An unshakeable Middle Paleolithic? Trends versus conservatism in the predatory niche and their social ramifications. Current Anthropology (original) (raw)
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Current Anthropology, 2013
The great temporal and geographic span of the Middle Paleolithic (MP) raises many questions about behavioral variation within this period and its evolutionary significance. This paper focuses on MP predator economics and its social ramifications by examining the data for possible trends in the size of the hominin ecological footprint, hunting practices, trophic level, food sharing, and the intensity with which sites were occupied. Middle Paleolithic hominins were big game hunters, and they were rather specialized in their focus on ungulate prey. Low-cost gatherable small prey were a perennial if minor contribution to MP diets at lower latitudes, but the overall breadth of the meat diet remained narrow throughout the period. Discernible trends in the MP are few. Foraging innovations of the MP include marine shellfish exploitation by 120,000 years BP (possibly earlier), galvanization of the prime-age ungulate hunting niche, and hearth-centered domestic camps. The density of zooarchaeological material seems to increase during the last 30,000 years of MP existence, implying mild increases in human populations. Important aspects of carcass processing and meat sharing in the MP do not show much variation but do indicate close cooperation and habitual sharing among group members. Contrasts to late Lower Paleolithic butchery patterns may illuminate more formal patterns of meat sharing in the MP and after. The seeming rigidity of MP hunting economics could have been the secret to its widespread success for 200,000 years..
Ophiussa. Revista do Centro de Arqueologia da Universidade de Lisboa
In the course of a general review of zooarchaeological studies, particular attention is given to the development of the thinking process associated with hominin dietary strategies. Since the dawn of archaeological studies animal bones were noticed and recovered in association with man‑made tools. Since then, faunal remains have been discussed as the result of human dietary practices. However, the way such feeding activities were conducted has been the focus of an ongoing heated debate. Different subsistence strategies – i.e. Hunting vs Scavenging; Specialization vs Broad Spectrum; Inland vs Coastal Adaptation – have a strong impact on the image we create about our ancestors. Indeed, depending on the mode of acquisition and processing of faunal remains, hominins have been assessed on their cognitive abilities and, therefore, stamped as more, or less, evolved. More recently, new insights have been provided by the development of actualistic studies, highlighting the need to understand ...
Coward, F. and Grimshaw, L. Hunter-Gatherers in Early Prehistory
in 'Investigating prehistoric hunter-gatherer identities: case studies from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe, eds. Cobb, H., Coward, F., Grimshaw, L. and Price, S. Oxford: Archaeopress. BAR International Series 141. , 2005
The success of the post-processual critique of processual models of prehistory has led to the development of models of human behaviour that prioritise people and their activities in a social milieu. However, although some aspects of these approaches have crept in to the late Mesolithic, the vast majority of illustrations of such paradigms in archaeology have been post-Neolithic. Why is there no social archaeology of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic? Firstly, the nature of the data is argued to be insufficient both quantitatively and qualitatively to address the lifeways of people in the past. The questions considered appropriate for the study of the Palaeolithic have thus been largely restricted to those considering the economics of subsistence or raw material procurement and lithic manufacture. Secondly, the problem is one of identification; the attitudes of researchers towards post-Neolithic farmers and Mesolithic and Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer (and particularly pre-human hunter-gatherer) populations have meant that the two branches of research are considered fundamentally different. The effect of this process of estrangement of hunter-gatherer archaeology from the rest of the discipline is the establishment of an a-personal Palaeolithic. The pre-eminence of the evolutionary paradigm, which equates change and evolution, identifies the process of evolution as purely a factor of time; change is conditional only on time passing, and is thus virtually unrelated to humans and their activities. The focus of research into Pleistocene archaeology has been at continent-wide geographical scales and geological timescales, which have removed the possibility of accessing personal experiences and actions. In addition, the conception of a culture as a system seeking homeostasis means that change requires external causality – usually, in the Palaeolithic, the environment. This session would like to reintroduce the not-so-radical notion of ‘people’ to the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, as creators of the archaeological record, and as inhabitants of the Pleistocene world. How can we access aspects of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer past that would have had meaning for its inhabitants/creators? How does the recognition of hunter-gatherer ‘persons’ in prehistory affect the generalizing, continent- and geological/climatic- scale models of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic which are current in the discipline? We invite papers that use new perspectives to ‘crack open’ the ‘black box’ of hunter-gatherer ‘persons’ of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic to access new perspectives on and understandings of the period.
