The stable isotope data from the ancient Texas populations does more than identify specific foods eaten by individuals.

It reveals the structure of an economy.

An economy, in the anthropological sense, is not just about money or trade.

It is about how a society organizes the production and distribution of the resources it needs.

For Archaic hunter-gatherers in Texas, the economy was organized around the systematic exploitation of the resources that different environments offered — and the isotope data from places like Buckeye Knoll reveals how that exploitation was structured in time and space.

The elevated aquatic isotope signatures in the earliest Buckeye Knoll individuals suggest that the population of the lower Guadalupe River in the early Archaic relied substantially on fish, freshwater mussels, and potentially coastal marine resources.