Following white-tailed deer to the hilltop: A zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of deer hunting at Cerro Mangote, a Late Preceramic (7800-4600 cal yr BP) site in central Pacific Panama

Abstract

The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus Zimmermann 1780) was an apex species for Precolumbian subsistence in the anthropogenic savannas and tropical dry forests bordering Parita Bay on the central Pacific coast of Panama. This paper focusses on Late Preceramic Cerro Mangote, a multi-component site whose domestic occupation corresponds to a maximum time-period of 7900 and 4600 cal BP. At this time, this site's inhabitants developed mixed subsistence strategies including farming and hunting, along with coastal fishing and invertebrate collection. Communities across the seasonally dry and windy plains and foothills of the central Pacific practiced swidden agriculture – a variety of plant food production that would have favored “garden hunting” (sensu Linares 1976), which, in this region, most likely involved white-tailed deer because of this species' acknowledged attraction to cultivated plots. Zooarchaeological and taphonomic analyses of white-tailed deer bone, tooth and antler samples from Cerro Mangote are based on two sequential Late Preceramic occupation layers. Results reveal that the same strategies for white-tailed deer hunting and for the treatment of their carcasses continued without change throughout the Late Preceramic period at Cerro Mangote.