Foragers or « Feasters ? » Inequalities in the Upper Palaeolithic
Paléo
Over the last half century, the dominant view in European archaeology has been that Upper Paleolithic societies were highly mobile egalitarian groups. While this model may be accurate for resource poor areas, it is increasingly evident that in some rich refugia like the Dordogne and Charente, more complex societies existed that exhibited transegalitarian types of characteristics including socioeconomic inequalities. Ethnographically, it is in the context of transegalitarian types of societies that unique features occur such as rich burials, prestige items, feasting, complex astronomical observations, elaborate numbering systems, rituals in deep caves, and other special features of the French Southwest Upper Paleolithic. Indeed, due to the socioeconomic dynamics involved, these features make the most sense as part of transegalitarian societies, whereas both the dynamics and these features are rare or are completely lacking among ethnographic egalitarian foragers. This paper reassesses the status of Upper Paleolithic hunter/gatherers from the transegalitarian perspective. It focuses particular attention on the role and importance of prestige items making the important distinction between communal ritual prestige items and individual status prestige items. Ten other key features are discussed briefly that indicate the existence of complex hunter/gatherers in the Upper Paleolithic.
In this paper, we compare cannibalism in chimpanzees, modern humans, and in archaeological cases with cannibalism inferred from evidence from the Early Pleistocene assemblage of level TD6 of Gran Dolina (Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain). The cannibalism documented in level TD6 mainly involves the consumption of infants and other immature individuals. The human induced modifications on Homo antecessor and deer remains suggest that butchering processes were similar for both taxa, and the remains were discarded on the living floor in the same way. This finding implies that a group of hominins that used the Gran Dolina cave periodically hunted and consumed individuals from another group. However, the age distribution of the cannibalized hominins in the TD6 assemblage is not consistent with that from other cases of exo-cannibalism by human/hominin groups. Instead, it is similar to the age profiles seen in cannibalism associated with intergroup aggression in chimpanzees. For this reason, we use an analogy with chimpanzees to propose that the TD6 hominins mounted low-risk attacks on members of other groups to defend access to resources within their own territories and to try and expand their territories at the expense of neighboring groups.
To Meat or Not to Meat? New Perspectives on Neanderthal Ecology
Neanderthals have been commonly depicted as top predators who met their nutritional needs by focusing entirely on meat. This information mostly derives from faunal assemblage analyses and stable isotope studies: methods that tend to underestimate plant consumption and overestimate the intake of animal proteins. Several studies in fact demonstrate that there is a physiological limit to the amount of animal proteins that can be consumed: exceeding these values causes protein toxicity that can be particularly dangerous to pregnant women and newborns. Consequently, to avoid food poisoning from meat-based diets, Neander-thals must have incorporated alternative food sources in their daily diets, including plant materials as well. Yrbk Phys Anthropol 156:43–71, 2015. V C 2014 American Association of Physical Anthropologists In this manuscript, we review traditional as well as more recent approaches for reconstructing the diet in past human populations, and we show how new archaeological discoveries and innovative methods are changing our views of Neanderthal ecology and behavior. We further underline the importance of reconstructing Nean-derthal environments derived from palaeoecological data to better understand and interpret the dietary evidence obtained by these methods. Finally, since the intake of specific foods can be invisible to certain techniques and detect by others, we suggest using a more holistic approach by integrating the findings of more than one method. Such comprehensive analyses would enable the reconstruction of the whole dietary spectrum, which is particularly important for species like Neanderthal, who lived under severe and unstable climatic conditions. Neanderthals are undoubtedly the most studied and best-known group in the human fossil record. Despite that, for more than 100 years since their discovery, research on Neanderthal ecology, subsistence strategies, and diet have received remarkably little attention (Ready, 2010). It is only with the emergence of new archeological disciplines and development of innovative analytical approaches in the 1960s, that scholars began to look at Neanderthal behavior and adaptations to their environment. Methods such as faunal analysis, lithic technology, and taphonomic studies progressively led to a general portrait that defined Neanderthals as a homogenous group, with similar nutritional needs typified by a reliance on the consumption of terrestrial animals. This idea was reinforced by the study of stable isotopes and Neanderthal anatomy. The general robusticity of Nean-derthal skeletons, with relatively short limbs and heavy trunks, has been interpreted as adaptation to cold stress environments that follow the ecogeographic principles of Bergmann's and Allen's rules (e.
