they the same environments as the site or would the occupants have had to travel some distance to gather them?

4. The data set labels some of the faunal remains as “unidentified.” What might make bones unidentifiable?

5. Several Cyperus tubers were found. What is a tuber? (Check Google if you don’t know and be sure to cite the source of your answer.) List one example of an edible tuber.

Questions for Bezuapan

6. What is the most abundant plant taxon? What is the most abundant animal taxon?

7. What environments (mountains, deserts, rivers, lakes, etc.) did the animal resources come from?

8. Are any of the plants familiar to you? Which ones? How do you obtain those plants to eat and how are they produced?

9. How do you think the residents of Bezuapan obtained most of their plant resources? Do you think they had to go far to get them?

10. How do you think the residents of Bezuapan obtained most of their animal resources? Was it in the same way they obtained the plants?

Comparative Questions

11. Plant parts found by paleoethnobotanists are not necessarily the parts of plants that were used by site inhabitants; archaeologists can find only what is preserved. When humans use nicotine (even today), what part of the plant is used?

12. What parts of plants were found at INY-1384?

13. When humans eat avocados, what part of the avocado do they primarily consume? What parts of avocado plants were found at Bezuapan?

14. Gophers of different types were found at INY-1384 and Bezuapan. Do you think that the inhabitants at those sites hunted gophers or did their remains wind up in the archaeological deposits in some other way? How?

15. Some of the plant and animal taxa found in the assemblages were not used for food. List two of the taxa that probably were not eaten.

16. Were any resources found at both INY-1384 and Bezuapan? If so, which ones?

17. Are there differences in how the occupants of INY-1384 and Bezuapan obtained their plant resources? How about their animal resources? Who were the farmers and who are the foragers?

INY-1384 Data Set

Taxon	Common name	Classification	Part	Count	Note
Plants
Achnatherum hymenoides	rice grass	aquatic plant	seed	2
Artemisia tridentata	big sagebrush	valley floor bush	seed	60
Chenopodium sp.	goosefoot	valley floor / disturbance plant	seed (achene)	28	Ever heard of quinoa? Same genus, different species!
Helianthus sp.	sunflower	valley floor / foothill plant	seed (achene)	1
Mentzelia sp.	blazing star	valley floor plant	seed	5
Scirpus sp.	tule	aquatic plant	seed (achene)	5
Eriogonum sp.	wild buckwheat	valley floor / foothill bush	seed (achene)	2
Fabaceae	bean family	?	seed (bean)	50	only identifiable to family level
Nicotiana sp.	nicotine	disturbance plant	seed	12	probably non-food
Pinus monophylla	single-leaf pinyon pine	mountain slope tree	nutshell	38	pine nuts are a staple, seasonal food source
Cyperus esculentus	yellow nutsedge	aquatic plant	tuber	6

Animals			all remains are bones
Catostomidae	sucker family	fish		5	probably Catostomus fumeiventris, Owens sucker
Siphateles bicolor	Owens tui chub	fish		3
unidentified fish		fish		12
Callipepla sp.	Quail	bird		1
Mareca strepera	Gadwall duck	bird		3
unidentified bird		bird		6
Thomomys sp.	pocket gopher	small mammal		2
Lepus californicus	blacktailed jackrabbit	small mammal		18	3 burned bones
Sylvilagus sp.	cottontail rabbit	small mammal		6
Antilocapra americana	pronghorn	large mammal		6	also called pronghorn antelope
Ovis canadensis	big horn sheep	large mammal		2	lives in Sierra Nevada mountains at high altitudes
Odocoileus hemonius	mule deer	large mammal		5	2 burned bones
unidentified large mammal		large mammal		23	6 burned bones

Bezuapan Data Set

Taxon	Common name	Classification	Part	Count	Note
Plants
Zea mays	maize	field crop	kernel	184
Phaseolus vulgaris	common bean	field crop	seed (bean)	3
Phaseolus coccineus	scarlet runner bean	field crop	seed (bean)	24
Persea americana	avocado	tree crop	pit (fragmented)	492
Pouteria sapota	sapote	tree crop	pit (fragmented)	130
Opuntia sp.	prickly pear	other fruits	seed from fruit	1	probably O. fig-indica
Psidium guayana	guava	other fruits	seed from fruit	1
Animals			all remains are bones
Cichlasoma sp.	Mojarra	fish		4
Bufo sp.	toad	amphibian		23
Staurotypus triporcatus	Mexican giant musk turtle	reptile		2
Cairina moschata	Muscovy duck	bird		2
Meleagris gallopavo	Wild turkey	bird		4
Orthogemoys hispidus	Hispid pocket gopher	small mammal		1
Didelphis sp.	opossum	small mammal		4
Dasypus movemcinctus	nine-banded armadillo	small mammal		3
Sciurus sp.	tree squirrel	small mammal		3
Sylvilagus sp.	cottontail rabbit	small mammal		4	1 burned bone
Canis familiaris	domestic dog	medium mammal		18	2 burned bones
Tayassu tajacu	collared peccary	medium mammal		2
Odocoileus virginianus	white-tailed deer	large mammal		10	3 burned bones

Citations

• Basgall, Mark E. and Michael G. Delacorte.
• 2012. Middle Archaic Cultural Adaptations in the Eastern Sierra Nevada: Data Recovery Excavations at INY-1384/H, INY-6249/H, INY-6250, and INY-6251/H. Report on file at Caltrans District 9, Bishop, CA.
• VanDerwarker, Amber M.
• 2006. Farming, Hunting, and Fishing in the Olmec World. University of Texas Press: Austin.