The Fauna from Quiroste: Insights into Indigenous Foodways, Culture, and Land Modification

Abstract

The CA-SMA-113 archaeofauna suggests that Quiroste Valley people used varied terrestrial and marine foods, generally avoided consuming birds, and maintained more open habitats than typifies the valley's natural climax vegetation. We contextualize habitat-diagnostic rodent taxa from the site with data from a recent live trapping transect only a few kilometers south of Quiroste. California voles, an open country species, were never trapped in closed vegetation but are the second most common identifiable rodent species in the CA-SMA-113 archaeofauna, a divergence that is extremely statistically significant. Based upon the modern live-trapping data, voles should not have been present at all, if Quiroste Valley habitats were unmodified. Their robust presence implies processes favoring grassland maintenance.