Middle Holocene menus: dietary reconstruction from coprolites at the Connley Caves, Oregon, USA
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Middle Holocene menus: dietary reconstruction from coprolites at the Connley Caves, Oregon, USA Katelyn N. McDonough 1 Received: 29 January 2019 / Accepted: 15 March 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Multiproxy data from coprolites at the Connley Caves in central Oregon provide new evidence for diet, seasonal subsistence strategies, and human health during the middle and late Holocene. Macrobotanical, palynological, and faunal components show that plant taxa from wetland and dryland habitats functioned as dietary staples. Repeated and abundant representation of wetland resources coupled with small dryland seeds provide strong evidence for dietary continuity between ~ 5700 and 3200 calendar years ago. Seasonal availability of represented taxa indicates late summer and early fall habitation. Minimal evidence for parasitic infection and unusual constituents such as cordage raise questions regarding health and cultural behavior. As the first coprolite analysis for this time period in the northern Great Basin, this study contributes unique datasets that complement and clarify the regional understanding of hunter-gatherer settlement-subsistence strategies and food economy. Keywords Paleodietary reconstruction . Coprolites . Middle Holocene . Hunter-gatherer subsistence . Great Basin
The Connley Caves feature prominently in our understanding of human occupation and paleoecology of the northern Great Basin. Situated in a hillside overlooking the most productive marsh in the Fort Rock Basin of central Oregon (Fig. 1), this string of rockshelters was intermittently inhabited by humans for over 12,000 years (Beck et al. 2004; Bedwell 1970; Jenkins et al. 2017). Coprolites (paleofeces) dating between ~ 5700 and 3200 calendar years before present (cal BP) are preserved in large quantities at the mouth of cave 5. As one of the most direct sources of unambiguous dietary information (Bryant 1974a; Heizer and Napton 1969; Reinhard and Bryant 1992), these coprolites provide a unique view of food economies, foraging choices, and health of cave inhabitants throughout two millennia.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00828-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Katelyn N. McDonough [email protected] 1
Center for the Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, 4532-TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4352, USA
Evidence of settlement-subsistence patterns during the middle to late Holocene transition in the northern Great Basin show a trend toward increased sedentism as populations Bmapped on^ to dense patches of lowland resources (Jenkins 1994). Coprolites presented here fall within the Bergen Period (6000 to 3000 cal BP), characterized by decreased mobility, population growth, food caching, and larger groundstone assemblages (Aikens et al. 2011). There is a significant decline in the archaeological record of Great Basin cave and rockshel
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