The archaeology and paleoenvironment of an Upper Pleistocene hyena den: An integrated approach

Data of high resolution for reconstructions of archaeological site formation processes can be obtained only by the use of precise excavation methods and comprehensive recovery techniques using fine-mesh water screening, followed by meticulous sorting and quantitative studies of all the small organic components from the screens. These methods are generally used at human occupation sites, but are not often employed at paleontological or mixed human-carnivore sites. At the site of Bois Roche, an Upper Pleistocene hyena den, we have used these meticulous recovery techniques in combination with absolute dating, geoarchaeological observations, taphonomic analyses, studies of microvertebrates and pollen analysis. Correlation of the site environmental data from pollen and microvertebrate assemblages with the vegetation record of a deep-sea core taken in the Bay of Biscay have allowed us to constrain the ages provided by ESR dating of bovid teeth and to reconstruct the physical environment of the site with a degree of confidence rarely achieved by the use of fossil remains from archaeological sites alone.     

Large carnivore attacks on hominins during the Pleistocene: a forensic approach with a Neanderthal example

Interaction between hominins and carnivores has been common and constant through human evolution and generated mutual pressures similar to those present in worldwide modern human-carnivore conflicts. This current interaction is sometimes violent and can be reflected in permanent skeletal pathologies and other bone modifications. In the present paper, we carry out a survey of 124 forensic cases of dangerous human-carnivore encounters. The objective is to infer direct hominin-carnivore confrontation during the Pleistocene, which is important to understand behavioral changes during human evolution. In addition, the case of Neanderthals is analyzed in order to find evidence of past attacks using forensic observations. The results obtained pose that Neanderthals could potentially have been involved in dangerous encounters during the Pleistocene, validating our methodology to approach past attacks from a forensic perspective.     

Hunting behavior and Neanderthal adaptability in the Late Pleistocene site of Pech-de-l'Azé I

The late Mousterian of Acheulian tradition (MTA) site of Pech-de-l'Azé 1 shows a very particular stratigraphic sequence characterized by numerous elements not usually found in Mousterian contexts such as avifauna exploitation and the use of hundreds of mineral pigments. Recent zooarchaeological and skeletochronological analyses provide new insights into the evolution of subsistence behaviors and settlement patterns of the Neanderthals that inhabited the shelter. Due to changes in hunting season, Neanderthals adapted their hunting strategies, exploiting various red deer populations which presented very different behavior. The evolution in the seasonal occupation of the shelter may have been the results of major modifications of its (series of roof collapsed) which induced a shrank in inhabitable space., which forced the Mousterians to adjust the way they used the cavity to its characteristics in order to optimize its exploitation. The conclusions underline the excellent adaptability of the Neanderthals to their physical environment.     

Bear dentine aspartic acid racemization analysis: a proxy for the dating of Pleistocene cave infills

A high correlation between chronometric determinations based on aspartic acid racemization ratios and radioactive dating methods is described from samples of cave bear (Ursus deningeri and Ursus spelaeus) dentine. For samples from a very restrictive environment, as deep cave bear sites are (in view of their highly stable geochemical and thermal history), an age calculation algorithm was obtained. It has been found that there is a very close relationship between collagen preservation, from total aspartic acid in the > 3500 D fraction, and the amino acid racemization.     

The British Late Middle Palaeolithic: An Interpretative Synthesis of Neanderthal Occupation at the Northwestern Edge of the Pleistocene World

The British Middle Palaeolithic is divided into two discrete periods of occupation: the Early Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 9–7, ~330–180 ka BP) and the Late Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 3, ~59–36 ka BP), separated by a long hiatus. Owing to the relative poverty of the record and historical difficulties in dating and correlating archaeological sites, the British Late Middle Palaeolithic has, until recently, received scant attention, and has largely been regarded as the poor man of Europe, especially by British archaeologists. Indeed, there has been more discussion of the absence of humans from Britain than of what they did when they were present. We aim here to redress that situation. Following from recent considerations of the Early Middle Palaeolithic (White et al. in J. Quat. Sci. 21:525–542, 2006; Scott, Becoming Neanderthal, Oxbow, Oxford, 2010), we offer an interpretative synthesis of the British Late Middle Palaeolithic, situating ‘British’ Neanderthals in their chronological, environmental and landscape contexts. We discuss the character of the British record, and offer an account of Neanderthal behaviour, settlement systems and technological practices at the northwestern edge of their known Upper Pleistocene range. We also examine the relationship of the enigmatic Early Upper Palaeolithic leafpoint assemblages to Neanderthals.     

