Thoughts about hunting: Some things we know and some things we don't know

This paper explores a number of underappreciated "complexities" in the interpretation of the taxonomic composition, sex ratios, and mortality profiles of archaeological faunal assemblages. Some of these complexities arise from the behavior of the animals themselves. For example, when hunters "disturb" animals such as bison in order to maneuver them toward a trap or ambush, the animals rearrange themselves spatially by age and sex in such a way that the subset of animals actually killed may not be a random sample of the living population. Other complexities arise from the fact that some animals are obligate drinkers, while others are not, making the former much more vulnerable to ambush. Hence, for hunters who rely heavily on an ambush strategy, the taxonomic composition of the kill assemblage will be biased toward obligate drinkers regardless of their actual numbers on the landscape. There are also a host of cutural factors that may affect what gets hunted, when hunting takes place, and the way these events are conducted. For example, hunts may occur primarily for prestige, as part of boys' puberty and initiation rites, as payment of bride price or bride service, in the context of establishing alliances or restoring peaceful relations between competing groups, as part of community-wide calendrical or episodic rituals, and for many other socially-grounded reasons. Most of these cultural factors are not easily approached using models drawn from behavioral ecology and, as a consequence, remain understudied by zooarchaeologists. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.