Overhunting in Prehistoric California

I want to thank Chas Clifton at Natureblog for reminding me of this story with his post. Jack Broughton, an archaeologist at the University of Utah, has conducted a detailed analysis of faunal remains from the Emeryville Shellmound. This was a significant prehistoric site in the San Francisco Bay area. The turn of the century photograph above shows the thick cultural deposit being scooped out with a steam shovel. Luckily archaeologists got to excavate a large sample before the site was destroyed.

Broughton's recent study of bird remains tells the story that the prehistoric Indians hunted many species to the brink of extinction. This is a companion piece to his study of mammal remains published here, that shows they did much the same thing with deer in that area. As Chas points out, it's one more nail in the coffin of the myth of Native Americans living in harmony with nature.

It also points up the fact, documented in many other regions by Charles Mann in 1491, that the large populations of game and fish reported by European explorers were a result of Indian demographic crash due to disease. Animal populations boomed when hunting pressure from Indians was removed. Our popular and scientific perception of what American "Wilderness" is like is hopelessly skewed as a result.

UPDATE
It just occurred to me to mention that the recorder of the Emeryville Shellmound and one of its early excavators was Nels C. Nelson (1875-1964). Nelson was a Danish immigrant educated at the University of California - Berkley and was a pioneering scientific archaeologist in California and the Southwest. I have always had a special affection for Nelson. First as he worked near Mesa Verde National Park. I remember seeing his monogram (NCN) scratched into the wall of a cliff dwelling (right below Richard Wetherill's autograph) in Mancos Canyon where I did my thesis research. Also, Nelson was the archaeologist who accompanied Roy Chapman Andrews on his Gobi Desert expedition of 1925. The juvenile books that Andrews wrote on that expedition and other topics were a tremendous influence on me as a boy. That has always biased me towards Nelson. The recent biography of Andrews, Dragon Hunter, was a joy for me on that score.