Inferring Human Behaviors from Isotopic Analyses of Rat Diet: a Critical Review and Historical Application

Rat (Rattus spp.) bone collagen stable isotope values are often assumed to reflect an average of food stuffs that were available to archaeological populations. This paper considers the feasibility of using stable isotope evidence from rat remains as a source of proxy information for human food-related social, economic, and sensorial behaviors. First, a literature review of archaeological and modern ecological rat isotope work reveals that, while rat dietary signatures are often a reasonable proxy for human food waste, they will not always record an unbiased average of foods which are available in a given environment. Second, an overview of ethological, biological, and environmental factors that can influence rat diets is given from the perspective of archaeological bone chemistry, to help identify factors that require explicit and critical consideration when rat stable isotope data is taken as a proxy for human food-related behaviors. Finally, rat stable isotope values are considered to provide new evidence about the social and economic responses of an important historical English fishing community at Ferryland (CgAf-02) to conflict and political turmoil at the turn of the eighteenth century. These results also highlight how information on rat diets can provide a counterpoint to other common faunal isotope approaches that focus on dogs and pigs as a proxy for human dietary behaviors.     

Assessment of the Southern Dispersal: GIS-Based Analyses of Potential Routes at Oxygen Isotopic Stage 4

This paper explores the geographic and environmental context of the Southern Dispersal Route, which has been proposed as a migratory route for Homo sapiens from East Africa to Australasia during oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 4 (71–59 kyr). A series of assumptions and constraints garnered from modern hunter-gatherer observations are used to build a model of coastal foragers, which is then integrated with high-resolution physiographic analyses to produce a potential dispersal route along the coastline of the Indian Ocean. Paleoenvironmental conditions that may have supplied critical resources or served as obstacles to human colonization are identified and discussed in regards to human subsistence, the speed of migration, and demographic expansion. These factors suggest that rapid dispersals along coastlines and river valleys would have occurred upon the initial expansion out of Africa, but slowed as populations expanded demographically into South Asia and the Sunda Shelf. This also suggests that archaeological signatures relating to the earliest modern Homo sapiens are more likely to be recovered in South Asia.     

Animal Exploitation and Behaviour of the Latest Middle Stone Age Societies in the Middle Nile Valley: Archaeozoological and Taphonomic Analysis of Late Pleistocene Fauna from the Affad Basin,Sudan

With the research on the issue in its initial phases, the behaviour and hunting strategies of MSA communities inhabiting the Nile Valley in the Late and Terminal Pleistocene have been fragmentarily recognised thus far. Osteological materials from the area of the Affad Basin in the Middle Nile Valley, recorded in archaeological contexts and dated to the sixteenth millennium BP using OSL methods, have significantly enhanced our knowledge in this regard. It is the first time that an opportunity has occurred to construct a reliable model of the environment exploitation and the behaviour of human groups producing lithic tools using Levallois methods in the Terminal Pleistocene. Archaeozoological analyses have allowed the identification of taxa, species and anatomical origin of remains and enabled the establishment of a database of osteometric measurements. The animals hunted in the Sudanese Nile Valley during the Terminal Pleistocene have been classified with a view to refer the data to the results of analogous studies on MSA in South Africa. The behaviour of the communities occupying the Affad Basin 15,000 years ago was connected to the environment of the tree-covered, swampy savannah and extensive backwaters. Medium-sized antelope (kobus) was hunted most often. People hunted also, albeit less frequently, for large ruminants (buffalo), guenons and large rodents. Remains of fish and mega-fauna (hippopotamus and elephant) have been found in isolated concentrations, away from the camp sites. Remains of molluscs or ostrich eggs have not been registered. The condition of the osteological materials, notably their anatomical distribution, is shown to have been largely affected by wetland environment, rich in iron and manganese.     

Neanderthal Shell Tool Production: Evidence from Middle Palaeolithic Italy and Greece

The vast majority of tools recovered from Palaeolithic sites are made of stone varieties. Only rarely do non-lithic implements come to light, let alone tools produced on marine mollusc shell. Interestingly, a good number of shell implements made on Callista chione and Glycymeris sp. valves have been reported from 13 Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) sites in southern peninsular Europe. Of these, more than 300 specimens display evidence of deliberate edge retouch. They are all considered products of Neanderthals and date from ~110?ka BP to perhaps ~50?ka BP. In this paper, we review the evidence for Mousterian shell tool production in Italy and Greece??the only two countries in which such tools have been securely identified??and present experimental results obtained in the effort to understand the production process and typo-functional role(s) of the artefacts. We examine the general provisioning pattern of raw materials, as well as the typological, species-related and chronological data pertinent to the production of shell tools by Neanderthals. The data suggest that the Mousterian shell scrapers are a response to poor availability of lithic raw material in the areas of occurrence, and may be best described as an extension of chipped stone technologies to specific types of marine shell, their form defined by an existing mental template. As such, they constitute evidence for refined adaptation strategies and advanced provisioning of resources amongst Neanderthals, and may lend further support to the idea that these hominids displayed a degree of complex behaviour.     

