Younger Dryas and early Holocene subsistence in the northern Great Basin: multiproxy analysis of coprolites from the Pai
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Younger Dryas and early Holocene subsistence in the northern Great Basin: multiproxy analysis of coprolites from the Paisley Caves, Oregon, USA John C. Blong 1
&
Martin E. Adams 2 & Gabriel Sanchez 3 & Dennis L. Jenkins 4 & Ian D. Bull 5 & Lisa-Marie Shillito 1
Received: 22 November 2019 / Accepted: 14 July 2020 / Published online: 28 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Younger Dryas and early Holocene Western Stemmed Tradition occupants of the northern Great Basin appear to have practiced a broad-based subsistence strategy including the consumption of a wide variety of small animal and plant resources. However, much of our evidence for human diet and land use during this period comes from dry cave and rockshelter sites where it can be challenging to distinguish plant and small animal remains deposited as a result of human versus nonhuman activity. This study presents new direct evidence for Younger Dryas and early Holocene human diet in the northern Great Basin through multiproxy analysis of nine human coprolites from the Paisley Caves, Oregon, USA. The evidence indicates that Western Stemmed Tradition occupants consumed plants, small mammals, fish, and insects, including direct evidence for consumption of whole rodents and several types of beetle. Occupation of the caves occurred during the summer and fall by individuals foraging on wetland, sagebrush grassland, and riparian ecological landscapes suggesting geographical and seasonal variability in land-use patterns during the Younger Dryas and early Holocene periods. This research suggests that Western Stemmed Tradition settlement patterns were seasonally centered on productive valley bottom lakes and wetlands but also included forays to a variety of ecological landscapes. The results highlight the importance of plant and small animal resources in the human diet during the terminal Pleistocene settlement of North America and contribute to debates about the process of the peopling of the Americas. Keywords Western Stemmed Tradition . Hunter-gatherer diet . Younger Dryas . Great Basin . Coprolite
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Coprolite Research: Archaeological and Paleoenvironmental Potentials Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01160-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * John C. Blong [email protected] 1
School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
2
Paleoinsect Research, Clatskanie, OR, USA
3
Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
4
Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
5
Organic Geochemistry Unit, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Introduction The Great Basin of North America offers informative case studies of regional hunter-gatherer subsistence and landuse adaptations during the first several millennia of human occupation of the Americas. Great
