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Six Bone Processing and Subsistence Stress in Late Prehistoric South Texas Zackary I. Gilmore On the basis of diet breadth theory, archaeologists often use the intensity of marginal food exploitation to measure the level of subsistence stress experienced by prehistoric peoples. The frequent occurrence of subsistence stress among Toyah phase groups inhabiting the south Texas plains can be investigated using ecological , ethnohistorical, and bioarchaeological evidence. This chapter examines the potential of marginal bone fat exploitation as an archaeological indicator of Toyah phase subsistence stress using evidence from site 41Sp220, a lateToyah site in south Texas. I argue that although economic intensification, in the form of expanded dietary breadth, may have been a common means of risk avoidance among Toyah groups, more attention should be paid to the social environments and historical circumstances in which the Toyah people made subsistence decisions. Substantial seasonal variation in available sources of nutrition is widespread among hunter-gatherer economies (Jenike 2001:9).This variation is often a product of extreme or unpredictable environmental conditions and often results in periodic increases in subsistence-related stress (Low 1990). As a result, virtually all ethnographically recorded hunter-gatherer groups have developed effective strategies to both avoid and cope with instances of food shortage. It is unlikely that Toyah groups inhabiting the highly variable Late Prehistoric environment of the Gulf Coast Coastal Prairies and Marshes would have been an exception. Multiple lines of evidence seem to confirm that dietary stress was a common concern for Toyah hunter-gatherers. In this chapter, I review evidence for subsistence stress among Late Prehistoric groups on the southern margin of the Classic Toyah area, which extends across most of the central and south Texas portions of the Southern Plains. I then examine the role of marginal bone fat exploitation in stress avoidance using zooarchaeological data from site 41Sp220, a Toyah 112 gilmore phase campsite in San Patricio County. The results of this study suggest that the site’s animal bone fragmentation patterns, which could easily be interpreted as evidence of intensive human processing activities, are actually largely the result of postdepositional taphonomic processes. Studies of bone-processing activities have the potential to contribute a great deal to knowledge of the state of Toyah subsistence economies as long as relevant social and historical factors are also taken into account. South Texas Coastal Prairies and Marshes: A Stressful Environment? The Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes ecosystem is located within Blair’s (1950) Tamaulipan biotic province, a region that includes essentially all of south Texas below the Guadalupe River along with a significant tract of extreme northeastern Mexico (see figs. 1.3c and 1.4).The climate in this region is characterized as semiarid and generally entails long, hot summers and relatively short, mild winters. For example, the modern average high temperature in the summer in the south Texas county of San Patricio is 96° F, and the average low temperature in the winter is 46° F (Guckian and Garcia 1979:82). Average annual rainfall in San Patricio County is 74.4 cm and varies considerably between seasons. More than 60 percent of total precipitation usually falls between the months of March and September, meaning that on average the region sees only 21.6 cm (8.5 inches) of rain during the five-month period between November and March (Guckian and Garcia 1979:Table 1).Total rainfall is also exceedingly unpredictable from year toyear. For neighboring Jim Wells County, Black (1986:22) reports that major droughts lasting for more than one year occur on average once every twenty years, and shorter droughts lasting up to a yearoccuronce every ten years. In addition, there are periods of months with little or no rain almost every year. Because of moisture deficiencies and modern cattle grazing, much of the Tamaulipan province is now largely dominated by thornbrush chaparral. Primary species include mesquite (Prosopis juliflora), various species of acacia and mimosa, granjeno (Celtis pallida), lignum vitae (Porliera angustifolia), cenizo (Leucophyllum texanum), white brush (Aloysia texana), and prickly pear (Opuntia leptocaulis) (Blair 1950:103). Prior to the mid-1800s, however, the distribution of thornbrush species was much more restricted (Johnston 1963), and much of the region in question was likely relatively productive grassland. Maintenance of prehistoric grassland in south Texas was probably aided by the native tradition of prairie burning, thought to have been used by Native American groups to rejuvenate plant growth and thereby increase bison and deer numbers (Albert 1999; Drolet 2005). Today, as in the past, the south...

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