Prey Availability Reflected in Cut Mark Frequencies: An ethnoarchaeological test case from Aché assemblages

Zooarchaeologists often assume that changes in the frequencies of cut marks are a proxy indicator of prey availability. The assumption is that as animals become scarce, people spend more time intensively processing prey and that this is reflected by an increase in the number of cut marks present on bone. In this paper, we test this idea against a series of bone assemblages generated by contemporary Paraguayan Aché foragers in an area with marked prey depression adjacent (or 1 days walk) to long-term residential villages. We compare different measures of cut mark frequencies from a sample of prey bones from temporary camps generated during a 10-day forest trek to procure prey not normally accessible in close proximity to residential villages. We expect cut mark frequencies to intensify in response to variation in prey availability as a function of increasing distances between temporary camps and long-term residential villages.