Hunter-Gatherers and Their Neighbors from Prehistory to the Present [and Comments and Replies]
Current Anthropology, 1989
It is widely assumed that modern hunter-gatherer societies lived until very recently in isolation from food-producing societies and states and practiced neither cultivation, pastoralism, nor trade. This paper brings together data suggesting a very different model of middle to late Holocene hunter-gatherer economy. It is argued that such foraging groups were heavily dependent upon both trade with food-producing populations and part-time cultivation or pastoralism. Recent publications on a number of hunter-gather societies establish that the symbiosis and desultory food production observed among them today are neither recent nor anomalous but represent an economy practiced by most hunter-gatherers for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Psychological and political reasons for Westerners' attachment to the myth of the "Savage Other" are discussed.
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Neanderthal hunting strategies inferred from mortality profiles within the Abric Romaní sequence
PloS one, 2017
Ungulate mortality profiles are commonly used to study Neanderthal subsistence strategies. To assess the hunting strategies used by Neanderthals, we studied the ages at death of the cervids and equids found in levels E, H, I, Ja, Jb, K, L and M of the Abric Romaní sequence. These levels date between 43.2 ± 1.1 ka BP (14C AMS) and 54.5 ± 1.7 ka BP (U-series). The degree of eruption and development of the teeth and their wear stages were used to determine the ages of these animals at death, and mortality profiles were constructed using these data. The equids display prime dominated profiles in all of the analyzed levels, whereas the cervids display variable profiles. These results suggest that the Neanderthals of Abric Romaní employed both selective and non-selective hunting strategies. The selective strategy focused on the hunting of prime adults and generated prime dominated profiles. On the other hand, non-selective strategies, involved the consumption of animals of variable ages, ...
Prey Size Decline as a Unifying Ecological Selecting Agent in Pleistocene Human Evolution
Quaternary
We hypothesize that megafauna extinctions throughout the Pleistocene, that led to a progressive decline in large prey availability, were a primary selecting agent in key evolutionary and cultural changes in human prehistory. The Pleistocene human past is characterized by a series of transformations that include the evolution of new physiological traits and the adoption, assimilation, and replacement of cultural and behavioral patterns. Some changes, such as brain expansion, use of fire, developments in stone-tool technologies, or the scale of resource intensification, were uncharacteristically progressive. We previously hypothesized that humans specialized in acquiring large prey because of their higher foraging efficiency, high biomass density, higher fat content, and the use of less complex tools for their acquisition. Here, we argue that the need to mitigate the additional energetic cost of acquiring progressively smaller prey may have been an ecological selecting agent in fundam...
