No Tunes Chime Amidst the Bones: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Saltpeter Cave (3NW29), an Ozarchaic Bluffshelter in Northwest Arkansas

The Southeastern Ozarks region is a karst limestone environment featuring many sheltered sites, including Saltpeter Cave in Newton County, Arkansas. Early and Middle Archaic components of this site assemblage contain abundant faunal materials that illustrate how Ozarchaic peoples modified their subsistence strategies to accommodate significant climate change that began ~10,000 years ago. I have employed several quantitative techniques, including, density-mediated attrition analysis, diet breadth models, and bone fragmentation patterns to investigate the hunting and trapping practices at this southern Ozarchaic site. I have also employed small mammal representation and correspondence analysis using datasets from Dust Cave, Modoc Rock Shelter, and Little Freeman Cave in Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri respectively to contextualize these practices in a broader landscape. While people living in other regions of the Eastern Woodlands appear to have altered their species selection patterns to cope with these changes, the people occupying Saltpeter Cave retained a selective concentration on forested patches which they quarried for game in what must have been a diverse mosaic landscape between 10,000 and 4,000 cal BP.