Late Archaic Bison Hunters in Northern Colorado: 1997-1999 Excavations at the Kaplan-Hoover Bison Bonebed (5LR3953)

An inter-site comparison of enamel hypoplasia in bison: implications for paleoecology and modeling Late Plains Archaic subsistence

“…Modifications due to housing developments and gravel quarrying make characteristics of the paleo-landscape difficult to infer; however, like Buffalo Creek, Kaplan-Hoover is located within an area conducive to the movements of large migratory populations of bison. The site was discovered in 1997, and excavation and analysis are currently ongoing under the direction of the Department of Anthropology, Colorado State University [59]. KaplanHoover also represents an arroyo trap into which animals were herded and subsequently dispatched.…”

“…Based on crania, the site contains a minimum of 44 animals. However, because the site is currently under excavation, this number should be viewed as a gross underestimate; there may be as many as 200 animals present [59]. Dental evidence suggests the site represents a single-kill event that occurred in late summer/early fall.…”

“…The season of death suggests it was designed to meet nutritional needs of a large group or groups well into the winter months. Discovery of at least two typologically distinct projectile points made from different raw materials [59] may indicate the involvement of different cultural groups in the kill event. Similar to Buffalo Creek, it appears that many carcass portions were not processed for meat and marrow at Kaplan-Hoover [59, p. 138], although it is not clear if this was related to physical condition of the adult cow and bull herd or other factors.…”

The use of stable isotope ratio analysis to distinguish multiple prey kill events from mass kill events

“…Unfortunately, it is difficult to use this evidence to investigate questions of optimal subsistence strategy and social aggregation because it is often uncertain whether particular archaeological assemblages resulted from mass kill events or accumulations of many kill episodes. Archaeologists confronted with substantial prehistoric bonebeds currently use a number of criteria for assessing whether a particular archaeological faunal assemblage is the result of a single mass kill or the accumulation of multiple kill events (e.g., Davis et al, 2000;Frison, 2000;Hill, 2002;Todd et al, 1992Todd et al, , 2001Widga, 2004). Lubinski (1997Lubinski ( : 124e206, 2000 provides a detailed discussion of many of these criteria as they relate to identification of a pronghorn mass kill.…”

The blessing of a great flood: differentiation of mortality patterns in the large mammal record of the Lower Pleistocene fluvial site of Untermassfeld (Germany) and its relevance for the interpretation of faunal assemblages from archaeological sites

“…Mortality events caused by natural catastrophes, like volcanic or gas eruptions, fire, droughts or epidemic disease could produce such a pattern [24,56,78,91]. In archaeological contexts catastrophic mortality can imply hunting tactics such as communal driving or trapping [86].…”