RESULTSĭental wear patterns suggest an age at death of 25 to 30 years ( 32– 35). Toward resolving the question of gendered big-game hunting practices among early hunter-gatherer populations in the Americas, we report the discovery of two Early Holocene hunter-gatherer burials in association with big-game hunting paraphernalia and place these findings in the context of Early Holocene and Late Pleistocene burial practices throughout the Americas. On the other hand, ethnographically informed models of gendered subsistence labor remain plausible as quantitative phenomena or given the multiple pathways by which objects can come to be spuriously associated in the archeological record ( 27). ” On the one hand, such reluctance may reflect a degree of contemporary gender bias ( 20) or ethnographic bias ( 26). However, if the artifact had been used as a knife or scraper, typically women’s tools, then its inclusion with the burial is a more consistent association.” Nelson ( 24) challenged a DNA-based sex determination at Toca dos Coqueiros ( 25) partially on the grounds that “.he presence of inferred funerary offerings in the form of chipped stone points and other tools and flakes appear to support.
( 23) grappled, “Since the burial has been determined to be a female, the inclusion of a projectile point preform has been difficult to explain. Concerning the Paleoindian Gordon Creek burial, Breternitz et al. This hypothesis is consistent with high population growth rates among early hunter-gatherer populations ( 19).ĭespite such theoretical considerations, some scholars have been reluctant to ascribe hunting functionality to tools associated with female burials ( 20– 22). Last, the residentially mobile lifestyle entailed by big-game specialization is quite conducive to human reproduction and, thus, female hunting-contrary to previous thinking-because it reduces net movement relative to central-place foraging strategies ( 18). Furthermore, peak proficiency in atlatl use can be achieved at a young age, potentially before females reach reproductive age, obviating a sex-biased technological constraint that would later intensify with bow-and-arrow technology ( 17). Pooling labor and sharing meat are necessary to mitigate risks associated with the atlatl’s low accuracy and long reloading times ( 16).
Moreover, the primary hunting technology of the time-the atlatl or spear thrower-would have encouraged broad participation in big-game hunting. Communal hunting, which also appears to have deep evolutionary roots ( 15), would have encouraged contributions from females, males, and children whether in driving or dispatching large animals.
Alloparenting, which appears to have deep evolutionary roots in the human species ( 14), would have freed women of child care demands, allowing them to hunt. Early subsistence economies that emphasized big game would have encouraged participation from all able individuals. However, a number of scholars have theorized that such division of labor would have been less pronounced, altogether absent, or structurally different among our early hunter-gatherer ancestors ( 5– 13). Such observations would seem to suggest that this gendered behavioral pattern is an ancestral one, ostensibly stemming from life history traits related to pregnancy and child care, which constrain female subsistence opportunities ( 3, 4). Big-game hunting is an overwhelmingly male-biased behavior among recent hunter-gatherer societies ( 1, 2).
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