Local Dietary Trends and Inter-site Connections in the Ancestral Pueblo Goodman Point Community, Southwestern Colorado

The Ancestral Pueblo people had some of the largest pre-colonization population densities in the southwestern United States. Over time, increasing population density lead to intense land use practices, in the context of several climatic shifts. These effects altered the way the Ancestral Pueblo people subsisted on the landscape and eventually lead to the depopulation of the Four Corners region (circa A.D. 1300). Several recently excavated archaeological sites within the Goodman Point Community, spanning a long temporal occupation (A.D. 775-1280), contain thousands of animal remains. We examine the local spatiotemporal variability in faunal remains through the use of quantitative approaches (including nestedness and prey choice indices) and investigate if these local dietary patterns mirror larger regional trends. The close spatial proximity and long temporal resolution of these newly excavated sites allows us to increase our understanding of local dietary stress and inter-site connectivity.