Living off the land: Subsistence and faunal prey choice at the Lovitt (25CH1) Dismal River type site in Southwestern Nebraska

The Dismal River complex refers to the archaeological expression of the ancestral Plains Apachean (Ndee) groups living in the central Great Plains between roughly AD 1400 and 1870. This paper reports the results of the zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal collection from the Lovitt site (25CH1) excavated by Hill and Metcalf in 1939. The site, whose Dismal River component dates between AD 1520 and 1670, produced a moderately sized faunal collection dominated by bison, turtle, beaver, dog, and pronghorn. Based on seasonality and osteometric analyses, bison procurement appears to be organized around episodic hunting of individual bull bison rather than communal hunting targeting cow-calf herds. Hunters at Lovitt seem to have timed their bison hunting episodes to the summer through early winter, a period when bison are in good physical condition and naturally aggregate into larger herds. Bison skeletal part representation patterns suggest small groups of hunters traveled away from the site to procure bison and returned to camp with primarily high-utility skeletal parts. Smaller-bodied game, especially turtles, beavers, and dogs were also likely an important contribution to the diet.