Isotopic evidence for non-local elk hunting by the Noble-Wieting community

The Noble-Wieting cultural site (11ML24) is a 14th century CE village in Illinois notable for its mix of Langford tradition and Mississippian-style ceramics. The site is situated in a “frontier” location, quite distant from known Langford and Mississippian villages. Notably, Noble-Wieting has a remarkably high ratio of elk, Cervus canadensis, to white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, at roughly 1:5 by NISP and 1:2 by MNI. The abundance of elk suggests a possible ecological explanation for the site’s location and multi-cultural nature: that inhabitants were drawn to the area due to an abundance of elk in the local landscape. We investigated this possibility using faunal and isotopic analysis, focusing particularly on ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values from deer and elk tooth enamel apatite. Our findings suggest that while deer hunting was rooted in the local landscape, elk largely came from non-local environments, which conflicts with the simple ecological explanation for the site’s location. Indeed, our data suggest that elk hunting involved either excursions to more distant locations or occasional hunting trips closer to home during seasonal elk migrations through the area. Either way, elk hunts would have been occasions of special social and economic importance. Elk hunting, butchering, and meat sharing could have acted to form and strengthen community bonds in this apparently multi-cultural community.