The Little Ice Age and Neutral Faunal Assemblages - Ontario ...

CAMPBELL & CAMPBELL: LITTLE ICE AGE 21FIGURE 7Variation in the percentages of Northern and Southern taxafollow a strictly linear relationship with time, andother factors affect faunal percentages includingsite location, site use, warfare, recovery bias, etc.These factors have not been modelled in this paper.We are not attempting to show that faunal use variesonly with time, but that time changes have significantexplanatory value for faunal assemblages.When factors other than time which affect the assemblagesare taken into consideration, the 25% ofthe variation accounted for by time becomes significantand requires explanation. The values of rand r ² for various species and groups of species arepresented in Table 2.If these changes were due to a shift in animalpopulations as a result of climatic deterioration, wemight expect to see a change in the frequency oftaxa which are currently distributed mostly to thenorth of the area under consideration and thosedistributed mainly to the south. Table 3 lists thosemammalian taxa which are near the limit of theirrange in southern Ontario. Fig. 7 and Table 2 showthat there are no such significant changes.If it was not the availability of the different mammaliantaxa that changed, then it may have beenhunting practices that changed. In order to determinewhat may have prompted such a change, wemust examine in more detail, from a culturalperspective, what animals were being taken beforeand after AD 1450. Animals will be hunted forfood, ritual, raw materials, or pest control. Whilethe Huron traded beaver pelts with Europeans(Wright 1963), Fig. 8 and Table 2 show that therewas no change with time in the percentage ofanimals hunted for their fur (beaver, muskrat, mink,racoon, otter, marten, chipmunk, fisher, weasel, andgrey squirrel, which the Neutral nation is knownethnographically to have traded to other Indians[Wright 1963]). The amount of grey squirrel wasstable through time. Had the hunting practices beeninfluenced by European trade, perhaps through theHurons, we would expect to find an increase inbeaver remains through to the mid-1600s. Fig. 9and Table 2 show that this is not the case.Large animals will usually be hunted for food;Fig. 10 and Table 2 show an increase after AD 1450in the frequency of mammals having an averageweight greater than 4 kg (beaver, dog, bear, racoon,otter, felids, cervids, and moose). This suggests thatlarge animals became more important in the Neutral