species of animals represented in the faunal collection, the archaeologist hopes to determine where, when, and even how prehistoric hunters captured their game, as well as how much variety there was in the diet. At CA-SAC-43, for example, the collection includes bones from several grassland mammal species (elk, jackrabbit, antelope) and several species that preferred riparian woodlands (deer, cottontail rabbits, various furbearing rodents and carnivores); migratory and other waterfowl that were most common in the area during the winter months (ducks, coots, geese, grebes); anadromous fish that migrated each year from ocean to river and back (sturgeon and salmon); and fish that lived year-round in the local, still-water lakes and sloughs (thicktail chub, hitch, Sacramento perch). We know that many of these species - notably elk, deer, waterbirds, and anadromous fish - would have been most abundant in the delta from late fall to early spring, the same seasons when plant foods would have been least available. By eating different foods during different seasons (and by preserving and storing some foods), the people at CA-SAC-43 would have had a steady food supply throughout all but the harshest years.

The relative numbers of bones, and how these numbers translate into amounts of edible meat, also are important to understanding the prehistoric diet. Fish bone from the Brazil Mound included the remains of 428 Sacramento perch, but only eight sturgeon; this seems to indicate that perch were more important than sturgeon in the prehistoric diet here. However, an adult sturgeon today can weigh hundreds of pounds, and they probably were even larger prehistorically, before the era of large-scale commercial fishing and the siltation of many of their migration routes and spawning areas. By some estimates, a full-grown sturgeon taken from the Delta before 1900 probably weighed over 1,000 pounds! Compare this to the average Sacramento perch, at less than a pound. This means that the eight sturgeon in the Brazil collection could represent over 8,000 pounds of fish, while the 428 perch represent less than 400 pounds . Clearly, those eight sturgeon were a much greater source of food to the Brazil Site occupants than the 428 perch.

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