Gaudzinski, S., Roebroeks, W., 2000. Adults only: Reindeer hunting at the Middle Palaeolithic site Salzgitter Lebenstedt, Northern Germany. Journal of Human Evolution 38, 497-521. (original) (raw)

The Middle Palaeolithic site Salzgitter Lebenstedt (northern Ger many), excavated in 1952, is weil known because of its well-preservedfaunal remains, dorninated by aduit reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). The archaeological assembiage accumulated in an arctic setting in anearlier part of the last (Weichsel) glacial (01S5-3). The site is remarkable because of the presence of unique Middle Palaeohthic bone tools and the occurrence of the northernrnost Neanderthal rernains, but this paper focuses on an analysis of its reindeer assemblage. The resuits indicate autumn hunting of reindeer by Middle Palaeolithic hominids. After the hunt, carcasses were butchered and in subsequent marrow processing of the bones a selection against young and sub-adult animals occurred. Aduits were clearly preferred, and from their bones, again, poorer marrow bones were neglected. This focus on primeness of resources has been documented in other dornains of Neanderthal behaviour, hut Salzgitter Lebenstedt is the best example yet known in terms of systematic and routinized processing of garne. The Salzgitter Lebenstedt assernblage displays sorne rernarkable sirnilarities to the Late Glacial reindeer assernblages from the Ahrensburg tunnel valley sites. The subsequent review ofthe evidence on subsistence strategies from earher periods of the European Palaeolithic shows that hunting of large mammals may have been a part of the behavioural repertoire of the Middle Pleistocene occupants of Europe from the earlfest occupation onwards. At the same time, it is suggested that these eariy hunting strategies were incorporated in ways of rnoving through landscapes (“settlement systems“) which were different frorn what we know from the middleparts of the Upper Palaeolithic onwards.