Long Term Interactions of People and Animals in the Mimbres Region of Southwest New Mexico, AD 200-1450

Understanding how people maintain long-term access to animals for food and other uses is important in the context of archaeology and may also have implications for contemporary societies’ access to animal resources.  This study examines the long-term record of human population and settlement patterns, land use, and animal remains in archaeological sites in the Mimbres area.  This region has a well-documented sequence of alternately dispersed and aggregated human settlements.  Over time, increasing population aggregation and sedentism contributed to altered environments around some villages, and access to some resources became more difficult.  Other sites show markedly greater access to certain desirable taxa due to such factors as location and population history.  This study brings together a large dataset of published and unpublished analyses to examine long-term trends in human use of animals, including the resilience of different taxa to human hunting and anthropogenic landscape change.