Subsistence Flashcards
(32 cards)
What is subsistence?
The activities and materials that people use to obtain food - strategies to acquire calorific resources for survival.
Why is subsistence considered a major component of the economy in arc studies?
It includes essential practices such as hunting, gathering, and farming/agriculture.
What does it mean to have an economy of farming?
It means having a subsistence strategy that relies on farming, which is interchangeable with subsistence of farming.
What is hunting and gathering?
A subsistence strategy reliant on wild animals and wild plants, typically requiring lower investment.
What are immediate returns in hunting and gathering?
A direct result of labor.
What evidence is used for hunting?
Species representation, body part representation, and mortality profiles.
What do mortality profiles indicate?
They show how old the animal was at the time of death.
What is catastrophic mortality?
It reflects age in natural populations and death by mass mortality events.
What is attritional mortality?
It shows predominance of young and old individuals.
What is an example of a tool used in hunting?
Fish hooks, which are the oldest in the world (23kya - Okinawa).
How is isotope analysis used in archaeology?
To reconstruct diets using stable isotope analysis for diet.
What do C and N isotopes in collagen signify?
They act as signatures for food eaten during the formation of teeth and bones.
How often is the human skeleton remodeled?
Every 10 years.
What is a trophic level?
Each step in the food chain where animals eat plants or other animals.
How do plants obtain nitrogen and carbon?
Plants obtain N from the soil and C from CO2 in photosynthesis.
What does the ratio of 13C to 12C represent?
Delta 13C.
What are the delta 13C values for different plant types?
C3 plants: -26.5%, C4 plants: -12.5%, CAM plants: falls between C3 and C4.
What is the delta 15N ratio?
The ratio of 15N to 14N, which comes from dietary protein.
What does delta 15N indicate?
It appears in amino acids that are in collagen and is suitable to environmental factors.
How does delta 15N change with trophic levels?
Every step up the food chain increases the ratio by 3%.
What is the significance of measuring delta 15N in archaeology?
It compares base delta 15N for herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores at the same site and time.
What is agriculture?
The intentional propagation of food by humans.
What is domestication?
The biological process that changes the genetic makeup and morphology of a plant or animal, resulting in a new species.
What results from the isolation of domesticated species?
It is a result of human intervention, whether intentional or unintentional.