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology
The ongoing refinement of archaeological excavation and recording methods over the last decades has led to a significant increase in quantitative Middle Palaeolithic datasets that provide a record of past Neanderthal behaviour. Stone tools and butchered animal remains are the two main categories of Middle Palaeolithic archaeological remains and both provide distinctive insights into site formation and Neanderthal behaviour. However, the integration of these quantitative lithic and zooarchaeological datasets is key for achieving a full understanding of both site-specific and broader-scale patterns of Middle Palaeolithic subsistence. To explore novel ways to enhance the incorporation of these datasets, we organised a session at the 82nd annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver. An underlying theme was the problem of linking lithic and faunal variability. Are variations in subsistence strategies reflected by changes in toolmaking decisions? This paper will briefly introduce the possible ways these Middle Palaeolithic datasets can be integrated, illustrated with the papers included in this special volume, and discuss its potential for understanding the variability and interconnectedness of Neanderthal technologies and subsistence strategies.
Combining ZooMS and zooarchaeology to study Late Pleistocene hominin behaviour at Fumane (Italy)
Scientific Reports
Collagen type I fingerprinting (ZooMS) has recently been used to provide either palaeoenvironmental data or to identify additional hominin specimens in pleistocene contexts, where faunal assemblages are normally highly fragmented. However, its potential to elucidate hominin subsistence behaviour has been unexplored. Here, ZooMS and zooarchaeology have been employed in a complementary approach to investigate bone assemblages from final Mousterian and Uluzzian contexts at fumane cave (Italy). Both approaches produced analogous species composition, but differ significantly in species abundance, particularly highlighted by a six fold-increase in the quantity of Bos/Bison remains in the molecularly identified component. Traditional zooarchaeological methods would therefore underestimate the proportion of Bos/Bison in these levels to a considerable extent. We suggest that this difference is potentially due to percussion-based carcass fragmentation of large Bos/Bison bone diaphyses. Finally, our data demonstrates high variability in species assignment to body size classes based on bone cortical thickness and fragment size. Thus, combining biomolecular and traditional zooarchaeological methods allows us to refine our understanding of bone assemblage composition associated with hominin occupation at Fumane. Zooarchaeological analyses use faunal remains to address archaeological questions. This provides a wealth of information on local and regional palaeoenvironments, the timing of hominin occupation, and interactions with other species 1-5. Most specifically, such studies have been used to reconstruct hominin diet and subsistence patterns. However, faunal remains are often highly fragmented by taphonomic, including anthropogenic processes, precluding any type of taxonomic identification for most specimens. The non-identifiable component of Pleistocene bone assemblages frequently incorporates 60-70% of the excavated assemblage 6,7. This leads to an extensive taxonomically uninformative proportion of bone assemblages, which could represent a source of bias in zooarchaeological studies of hominin subsistence behaviour. Bone fragmentation can also provide a wealth of detail about site formation and depositional processes, but also more specifically about butchery practices and subsistence patterns. The species body part representation and the occurrence and location of cut-marks, percussion traces and bone breakage patterns can illustrate specific transport decisions by human groups 8-10. However, large portions of bone assemblages remain taxonomically unidentifiable, and in the best cases can only be attributed to body size classes. Patterns of human subsistence behaviour are therefore often reliant on a relatively small proportion of morphologically identifiable remains. To provide a more comprehensive picture of human subsistence behaviour at a site requires the synthesis and analysis of comparable taxonomic and taphonomic data from both identifiable and unidentifiable fraction of Pleistocene faunal assemblages.
Quaternary
Proboscideans and humans have shared habitats across the Old and New Worlds for hundreds of thousands of years. Proboscideans were included in the human diet starting from the Lower Paleolithic period and until the final stages of the Pleistocene. However, the question of how prehistoric people acquired proboscideans remains unresolved. Moreover, the effect of proboscidean hunting on the eventual extinction of these mega-herbivores was never seriously evaluated, probably because of the lack of acquaintance with the plethora of information available regarding proboscidean hunting by humans. The aim of this paper is to bridge this gap and bring to light the data available in order to estimate the extent and procedures of elephant and mammoth hunting by humans during the Quaternary. This study examines the archaeological evidence of proboscidean hunting during Paleolithic times, and provides a review of ethnographic and ethno-historical accounts, demonstrating a wide range of tradition...
