Estimating age and season of death of pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana Ord) by means of tooth eruption and wear

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Anthropology and Museum Studies

Publication Date

5-25-2001

Abstract

Age and season of death information for prey animals at archaeological sites can address issues such as season of site occupation and prey hunting or harvesting strategies. Unfortunately, adequate reference information for estimating age and season is lacking for many wild species, including pronghorn antelope. To address this problem, new methods of scoring tooth eruption and wear have been developed and have been applied to a sample of over 500 pronghorn mandibles to obtain improved eruption and wear schedules. One implication of this study is that ‘age class discreteness’ is an unreliable method for demonstrating mass mortality of prey. This study provides a much larger comparative sample than previously available, although larger known‐age mandible samples are still needed for pronghorn and many other wild species.

Comments

This article was originally published in International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

International Journal of Osteoarchaeology

Rights

Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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