Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1999

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Anthropology

Major Professor

Walter E. Klippel

Committee Members

Paul W. Parmalee, James Michael Elam

Abstract

Whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) was one of the prevalent food resources of human beings in both prehistoric and early historic North America (Smith 1975). This paper shall explore deer selection by prehistoric hunters though analysis of deer remains from Toqua (40MR6). Toqua is a multicomponent site spanning from the late Mississippian (AD 1200-1600) through the historic Overhill Cherokee Period (AD1600-1800) in Tennessee (Polhemus 1987: 1246). Previous work done by Bogan (1980), demonstrated a status related distribution not only between species but also within species at this site. This is typified by the presence of axial portions of whitetail deer that were clustered around high status areas such as mounds and courtyards while apendicular portions tended to cluster near single dwellings. Findings indicate that there was a culturally imposed biased distribution of deer parts across the site. Given this, there may have also been cultural factors involved in the selection process based on the size or sex of the deer. Traditional methods of sexing deer remains relied on the presence or absence of antlers or the pubis, however, these elements seldom survive intact in the archaeological record. Because of this fact, two nontraditional elements for estimating the sex and weight for North American whitetail deer were employed: the first cervical vertebra (atlas) and the distal humerus. While these elements seem unlikely candidates for estimating sex and weight, they have been successfully employed in Europe with many species.

The first requirement to properly carry out this study was the metric evaluation of skeletal elements from a sample of modem whitetail deer of known sex and weight. Both simple and multiple regression clearly demonstrate a linear relationship of these element's size to live weight (R squared values of .80). Statistical logistics allowed for the accurate estimation of sex upwards of 70% of the time. Based on the favorable control sample results, this method was applied to analyze the deer remains from Toqua. The archaeological data indicates that there was a preference for large male deer by prehistoric peoples. Furthermore, there was also a trend for even larger deer being taken in the historic periods.

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