To meat or not to meat? New perspectives on Neanderthal ecology
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2014
Neanderthals have been commonly depicted as top predators who met their nutritional needs by focusing entirely on meat. This information mostly derives from faunal assemblage analyses and stable isotope studies: methods that tend to underestimate plant consumption and overestimate the intake of animal proteins. Several studies in fact demonstrate that there is a physiological limit to the amount of animal
New evidence of broader diets for archaic Homo populations in the northwestern Mediterranean
Science Advances, 2019
Investigating diet breadth is critical for understanding how archaic Homo populations, including Neanderthals, competed for seasonally scarce resources. The current consensus in Western Europe is that ungulates formed the bulk of the human diet during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, while small fast prey taxa were virtually ignored. Here, we present a multisite taphonomic study of leporid assemblages from Southern France that supports frequent exploitation of small fast game during marine isotope stages 11 to 3. Along with recent evidence from Iberia, our results indicate that the consumption of small fast game was more common prior to the Upper Paleolithic than previously thought and that archaic hominins from the northwestern Mediterranean had broader diets than those from adjacent regions. Although likely of secondary importance relative to ungulates, the frequent exploitation of leporids documented here implies that human diet breadths were substantially more variable within E...
From things to thinking: Cognitive archaeology
Mind & Language, 2019
Cognitive archaeologists infer from material remains to the cognitive features of past societies. We characterize cognitive archaeology in terms of trace-based reasoning, that is, cognitive archaeology involves inferences drawing upon background theory linking objects from the archaeological record to cognitive (including psychological, symbolic, and ideological) features. We analyse such practices, examining work on cognitive evolution, language, and musicality. We argue that the central epistemic challenge for cognitive archaeology is often not a paucity of material remains, but insufficient constraint from cognitive theories. However, we also argue that the success of cognitive archaeology doesn't necessarily require well-developed cognitive theories: success might instead lead to them.
Origins of music in credible signaling
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2020
Music comprises a diverse category of cognitive phenomena that likely represent both the effects of psychological adaptations that are specific to music (e.g., rhythmic entrainment) and the effects of adaptations for non-musical functions (e.g., auditory scene analysis). How did music evolve? Here, we show that prevailing views on the evolution of music – that music is a byproduct of other evolved faculties, evolved for social bonding, or evolved to signal mate quality – are incomplete or wrong. We argue instead that music evolved as a credible signal in at least two contexts: coalitional interactions and infant care. Specifically, we propose that (1) the production and reception of coordinated, entrained rhythmic displays is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling coalition strength, size, and coordination ability; and (2) the production and reception of infant-directed song is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling parental attention to secondarily altricial infants. These ...
Scientific Reports
Data regarding the subsistence base of early hominins are heavily biased in favor of the animal component of their diets, in particular the remains of large mammals, which are generally much better preserved at archaeological sites than the bones of smaller animals, let alone the remains of plant food. Exploitation of smaller game is very rarely documented before the latest phases of the Pleistocene, which is often taken to imply narrow diets of archaic Homo and interpreted as a striking economic difference between Late Pleistocene and earlier hominins. We present new data that contradict this view of Middle Pleistocene Lower Palaeolithic hominins: cut mark evidence demonstrating systematic exploitation of beavers, identified in the large faunal assemblage from the c. 400,000 years old hominin site Bilzingsleben, in central Germany. In combination with a prime-age dominated mortality profile, this cut mark record shows that the rich beaver assemblage resulted from repetitive human h...
