Pests in the Garden: Testing the Garden-Hunting Model at the Rutherford-Kizer Site, Sumner County, Tennessee

Garden hunting as a prehistoric subsistence strategy has been studied in the American Tropics and the American Southwest, and as a modern strategy in the Peruvian Amazon. The concept of garden hunting is centered on the idea that as human groups focus more time on agriculture-related activities, they have less time to spend on hunting. This case study is the first time the garden-hunting model has been tested with data from the Mississippian period in the South-eastern United States. We build on previously published primary zooarchaeological data from the Rutherford-Kizer site, located in Middle Tennessee, to test the garden-hunting model of animal exploitation. Our analysis indicates the Rutherford-Kizer site residents practiced a selective hunting strategy that targeted terrestrial animals that thrive in disturbed habitats, such as cultivated fields.