7 

 mammals was taken. Although Linares (1976) did not present information about the occurrence and 

 relative abundance of the other taxa present at the area, she concluded that the number and kinds of 

 animals taken by the hunters were affected by 1) shifting cultivation, especially of cultivated root crops, 

 and 2) the behavioral preadaptation of these mammals to become commensals of people. 



Linares (1976) called this hypothetical game-procurement system "garden hunting" and 

 characterized it (p. 344) from two different perspectives: 



One, "The most abundant animals present are either smallish animals that live in the 

 underbrush or in burrows, often in the vicinity of encampments or recently cleared fields (the 

 caviomorph rodent[sl and armadillo), or larger forms that are not too shy and live— or can 

 live— in forest-edge conditions (the collared peccary and the white-tailed deer)." 



Two, "The mammals missing altogether or poorly represented are either those that inhabit the 

 high canopy (monkeys [Cebus, Ateles, Alouatta, etc.], sloths [Bradypus and Choleopus] or 

 those that are fast climbers (coatis [Nasua nasua], squirrels [Sciurus]) or those that are very 

 shy and live in forested conditions away from man (the brocket deer and tapir [Tapirus 

 bairdii]." 



The supporting evidence for these characterizations was based on 1) fauna! assemblages in 

 Neotropical forests at Suriname and Barro Colorado Island, Panama (Eisenberg and Thorington, 1973) 

 and 2) behavioral and ecological traits of the most important mammals hunted by the prehistoric Cerro 

 Brujo group. Based on a comparison of mammalian biomasses, Linares (1976) determined that none of 

 the dominant species (in terms of biomass) at Surinam or Barro Colorado Island was taken by Cerro 

 Brujo hunters. Linares (1976) hypothesized that this was due to a difference between faunal 

 assemblages among the three areas, and indicated that Cerro Brujo represented a cultural faunal 