Scientific Reports
Although Middle Paleolithic (MP) hominin diets consisted mainly of ungulates, increasing evidence demonstrates that hominins at least occasionally consumed tortoises, birds, leporids, fish, and carnivores. Until now, the MP zooarchaeological record in the Zagros Mountains has been almost exclusively restricted to ungulates. The narrow range of hominin prey may reflect socioeconomic decisions and/or environmental constraints, but could also result from a research bias favoring the study of large prey, since archaeologists have undertaken no systematic taphonomic analyses of small game or carnivores in the region. Here, we report on the first comprehensive taphonomic analysis of an MP faunal assemblage from Ghar-e Boof (∼ 81–45 kyr), a Late Pleistocene site in the southern Zagros of Iran. Anthropogenic bone surface modifications point to hominins as the main agent of accumulation. Hominins preyed primarily on ungulates, particularly wild goat. However, we also found evidence for MP ho...
Quaternary Science Reviews, 2020
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10th Annual Meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE), 2020
Archaic humans (early Homo) and carnivores inhabited the Early and Middle Pleistocene landscapes of Europe, and shared ecosystems for more than 1 million years. Indeed, many archaeo-palaeontological sites evidence the co-existence of humans and carnivores, and demonstrate a certain degree of human-carnivore competition for acquisition and exploitation of animal (meat/bone) resources. We investigate here the role of large carnivores in the evolution of hominin subsistence strategies during the Early and Middle Pleistocene of Europe, focusing on important renewals in the carnivore guilds, and their significance in terms of carrion availability for scavenging and human-carnivore competition for access to food resources. Based on a previous ecomorphological approach of carnivore guild analysis [1], a modified version was recently employed [2] and is presented herein, combining four ecomorphological/behavioral parameters of large carnivores (body mass-BM, diet, hunting strategy, sociality) that practice hunting and/or scavenging on large prey. 3D guild structure diagrams were constructed and analyzed aiming to: 1) examine the community structure and dynamics of the predatory guilds, 2) infer the possible role of carnivores in the changes of early Homo subsistence strategies (passive/active scavenging and hunting), and 3) assess the role of hominins within the guilds. The late Villafranchian–Epivillafranchian (Early Pleistocene) carnivore guild was dominated by large-sized, hypercarnivorous and ambush-hunting felids (e.g., the saber-toothed cats Megantereon and Homotherium), and by the large-sized, bone-cracking and scavenging hyaenid Pachycrocuta. Τhe latter in particular was the most direct competitor of Homo for scavenging food resources (leftovers) left behind mainly by the saber-toothed cats [3]. As a member of the predatory guild (evident from the presence of cut and percussion marks on mammal bones), Homo would occupy the ecological space that was “available” for a predator with a 30–100 kg BM and a (mostly?) scavenging behavior, perhaps with a hypocarnivorous/carnivorous diet according to ecological circumstances and geographic setting. Τhe disappearance of most of the Early Pleistocene carnivore components (including Pachycrocuta and Megantereon) towards the end of this period, and their replacement by the Galerian (Middle Pleistocene) to modern hyenas and felids, resulted in the change of the structure and dynamics of the guild. Most notably, this reorganization included the decrease of carrion providers (hunters), and the higher representation of species with scavenging, bone-cracking and pack-hunting behavior. In this Middle Pleistocene guild, Homo would occupy the niche that was previously held by Megantereon, in the group of predators with 30–100 kg BM. Similar to Megantereon, humans could have a carnivorous to hypercarnivorous diet, but unlike the solitary and “ambush-and-slash” felid, the biological, technological, cultural and social developments would have allowed humans to employ a modified hunting strategy: the cooperative “ambush-and-spear” strategy (in accordance with the use of hunting spears during this period). The incorporation of such hunting behavior made humans fairly independent of erratic food sources from scavenging carnivore kills and allowed the provisioning of animal resources on a more regular basis. Moreover, even though the carnivore diversity slightly increased during this period, carnivore representation in the archaeo-palaeontological localities is rather low in both species and specimens number. This is possibly an anthropogenic effect on the ecosystem due to: 1) the firmer establishment of the hominin niche, including anti-predator strategies and expulsion of large carnivores from the region of human influence; and 2) the reduction of food quantity through human confrontational scavenging or decrease in prey availability through human hunting (see also [4] and [5]).
