No bison for your simulated bison hunt? Then use a tyre

ERJ staff report (DS)

Tucson, Arizona -- Researchers at the University of Arizona are researching how ancient hunters went after big game on the US Great Plains. Instead of chasing a live animal off a cliff, the researchers are pushing tyres over the edge to see how far the bison may have fallen.

Led by Maria Nieves Zedeño from the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, the Kutoyis Archaeological Project is a four-year collaboration focused on prehistoric bison hunting societies in the Northern Great Plains. The project is funded by the National Park Service and the National Science Foundation.

The field experiments this year included reconstructing the final moments of a traditional bison hunt. Since using live bison was not an option, the researchers instead substituted old car and truck tyres on the recommendation of Dale Fenner, one of the team's Blackfeet crew chiefs.

Researchers rolled tyres over a 25 metre slope above the cliff and used a stop watch to determine their speed in an attempt to approximate the speed of a running bison.

"It was a great idea because tyres and bison are heavy enough that they behave alike when they fall," said Jesse Ballenger of Statistical Research, Inc. and the project's co-director. "We can also predict landing sites based on the laws of physics, but there's obviously certain qualities of both that complicate the experiment after the first bounce. The short story is that we're finding partially complete bison carcasses much lower on the slope than were they probably impacted."

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Press release from University of Arizona