Climate-driven dietary change on the Colorado Plateau, USA and implications for gender-specific foraging patterns

Complementary archaeological and paleoenvironmental datasets from North
Creek Shelter (Colorado Plateau, Utah, USA) are analyzed using the diet
breadth model, revealing human dietary patterns during the early and
middle Holocene. Abundance indices are derived from botanical and faunal
datasets and along with stone tools, are used to test the prediction that
increasing aridity caused the decline of high-return resources. This
prediction appears valid with respect to botanical resources, as
high-ranked plants drop out of the diet after 9800 cal BP and replaced
with low-ranked, small seeds. The prediction is not met, however, with
respect to faunal resources: high-ranked artiodactyls are consistently
abundant in the diet. The effects of climate change on dietary choices are
also examined, finding that increased aridity coincides with greater use
of small seeds and ground stone tools, but not with increases in
low-ranked fauna, such as leporids. The patterns observed from the North
Creek Shelter botanical and faunal datasets may reflect different foraging
strategies between men and women, thus accounting for the discrepancy that
low-ranked plant resources became increasingly abundant in the diet
without a corresponding decrease in abundance of high-ranked artiodactyls.
If so, then archaeological records with similar datasets should be
re-examined with this perspective.