This study illustrates the potential of small-game data for identifying and dating Paleolithic demographic pulses such as those associated with modern human origins and the later evolution of food-producing economies. Archaeofaunal series from Israel and Italy serve as our examples. Three important implications of this study are that (1) early Middle Paleolithic populations were exceptionally small and highly dispersed, (2) the first major population growth pulse in the eastern Mediterranean probably occurred before the end of the Middle Paleolithic, and (3) subsequent demographic pulses in the Upper and Epi-Paleolithic greatly reshaped the conditions of selection that operated on human subsistence ecology, technology, and society. The findings of this study are consistent with the main premise of Flannery's broad-spectrum-revolution hypothesis. However, ranking small prey in terms of work of capture (in the absence of special harvesting tools) proved far more effective in this investigation of human diet breadth than have the taxonomic-diversity analyses published previously. anonymous reviewers for many thoughtful comments on earlier drafts. This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (to M.C.S., SBR-9511894) and the Levi Sala Care Foundation (to N.D.M.). key, and France and at sites of diverse ages in the United States. Her interests include coevolutionary processes involving humans, forager economics, the forager-producer transition, population and behavioral ecology, zooarchaeology, and taphonomy. n a t a l i e d . m u n ro is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her dissertation research focuses on the nature of Natufian subsistence at large and small sites in western Asia, testing hypotheses about the causes of economic and social changes immediately prior to the emergence of agriculture. She received her M.A. degree from Simon Fraser University in 1994, and she has done fieldwork in the southwestern United States, northern Europe, and western Asia. Her interests include Pleistocene and Holocene forager ecology, complex hunter-gatherers, early food production societies, zooarchaeology, and taphonomy. t o d d a . s u ro v e l l completed his M.A. degree in anthropology at the University of Arizona in 1998 on perfecting infrared spectrographic measures of bone diagenesis in archaeological sites. His dissertation research focuses on Paleoindian resource economics and land use in the Americas. He has done fieldwork in western North America, northern Europe, and western Asia. His interests include Paleoindians, colonization of the Americas, simulation modeling, hunter-gatherer ecology and technology, and geoarchaeology. The present paper was submitted 16 x 98 and accepted 10 iii 99; the final version reached the Editor's office 17 iii 99.
The transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic is a major biological and cultural threshold in the construction of our common humanity. Technological and behavioral changes happened simultaneously to a major climatic cooling, which reached its acme with the Heinrich 4 event, forcing the human populations to develop new strategies for the exploitation of their environment. The recent fieldwork at Les Cottés (France) transitional site offers a good opportunity to document subsistence strategies for this period and to provide for the first time high-resolution insights on its evolution. We present the results of the complete zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of the transitional sequence, associated with a large regional synthesis of the subsistence strategy evolution during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic. We conclude that, while there is no major change in the hunting strategies, the butchery activities evolved in strict correlation with the development of range weapons. In addition, the demise of carnivore seems to be a consequence of the human pressure on the environment. Our study demonstrates how the faunal component of the environment became a structuring element of the human social organization, being at the base of future cultural evolutions. The Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition is well known for the major demographic shift that occurred with the arrival of anatomically modern humans (AMH) in Europe, their interbreeding with the local Neanderthal populations 1 , whom they eventually replaced. We assist to major behavioral changes with the gradual development of the cultural components of what would define the Upper Paleolithic and the cultural modernity 2. Scarce during the European late Middle Paleolithic 3-6 , evidences of symbolic behavior exploded in term of quantity and diversity in the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) cultural material 7-11. Significant technological advances were developed with the production of blades and notably bladelets in the Châtelperronian 12,13 , the intensification of the bladelet production with