Visualizing Archaeozoological Evidence of Hunting Traditions on the Northwest Coast of North America

Graphical representations of assemblage data (maps, figures, & tables) are a fundamental medium for disciplinary and interdisciplinary communication but the conventional focus on single-sites and complex statistical analyses often occurs in the absence of exploratory investigations of broad regional and spatial patterning. The increasing sophistication and availability of map-based graphical analyses offers robust visualization tools for considering large multi-site datasets at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. This poster illustrates such an approach by documenting spatial patterning of mammalian assemblage data from 50 coastal sites in southern British Columbia spanning the past 8,000 years. Focusing on percentages of marine and terrestrial taxa, we note striking (and previously unidentified) regionally consistent patterns of hunting activity with continuity over long periods indicating regionally specialized hunting traditions. We posit that this simple exploratory approach can provide significant insight into regional historical phenomena at increasingly broad scales and localities.