This Dataset complements the book Las Vegas: The Early Holocene Archaeology of Human Occupation in Coastal Ecuador edited by Peter Stahl and Karen Stothert (available from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Comparative Archaeology). It provides detailed counts of faunal remains recovered from excavations carried out during the 1970s and 1980s at sites near the Vegas river, city of Santa Elena, Coastal Ecuador dating to the Early Holocene and discussed in full in the printed volume, whose contents are as follows:

• Chapter 1: Introduction (by Karen E. Stothert)
• Chapter 2: The Vegetation of the Santa Elena Peninsula: Past and Present Conditions (by Xavier Cornejo)
• Chapter 3: The Santa Elena Peninsula in the Early Mid-Holocene: Human-Environment Interactions Before and During the “Hiatus” Between Vegas and Valdivia (by Deborah M. Pearsall, Neil A. Duncan, John G. Jones, and Dorothy E. Friedel)
• Chapter 4: Paleoshorelines and Early Holocene Mangrove Formations (by Miriam E. Domínguez)
• Chapter 5: The Skeletal Biology of Human Remains from Site-80 in Contemporary Perspective (by Douglas H. Ubelaker)
• Chapter 6: Plant Cultivation and Domestication at the Vegas Sites: New Evidence from Starch Grain Studies of Human Teeth (by Dolores R. Piperno)
• Chapter 7: New Interpretation of Las Vegas Molluscan Remains (by Karen E. Stothert and Kate E. Clark)
• Chapter 8: Mammalian Archaeofaunal Accumulations, Taphonomy, and Early Human/Animal Relationships (by Peter W. Stahl)
• Chapter 9: Las Vegas Fish Resources and their Exploitation (by Philippe Béarez and Peter W. Stahl)
• Chapter 10: Avifaunal Specimens in Las Vegas Contexts (by Markus P. Tellkamp and Peter W. Stahl)
• Chapter 11: Las Vegas Lithics: The View from the Other Side of the Pacific (by Andrei V. Tabarev and Yoshitaka Kanomata)
• Chapter 12: Las Vegas in the Early Holocene of Northwestern South America (by Peter W. Stahl and Karen E. Stothert)

The raw faunal data presented below was compiled and analized by the authors of their respective chapters: molluscan data by Karen Stothert and Kate Clark (Chapter 7); mammalian and indeterminate faunal data by Peter Stahl (Chapter 8); ichthyo faunal data by Philippe Bearez (Chapter 9); and avifaunal data by Markus Tellkamp (Chapter 10).

This dataset also serves as a complement to the following publication (which contains additional information about excavations at Las Vegas):

Stothert, Karen (1988) La Prehistoria Temprana de la Peninsula de Santa Elena, Ecuador: Cultura Las Vegas. Miscelánea Antropológica Ecuatoriana (Serie monográfica) Nro. 10. Museos del Banco Central del Ecuador, Guayaquil, Ecuador

Analysis of all recovered archaeofaunal specimens was made possible through funding awarded to Peter Stahl from the National Science Foundation (BCS0739602).

Stahl, Peter and Karen E. Stothert, editors (2020a) Las Vegas: The Early Holocene Archaeology of Human Occupation in Coastal Ecuador. University of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, No. 20.

Stahl, Peter and Karen E. Stothert (2020b) Las Vegas Fauna Dataset. Comparative Archaeology Database, University of Pittsburgh. URL: <http://www.cadb.pitt.edu>.

Questions or comments about this dataset or the Comparative Archaeology Database can be directed to cadb@pitt.edu via email.

THE DATASET
Designed by Alexander J. Martín

Numeric Data

Numeric data are provided in two file formats. Comma-delimited text files should be easy to import into spreadsheet, database, and statistical programs for manipulation and analysis. Excel spreadsheets are easier to browse, and can also be imported into many programs. The numeric data files are as follows:

Technical Report

A technical report that summarizes and interprets the mammalian archaeofaunal remains recovered from Las Vegas contexts is provided as a PDF.

Return to the Comparative Archaeology Database Homepage
Haga click aquí para la versión en español de esta Base de Datos.