Speaker: Anna Marie Prentiss
Dietary change in traditional fishing and foraging societies has been examined from standpoints of resource accessibility, population demands, and social needs. Typically, scholars focus on singular models to explain diet choice including those from optimal foraging theory, socio-ecology, and political ecology. It is far less common that we are able to evaluate multiple factors affecting shifting diets and associated cooking procedures within a singular archaeological context. In this talk, I develop data from the contents of deep pits filled with kitchen refuse from the 15 stratified anthropogenic floors of Housepit 54, Bridge River Site (K’etxelknaz), British Columbia. I distinguish refuse pits from sequentially re-used cache pits drawing on sediment micromorphology, isotopes, and general pit contents. Then, focusing on the refuse-filled pits, I develop insights into kitchen activities by examining variation in faunal and floral remains. Temporal change in kitchen regimes is compared to house and village-wide socio-demographic trends to assess alternative explanatory models. Results implicate the effects of variation in prey populations as related to climate and foraging pressures.