The Analysis of Diversity in Archaeological Faunal Assemblages: Complexity and Subsistence Strategies in the Southeast during the Middle Woodland Period

Abstract

Middle Woodland archaeological sites along the Gulf Coast of Florida exhibit greater cultural complexity earlier than contemporaneous sites along the Atlantic Coast of Georgia. This greater complexity is hypothesized to ultimately be the result of more advanced fishing technologies having been employed in the Apalachee Bay area of Florida than in the other study areas. Prey species diversity is one aspect of site faunal assemblages that is affected by such intensification of subsistence practices. Faunal data from Middle Woodland period sites in the Apalachee Bay area of Florida, the Pensacola Bay area of Florida, and the King's Bay area of Georgia were analyzed in this study. Data from a late prehistoric site in eastern North Carolina were included in the analysis for comparative purposes. It was predicted that faunal assemblages from Swift Creek sites in the Apalachee Bay area will reflect greater regularity in the number of species taken as well as a relatively even number of individuals per species. The method for measuring diversity proposed in this article estimated the population richness from which the samples of interest were drawn by fitting a limited growth model to the sample data and using the limit of the model as an estimate of the population richness. The goodness of fit of the model, interpreted as a measure of the regularity in subsistence practices, was evaluated with a χ 2test. Evenness was estimated graphically. Application of the methods to the faunal samples revealed that richness was equal for nearly all groups. The Georgia Atlantic coast group data indicated great irregularity in the number of species exploited and low evenness. Evenness was highest in the Apalachee Bay group and in the Late Woodland group. These results suggested that the shared sedentariness, higher population densities, and practice of food storage made possible by the advanced fishing technologies of both groups explains the higher evennesses of the vertebrate taxa in the samples.