Infrastructure and Subsistence Strategies in the Context of Long Term Land Use

This project investigates the social and economic role of ancient animal hunting traps known as "desert kites" during a time of dramatic changing land use, human migrations, and shifting economies. Located in a hyper-arid, basaltic desert, these structures were built as mass-kill traps for ungulates in the later prehistory of the region. Each chain includes dozens to hundreds of individual traps, spanning tens of kilometers, linked by intricate wall networks that functioned to create one enormous system.

These represent a remarkable ancient infrastructural investment in labor, significant social organization, and the ability to generate subsistence surpluses in a marginal environment. This new study of desert kites, in context, focuses on the economy of this desert infrastructure and the social organization of large-scale prey-manipulation strategies, to offer new insight into subsistence adaptations in marginal environments.

The results from this research have the potential to transform knowledge of human responses and adaptations to arid environments in prehistory.

The research examines human land-use in a critical and understudied period of prehistory in order to document overlooked instances of significant anthropogenic landscape transformation and assesses the potential long-term impact on climate and environment. To address these issues, the investigators integrate remote sensing data, including historic satellite and aerial imagery, modern high resolution satellite imagery, and 3D data from low-elevation drone photography for landscape-scale mapping and analysis of ancient features.

This combination of remote sensing data sources provides time depth for changing landscape conditions in the present, 3D data for topographic reconstructions, and broad-scale coverage across a large survey area. The remote sensing analysis is complemented by intensive excavations of kites and associated structures while the analysis of animal remains and artifacts provide a clear picture of how massive-kill traps were used as a crucial subsistence technology that reflects broad regional cooperation.

By revealing nuanced insights into settlement and land use patterns, herding versus hunting strategies, building traditions, and exchange with different regions, this research begins to demonstrate the network people established beyond well-studied agriculture zones. These new strategies, land use patterns and settlements underscore a vital new social network that has been invisible up until now and will facilitate comparative analyses across the larger arid environmental regions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.