Large mammal relative abundance in Pithouse and Pueblo period archaeofaunas from southwestern New Mexico: Resource depression among the Mimbres-Mogollon?

Archaeologists working in western North America have recently demonstrated temporal declines in the relative abundances of large mammals in archaeofau nal assemblages and have argued that these declines indicate vc resource de pression, or reductions in the prey capture rates of prehistoric human hunt ers resulting from increases in harvest pressure. In the Mimbres-Mogollon r egion of southwestern New Mexico, evidence for resource depression has been controversial. Here, I employ a larger number of assemblages from this are a than has been considered previously and show that large mammals are signi ficantly more abundant at sites located in more mesic, wooded habitats. By taking this spatial patterning into account and by employing a model from f oraging theory which indicates that temporal increases in large mammal rela tive abundance might also result from local resource depression in certain situations, I show that sites with samples large enough to produce statisti cally significant results do show temporal trends in large mammal relative abundance that are consistent with the hypothesis that they are due to chan ging intensities of human harvest pressure. This research has important imp lications for our understanding of prehistoric human impacts on biotic comm unities and may help to explain the increased reliance on agriculture that developed in the Mimbres-Mogollon region during the Pithouse and Pueblo tim e periods. (C) 2000 Academic Press.