A Folsom group would require X amount of meat and bison product for subsistence. In this scenario, the amount of bison product obtained from the heavy butchery of 5 animals would equate to the amount of bison product obtained from the light butchering of a larger number of animals. If gourmet butchering removed half this amount from a carcass, then it would require twice as many animals to meet the minimum requirement of bison products. The meat from 10 gourmet butchered animals would equal the meat from 5 extensively butchered animals. The location of cutmarks on the bones from the three kills at Cooper may provide a means to quantify the amount of meat obtained from these kills.
Cut marks have similar distributions in all three kills.
Such marks cluster on the ribs, humerus, femur, tibia, and thoracic vertebrae. Hence, even the selective butchering of animals at Cooper produces a surplus capable of feeding three Lubbock Lake size Folsom groups. This exceeds the expected situation of a Lubbock Lake size group employing a selective butchering technique because of an overkill. Although the switch in butchering technique from extensive to gourmet may be related to the number of animals killed, the large kills at Cooper and Lipscomb could provide for the aggregate needs of either three Lubbock Lake groups through gourmet butchering or six Lubbock Lake groups through extensive butchering. Although not conclusive, this discussion anticipates the presence of more than one group at the Cooper site on the basis of butchering technology.