Analysis and interpretation of the fauna from the Bluff Great House

This thesis describes the analysis and interpretation of the animal remains from the Bluff Great House, a Chacoan outlier in southeastern Utah. Faunal resources utilised at the Bluff Great House are generally analogous to those from other sites in the region. The temporal changes in the Bluff assemblage show a decrease in the percentage of artiodactyls and an increase in the percentage o f turkeys, a pattern which is paralleled at other sites from the same time period. This pattern may have been influenced by a form of resource depression and shaped by the domestication of the turkey. A comparison of regional assemblages revealed that the material from Great Houses and unit pueblos were similar. All pathological conditions present in the faunal material from Bluff were briefly reviewed and discussed. Some of the pathological specimens resemble pathologies from other Chacoan sites in the Northern San Juan region