From optimality to prestige: Investigating human-animal interactions at Late Mesolithic Hoge Vaart-A27 (Almere, the Netherlands) using a Prey Choice Model

This dataset is from my Research Master's Thesis from Groningen University. 

The dataset includes;

The CSV data necessary to recreate all models and graphs from the thesis

The R.Script with all codes

Used packages and programming language: 

Kassambara, A. (2023). ggpubr: ‘ggplot2’ Based Publication Ready Plots (R package version 0.6.0) [R; Rstudio]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. .

Mei, W., Yu, G., & Greenwell, B. M. (2022). ggtrendline: Add Trendline and Confidence Interval to ‘ggplot’ (R package version 1.0.3) [R; Rstudio]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggtrendline

Pedersen, T. L. (2024). patchwork: The Composer of Plots (R package version 1.2.0) [R; RStudio]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=patchwork

R Core Team. (2022). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (R version 4.2.1) [R; RStudio]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/

Sievert, C. (2020). Interactive web-based data visualization with R, plotly, and shiny. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Wickham, H. (2016). ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. Springer-Verlag New York. https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org

Wickham, H., Averick, M., Bryan, J., Chang, W., McGowan, L., François, R., Grolemund, G., Hayes, A., Henry, L., Hester, J., Kuhn, M., Pedersen, T., Miller, E., Bache, S., Müller, K., Ooms, J., Robinson, D., Seidel, D., Spinu, V., … Yutani, H. (2019). Welcome to the Tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686

Abstract

The research of the faunal assemblage from Hoge Vaart-A27 (Almere, the Netherlands) provides a new perspective on investigating the connections between foraging strategies and socio-cultural dynamics of the Late Mesolithic and Early Swifterbant communities in Northwest Europe. The significance of this topic lies in its potential to help elucidate the broader socio-cultural aspects of foraging and human-animal interactions during this period. Despite extensive research, there remains a gap in comprehending how prestige influenced prey selection alongside optimal foraging strategies. The study aims to address this gap by employing zooarchaeological methods combined with prey choice modelling to investigate prey selection complexities in Flevoland’s transitioning cultural and physical landscape. The methods include analyses of species abundance and detailed examination of red deer, horse, aurochs and wild boar. The key findings reveal that while (optimal) foraging strategies were practised at Hoge Vaart-A27, they were significantly influenced by motivations such as prestige. The results contribute significantly to research by offering a glimpse into how Northwest European foragers could have perceived and interacted with big game beyond subsistence. 

Keywords human-animal relationships, prestige, profitability, prey choice, Swifterbant Culture, optimal foraging theory, costly signalling theory