My dissertation research developed a series of predictions for identifying whether certain kinds of animals were targeted by prehistoric hunters for reasons extending beyond simple dietary needs. This largely stems from recent ethnographic research on “costly signaling” that attempts to explain why large game are frequently hunted even when smaller game are more reliable, accessible, and sometimes provide higher caloric returns.

Basically, the theory is that individuals who are of higher underlying quality have a higher capacity to assume the costs (“handicaps”) of signaling their quality. Observers of the signal benefit by correctly reading the signal and responding accordingly. Large game hunters may be signaling their capacity to provide their families with more predictable resources at a later time (such as when their spouses have young children), and thus women may benefit by selecting good hunters as their mates.

In a nutshell, I predicted that animals that become locally more rare should have increasing value as a costly signal. Animals with high signaling value should be shared widely among a community. Thus, as some animals become more rare on the landscape through time, there should be a corresponding change in sharing.

Here I present a portion of the results that came out of this research. In particular, I focus on the changes in animal resource use through time at Five Finger Ridge, a Fremont site located in central Utah.