Meat food preferences during the Late Archaic Period at Puerto Marqués, Guerrero, Mexico

Abstract

We investigate animal food preferences of the Ostiones people, the occupants of the coastal site of Puerto Marqués, one of the few Late Archaic Period sites located along the Pacific coast of Mexico (4600 and 2000 cal BCE). Our data are based upon recovered faunal remains at the site, which consist of vertebrate bones and molluskan shells identified to the lowest possible taxon. Habitat information for the animals allows a reconstruction of the Ostiones people's predator-prey relationship to regional animal populations. Estimated meat weight calculations provide information about the relative importance of food sources, at least in terms of animal remains at the site. In general, shellfish meat dominates meat from vertebrates and the principal targeted mollusks are estuarine. Bony fish are the most important contributor to vertebrate meat and they are mainly marine species. We compare these data to the only other known Late Archaic Period coastal assemblages on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico in order to formulate a preliminary model of people's coastal adaptation during this interval.

Keywords:

• Faunal food preferences
• Late Archaic archaeofauna
• meat weight
• south Pacific coastal Mexico

Acknowledgments

We thank Arqlgo. Cuautémoc Reyes Alvarez (Centro Regional de Guerrero, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) for his knowledge of the region and facilitating our research; Dr. Rubén Manzanilla López for generously sharing insights about the prehistory of Puerto Marqués; and Lic. Martha E. Cabrera Guerrero for her enthusiasm and environmental and archaeological knowledge of the region. Ing. Paul Rangel Merkley kindly provided access to the Puerto Marqués site, whereas Ing. Victor Hugo Martínez and Ing. Francisco Rodríguez from Desarrollo Integral de Ingenería SAdeCV (DEIN) aided the project in innumerable ways. A very special thanks to our able archaeology field crew: Cassandra Albush, Natalia Martínez Tagueña, Juan Jorge Morales, Amparo Robles Salmerón, Cameron M. Walker and Nathan Wilson.

We are indebted to Henry Chaney and Paul Valentich-Scott for their expert identifications of shells. Finally, our immense gratitude to John E. Clark, former director of the New World Archaeological Foundation, Brigham Young University, for lending us field vehicles, field equipment, and work space for post fieldwork analyses. Keith W. Kintigh and the late Phillip L. Walker provided valuable advice about estimating meat weight from bones and shells. Kenneth Gobalet reviewed an earlier version of this manuscript and provided helpful comments and advice. Three anonymous reviewers made valuable suggestions that illuminated the error of our ways.

Notes

1 These are straight-line measurements.

2 Kennett supervised excavations at the La Zanja site, another archaeological site that Brush investigated.

3 The ratio data we obtained for A. tuberculosa were not used in the study.

4 The shellmounds are Campón, Tlacuachero, and Zapotillo.

5 For Guerrero these are the combined data for all field-screened Late Archaic Period deposits at Puerto Marqués.

6 It is costlier to catch small fish compared to large fish in that fine-mesh fishing nets need more material to weave and take more time compared to large-mesh nets.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant IBCS-02112215 and carried out with permission from the Consejo de Arqueología, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico.