Reconstructing carcass processing related to elk (Alces alces) exploitation during the Late Mesolithic: The case of Zamostje 2 (Central Russia (original) (raw)
Related papers
Quaternary International, 2014
Zamostje 2 is an open-air site, discovered in a bog in central Russia and excavated by V. Lozovski from 1989. It is basically a border of an habitation and fishing zone, partially with a waste area. This deposit is characterised by a successive stratigraphy of Late Mesolithic to Neolithic, linked to an assemblage unusually preserved because of humid conditions. This study aims to establish the "chaine op eratoire" of butchery in the Late Mesolithic (7900 ± 180 BPe7050 ± 60 BP) of elk, which is the most represented species. A quantitative analysis of human traces was performed in order to identify the different phases of acquisition, processing, and consumption of resources provided by the elk.
Evidence for kill-butchery events of early Upper Paleolithic age at Kostenki, Russia
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2010
a b s t r a c t At least 10 early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) open-air sites are found at Kostenki on the west bank of the Don River in Russia. During the 1950s, A.N. Rogachev excavated concentrations of horse bones and teeth from EUP layers at Kostenki 14 and 15 exhibiting the characteristics of kill-butchery assemblages. Excavations at Kostenki 12 in 2002-2003 uncovered a large quantity of reindeer and horse bones in EUP Layer III that also might be related to kill-butchery events, and the partial skeleton of a sub-adult mammoth excavated during 2004-2007 in EUP Layer V at Kostenki 1 yields traces of butchery. The character of these large mammal assemblages -combined with the analysis of artifacts and features -suggests that both habitation areas and kill-butchery locations are represented in a ''EUP landscape'' at Kostenki.
Archaeozoological Analysis of Animal Remains from the Mesolithic Site of Kukrek Culture Igren’ 8 (Ukraine), 2022
Ihren 8 is a settlement of hunters and gatherers of the Mesolithic period. The 10 pit-dwellings were found, being constructed by the people of the Kukrek culture (the 8th - 7th millenia BC). The present study focuses on revising the animal’s osteological material according to modern archaeozoological techniques. The study findings are related to seasonal fluctuations of the settlement, the hunting specialization of its inhabitants, details of taphonomy and trasology of the bones found. Moreover, a group of bone fragments were distinguished, which constituted the wastes of bone tool production. The major groups of bone tools were also described.
Artifacts Made of Animals’ Teeth and Jaws in the Mesolithic of Eastern Europe
Mark Pearce and Maurizio Tosi (eds). Papers from the European Association of Archaeologists Third Annual Meeting at Ravenna 1997 Volume I: Pre- and Protohistory. BAR S717, 1998
The study of animals teeht and jaws from the point of vew of their utilisation as tools showed, that these artifacts, especially made of beaver’ incisors, were well developed and played very important role in 4 woodworking from the very beginning till the very end of the Mesolithic in Eastern Europe. Gradual spread of forests over territories, occupied earlier by periglacial landscapes, produced large amounts of wood - a very useful material for many purposes. Traceological study of lithic inventories of the Mesolithic sites of Upper Volga showed rather small number of tools for woodworking, mainly burins with a very narrow edge and scrapers, supplemented by small series of whittling knives, saws, borers, axes and adzes. As it is clear now, most part of wood carving, planing and scraping was carried out by tools, made of beaver’ incisors. It is also worth noting, that beaver was one of the main hunted animals, its role is the second after the elk. It was not only a source of meat and hide, but also of raw material for making tools, very important for humans in their new forest surroundings. Flakers, made of bear’ fangs and beaver’ incisors, as well, as tools for dragging senew, were also very useful. Such tools could not be made of lithic materials. It will not be an exaggeration to say, that tools, made of animals’ teeth and jaws played their important role in successful Early Holocene adaptation of hunter-gatherers in Eastern Europe.
PLOS ONE
Long bone breakage for bone marrow recovery is a commonly observed practice in Middle Palaeolithic contexts, regardless of the climatic conditions. While lithic technology is largely used to define cultural patterns in human groups, despite dedicating research by zooarchaeologists, for now butchering techniques rarely allowed the identification of clear traditions, notably for ancient Palaeolithic periods. In this paper, we test the hypothesis of butchery traditions among Neandertal groupsusing the bone assemblages from three sites in southwestern Europe. These sites are located in southeastern France and northern Italy and are dated to the Late Middle Palaeolithic: Abri du Maras (Marine Isotopic Stages (MIS) 4–3, Ardèche), Saint-Marcel (MIS 3, Ardèche), and Riparo Tagliente (MIS 4–3, Verona). The detection of culturally-induced patterns of bone breakage involves differentiating them from intuitively generated patterns. To tackle this issue, we used a zooarchaeological approach focu...
The Upper Pleniglacial, between 23 000e20 000 BP, is characterized by the intensification of cold climate and is followed by the maximum extent of ice sheets. There is a little bit information about the human activities during this period. New archaeological excavations in Ukraine permit to evidence data about behavioural human adaptations. These open air sites are on the one hand Pushkari 1 (excavation VII), Pogon (excavation VII) and Obollonia in the Desna valley and on the other hand Dorochivtsy III in the Dniester valley. These sites are characterised by atypical lithic industries made on local flint relied to the Gravettian but containing Epigravettian or Aurignacoid elements. In order to better understand the subsistence strategy we carried out zooarchaeological and taphonomical studies, which allow us to reveal the strategy of fauna exploitation by the human groups. We highlighted that all these sites are characterized by a restricted faunal spectrum with the presence of mammoth, reindeer, horse and car-nivores (mainly fox [Vulpes vulpes and Alopex lagopus] and wolf). In the Dniester valley the reindeer was the most exploited, whereas the mammoth is the most exploited in the Desna valley. Indeed, it was probably hunt in Pushkari 1, maybe in Pogon and Obollonia. It was exploited as combustible, food resources and bones as raw material. In Dorochivtsy III/6 ivory was used to make tools and as artistic support. Indeed this site and Obollonia present grooved ivory points, this is the oldest occurrence of this kind of artefacts in the both regions. Moreover two engraved tusks presenting more or less figurative pictures were found in Dorochivtsy III/l.6 and Obollonia. The other large herbivores were also consumed and carnivores were exploited for their pelts in all these sites. The settlements are recurrent camps with little development occupied during varied seasons oriented to hunting and butchering activities linked with exploitation of local flint. These sites demonstrate the continuity of human occupations within the Eastern European plain, with the persistence of hunting methods and the relative diversity of animal exploitation, during the Upper Pleniglacial. These sites are really important for the understanding of cultural processes in the Eastern European Upper Palaeolithic, and particularly for the understanding of Epigravettian origin.
Resurrecting roe deer: skeletal weight ratios at prehistoric Paks–Gyapa, Hungary
In: Monica Mărgărit and Adina Boroneanț (eds) FROM HUNTER-GATHERERS TO FARMERS. Human adaptations at the end of the Pleistocene and the first part of the Holocene. Papers in Honour of Clive Bonsall, 2017
Pathological conditions of the human skeleton from Climente II Cave, Romania / 25 Adina Boroneanț -Răzvrata revisited. A supplementary account of the excavation / 45 Adrian Bălășescu, Adina Boroneanț, Valentin Radu -Animal exploitation at the Mesolithic site of Răzvrata, Romania / 65 Monica Mărgărit, Adina Boroneanț -The Mesolithic osseous industry from Răzvrata (the Iron Gates region) / 81 Dragana Filipović, Jelena Jovanović, Dragana Rančić -In search of plants in the diet of Mesolithic-Neolithic communities in the Iron Gates / 93 Ivana Živaljević, Vesna Dimitrijević, Sofija Stefanović -Faunal remains from Kula, a Mesolithic-Neolithic site at the exit of the Danube Gorges (Serbia) / 113 Dragana Antonović, Vidan Dimić, Andrej Starović, Dušan Borić -Ground stone artefacts from Aria Babi / 135 Selena Vitezović -The Early Neolithic osseous industry in the Iron Gates region / 149 REGIONAL STUDIES / 167 Jonathan Benjamin, Geoff Bailey -Coastal adaptations and submerged landscapes: where world prehistory meets underwater archaeology / 169 Judith M. Grünberg -Women and men in Mesolithic burials: inequalities in early postglacial hunter-gatherer-fisher societies / 185 Agathe Reingruber -Foragers, Fishers and Farmers in the Aegean (12,000-6000 cal BC) / 203 Tomasz Płonka -Ornamented hunting weapons from the Late Palaeolithic in the southern Baltic Basin / 217 Éva David -No Maglemosian bone tools in Mesolithic Norway so far! / 229 Mihael Budja -Ceramic technology inventions in Europe and Asia / 245 Maria Gurova -Geometric microliths from Holocene sequences in Bulgaria / 273 Annie Brown, Haskel Greenfield -Deer Season: hunting seasonality during the Neolithic in the central Balkans / 295 Vassil Nikolov -Fortified settlements in the valleys of the Rivers Provadiyska, Golyama Kamchia, and Luda Kamchia (northeast Bulgaria) in the context of Chalcolithic economy / 317 Kenneth Ritchie -Mixing copper and water: the aquatic focus of Chalcolithic Romania / 329 From hunter-gatherers to farmers Human adaptations at the end of the Pleistocene and the first part of the Holocene 4
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
More than 4300 Eurasian elk (Alces alces) incisors, most of them pendants, were found in 84 burials in the Late Mesolithic cemetery of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, Northwest Russia. We analysed the manufacture techniques of elk teeth (4014), in the collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St Petersburg. A striking observation is that the manufacture of these pendants is similar in all burials. Teeth were worked by carving one or several grooves around the root tip. In addition to grooved ones, a number of teeth were not worked at all. The uniformity of the chosen species, tooth and techniques indicates that strict norms prevailed in the pendant industry. Despite the overall similarity, our study shows some variation in making pendants. A groove can cut the whole circumference of the root, or several distinct grooves can mark opposite sides of the root. Sometimes the grooves are deep and made carefully, and sometimes they are weak and made hastily. A typolo...
In: C. Montoya/J.-P. Fagnart/J.-L. Locht (eds.), Préhistoire de l’Europe du Nord-Ouest. Mobilités, climats et identités culturelles 2 (Paris 2019) 477-489
(Wild/Pfeifer 2019) This paper focuses on the effects of environmental change, particularly of faunal replacement, on acquisition strategies and use of osseous raw materials for the production of tools around the Pleistocene/ Holocene transition in northwestern Central Europe. It is therefore a contribution to the overall question "10,000 BP (11,600 cal. BP)-what changes?", which is discussed along three lines of argumentation: 1) Pleistocene/Holocene archaeology, 2) material properties of osseous raw materials and 3) the relationship between tool type and selected raw material. For typological classification and comparability, the osseous tools are partitioned into three functional classes: A-striking objects, B-hooking objects and C-perforating objects, which are further subdivided into hafted perforating tools (C1), and hand-held perforating tools (C2). The advantage of this very basic classification scheme is that it can be applied to compare assemblages from different cultural entities. From northwestern Central Europe, only well preserved osseous assemblages securely dated to the Younger Dryas or the Preboreal that have been zooarchaeologically analysed were included (n = 5). The analysis led to the following results: Striking tools are exclusively produced from antler. Barbed tools are predominantly made of antler. The preferred raw material for perforating tools is bone. We explain this clear picture by the different mechanical properties of osseous raw materials. Though heterogeneous and incomplete, the currently available experimental data suggest that antler is flexible and tough whereas bone is rather stiff. Taking these archaeological and experimental observations into account, we postulate that no change in the general raw material choices took place at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. However, what changed were the raw material sources: Instead of migrating reindeer herds, more sedentary taxa provided antler and bone. Résumé : Cet article discute des effets des changements environnementaux, plus particulièrement du rempla-cement de la faune, sur les stratégies d'acquisition et l'utilisation des matières premières osseuses pour la production d'outils, autour de la transition Pléistocène/Holocène en Europe centrale du Nord-Ouest. Il s'agit donc d'une contribution à la question plus large des changements intervenant autour de 10 000 BP (11 600 cal. BP), en les déclinant selon trois domaines : 1) l'archéologie de la transition Pléistocène/Holocène ; 2) les propriétés des matières premières osseuses et 3) la relation entre type d'outil et matière première sélectionnée. Pour la classification typologique et les comparaisons, les outils osseux ont été répartis en trois classes fonc-tionnelles: A-objets percutants, B-objets accrochants et C-objets perforants. Cette dernière classe a été subdivisée en outils emmanchés (C1), et en outils tenus à la main (C2). Cette classification simple présente l'avantage de pouvoir être appliquée à des assemblages appartenant à des entités culturelles différentes. Pour l'Europe centrale du Nord-Ouest, seuls des assemblages osseux bien préservés, datés du Dryas récent ou du Préboréal et qui ont fait l'objet d'une analyse archéozoologique, ont été inclus dans l'étude (n = 5). Les résul-tats de cette analyse sont les suivants : les objets percutants sont exclusivement en bois de cervidé ; les objets accrochants sont principalement en bois de cervidé ; et la matière première prédominante pour les objets perforants est l'os. Nous expliquons ces distinctions nettes par les propriétés mécaniques respectives des diffé-rentes matières premières osseuses. Bien qu'hétérogènes et incomplètes, les données expérimentales actuellement disponibles suggèrent que le bois de cervidé présente une relative flexibilité et une certaine dureté, alors que l'os est plus rigide Prenant en compte ces observations archéologiques et expérimentales, nous postulons qu'aucun changement vis-à-vis des choix globaux en matières premières n'est survenu lors de la transition Pléistocène/Holocène. Cependant, les sources de matières premières ont bel et bien changé : les espèces séden-taires ont remplacé les troupeaux de rennes mobiles pour fournir des bois et des os.
Paleobiology as a clue for Paleolithic taphonomy: the case of reindeer hunting in Moldova
Quaternaire, 2018
The article proposes an interpretation of hunting strategy of Late Paleolithic hunters from Moldova based on demographic structure of reindeer remains (sex ratio and proportion of juvenile remains) and reindeer paleobiology and ecology. The obtained results demonstrate a flexible strategy of game procurement of Paleolithic hunters ensuring the optimal energy investment/ food gain ratio. The hunting strategy was influenced by prey ecology, seasonal biological cycle, paleogeographic conditions, prey availability, cultural traditions, and available human resources. LA PALÉOBIOLOGIE COMME CLEF EN TAPHONOMIE PALÉOLITHIQUE : L'EXEMPLE DE LA CHASSE AU RENNE EN MOLDAVIE. Cet article propose une reconstitution des stratégies de chasse au Paléolithique supérieur en Moldavie, fondée sur la démogra phie des populations de renne fossile (sexratio et nombre de restes de jeunes) en relation avec la paléobiologie et l'écologie de cette espèce. Les résultats indiquent des stratégies flexibles dans l'acquisition de ce gibier permettant un rapport optimisé entre inves tissement énergétique et gain alimentaire. Les stratégies de chasse sont influencées par l'écologie du gibier, leur cycle saisonnier et leur disponibilité, les conditions paléogéographiques et les traditions culturelles des groupes humains et leurs autres ressources.