the Proto-Aurignacian and finally the individualization of their reduction sequence during the Early Aurignacian 14,15. Simultaneously, craftsmen explored and mastered new raw material 10,16,17 , bones and teeth, producing a brand-new set of tools as a response to arising needs. The development of these new needs and subsequently these new bone technologies had direct consequences on the resources procurement and management strategies and, in a more general way, on the cultural relationships constructed by human with their animal counterpart. This is specifically attested by the development of figurative art, where mammals play a quasi-exclusive role during the EUP, and the introduction of mammal bones and teeth in the personal ornaments 10 , where previously only minerals and malacofauna were used 5. These symbolic and economic transformations of the societies occurred in a changing environment characterized by the major climatic shift of the MIS3 18. In Southwestern France, the final Mousterian took place in a
Hunting and Scavenging by Early Humans: The State of the Debate
Journal of World Prehistory, 2002
During the last 25 years, there has been a shift towards the belief that early humans were scavengers instead of hunters. This revisionist interpretation has brought a reconciliation with the Darwinian paradigm of gradual progressive evolution that has traditionally guided (and very often, misled) an important part of anthropological thinking. However, empirical support for the scavenging hypothesis is still lacking. Recent data based on bone surface modifications from archaeological faunas suggest, in contrast, that hominids were primary agents of carcass exploitation. Meat seems to have been an important part of Plio-Pleistocene hominid diets. Passive scavenging scenarios show that this kind of opportunistic strategy cannot afford significant meat yields. Therefore, the hunting hypothesis has not yet been disproved. This makes the hunting-and-scavenging issue more controversial than before, and calls for a revision of the current interpretive frameworks and ideas about early human behavior.
Scavenging or hunting in early hominids: theoretical framework and tests
American Anthropologist, 1986
Evidence from Bed I, Olduvai, supports the hypothesis that scavenging, not hunting, was the major meat-procurement strategy of hominids between 2 and 1.7 million years ago. Data used to evaluate the hunting and scavenging hypotheses are derivedjom studring cut marks on Bed I bovids, comparing adaptations necessary for scavenging with those of ear& hominids, and a paleoecological reconstruction of Bed I carcass biomass, carnivore guild, and hominid foraging area.
Introduction: The Study of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Hunting
Archeological Papers of The American Anthropological Association, 1993
Whatever may be the analytic utility of any specific model (Binford's or anyone else's) for the early development of hunting behavior, the broader question of the relationship between behavioral modernity and anatomical modernity at the end of the Pleistocene is a matter of widespread concern within anthropology (e.g., Trinkaus 1989; Mellars and Stringer 1989; Mellars 1990;). Regardless of when technologically assisted hunting may have started, it is clear that hunting was practiced during the later Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. Whether or not it is uniquely "modern," hunting is undeniably an important part of "modern" human behavior. Because the technology associated with hunting activities became more complex and more elaborated during the course of the Upper Pleistocene, and because the hunting weaponry and the osteological results of hunting form such major parts of the relevant archaeological record, the study of animal exploitation strategies and associated technology provides some of the most direct insights into the development of human societies existing at and immediately following the end of the Pleistocene.
Few would question the assertion that by the end of the Upper Paleolithic (about 10,000 years ago) humans were highly competent hunfers, going about (he business of hunting much as any modern forager would, and probably employing a broadly similar range of techniques, strategies and decision-making criteria. While much less is known about the foraging behavior of Plio-Pleistocene hominids, most would also probably agree that their behavior was quite unlike that of modem huntergatherers, differing not just because early hominids possessed a far more rudimentary technology, but also because they probably went about it in ways that have few analogues among contemporary foragers. Thus, we seem to have fairly clear notions about the nature of human foraging at eilher end of the Pleistocene--scav· enging and small·game hunting at the beginning, highly skilled large-game hunting by the end (see Bunn this volume).
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