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Zooarchaeologists have long realized the analytical potential of ungulate mortality data in studies of temporally shifting foraging efficiency. An additional but seldom examined form of evidence from ungulate remains is the morphometry of age-independent body size. Together simple bivariate morphometric and mortality data from ungulate remains reveal shifts through time in harvest pressure and/or environmental carrying capacity. A proposed model of these effects is validated using wildlife biology data from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), an ungulate taxon that is very common in North American archaeological faunas. Several archaeological implications that bear on studies of foraging efficiency in subsistence hunting economies arise from this ordinal-scale model, such as the conditions under which harvest pressure increases or decreases or when carrying capacity rises or declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological studies of temporal changes in human predation strategy using foraging theory tend to focus on the role of overexploitation of important prey resources and resulting resource depression. An alternative use of the prey- choice model framed under foraging theory is to investigate the influence of environmental changes, such as increases in climate stress, on prey availability. Environmental change can be expected to produce many of the same effects on human predation strategy as resource depression. Here analytical techniques typically used to study the effects of over-predation and resource depression caused by humans are used to monitor their response to fluctuations in prey availability related to climate change during the Holocene in Missouri. Data and interpretations presented here add to the growing body of zooarchaeological foraging theory literature implicating environmental change as a critical factor in human diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]