Problems of Identification and Quantification in Archaeozoological Analysis,Part I: Insights from a Blind Test

In archaeozoology, counts are generally considered as replicable data that accurately represent the initial abundances of elements, individuals, or taxa, although perhaps only at the ordinal scale. However, few studies have tested these assumptions with control data. To improve our knowledge of these issues, we conducted a blind test that involved the analysis of two large experimental samples composed of modern ungulate specimens of known element and taxon. Because the samples differed in level of fragmentation, the blind test provides substantial information on the impact of bone processing on faunal identification and quantification. Our results suggest that Number of Identified SPecimens (NISP) and Minimum Number of Elements (MNE) provide measures of abundance for whole assemblages and for samples limited to non-long bones that are both replicable and accurate at the ratio scale. However, the same metrics generally failed, even at the ordinal level, to predict abundances in analyses restricted to long bones and long bone portions. Given these mixed results, it seems judicious, in agreement with the current majority view among archaeozoologists, to treat faunal tallies as ordinal-level information. Despite issues of reproducibility and the difficulty of aggregating counts with MNE, the blind test also indicates that this measure is more robust at predicting skeletal abundances than NISP. Substantial variations in rates of long bone fragmentation and identification probably explain the poorer performance of NISP in the blind test.     

Isotopic analysis of the ecology of herbivores and carnivores from the Middle Pleistocene deposits of the Sierra De Atapuerca,northern Spain

Carbon and oxygen isotope values reveal resource partitioning among the large mammal fauna from three contemporaneous Middle Pleistocene hominid-bearing localities within the Sierra de Atapuerca (northern Spain). Carbon isotope values sampled from the tooth enamel of fauna present during Atapuerca Faunal Unit 6 show that a C₃-dominated ecosystem surrounded the area where fossils were preserved during this time. For the herbivores, Fallow deer isotope values are significantly different from Red deer and horses and show that this species did not forage in open environments at this locality. Red deer and horses show similar feeding strategies with less negative carbon values implying use of more open environments for these taxa. For the carnivores, carbon isotope values for Ursus deningeri are significantly different from either lions (Panthera leo) or foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and support the contention that this species is herbivorous. Special metabolic mechanisms involved in hibernation in U. deningeri might also have influenced its isotope values. The carbon isotope values of remaining carnivores were similar and suggest that each was typically a generalist carnivore, eating a wide variety of prey items. While the isotopic results generally correspond to ecology indicated by previous techniques, this study shows that isotope analyses can provide further insights that alternate techniques do not provide. Isotope analyses can help elucidate the ancient ecology of taxa present in the Sierra de Atapuerca during the Middle Pleistocene allowing for an accurate portrayal of the setting in which humans lived.     

Problems of Identification and Quantification in Archaeozoological Analysis,Part II: Presentation of an Alternative Counting Method

Archaeozoologists commonly use Number of Identified SPecimens (NISP) and Minimum Number of Elements (MNE) as measures of anatomical abundances. According to a blind test examining the reproducibility and accuracy of identifications of ungulate remains (Morin et al., Part I, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, doi: 10.1007/s10816-016-9300-4), NISP provides estimates of skeletal abundances that are less robust than those based on MNE. However, although results were improved with the latter method, MNE is not free of problems. Here, we show through an analysis of paired NISP-MNE data for 24 classes of elements that MNE is prone to inflate the representation of rare parts (as measured by NISP), a phenomenon more strongly expressed in certain elements than in others. Moreover, some elements show a wide scatter of points, which raises issues of data reproducibility. MNE is also known for being seriously affected by aggregation methods. These fundamental problems severely undermine the value of MNE as a measure of abundance. This article introduces an alternative counting method that avoids many of the weaknesses of MNE. This counting method, called the Number of Distinct Elements (NDE), focuses on the occurrence of pre-determined, invariant landmarks counted on mutually exclusive specimens. Preliminary experimental results suggest that NDE counts are robust predictors of skeletal, and perhaps taxonomic, abundances. Moreover, the NDE approach eliminates the complex and time-consuming task of spreading or drawing specimens to identify fragment overlap. Furthermore, NDE values are additive and easy to calculate. Given these features, the NDE approach represents a compelling alternative to MNE in archaeozoological analysis.     

Home Is Where the Hearth Is: Anthracological and Microstratigraphic Analyses of Pleistocene and Holocene Combustion Features,Riwi Cave (Kimberley,Western Australia)

The manipulation of fire is a technological act. The identification of the archaeological signatures of the controlled use of fire has important implications not only for the estimations of the origins and functions of the first fireplaces but also for our understanding of prehistoric technological development and resource use. At Riwi (Kimberley region, Western Australia), excavations over two field seasons have revealed a discontinuous occupation sequence over the past 45 ka, showing numerous, different combustion features interspersed within the deposit. Anthracological and micromorphological investigations at Riwi Cave indicate that the combustion features at the site can be categorised into three types: flat combustion features (type A), dug combustion features (type B) and thick accumulations of mixed combustion residues (type C). These provide evidence for two kinds of combustion practice: (i) fires lit directly on the ground and most likely not re-used and (ii) ground ovens, the latter appearing some 10,000 years after the first evidence for occupation of the site. A comparison of the wood species identified within these combustion features with those from equivalent scattered context levels, enables an exploration of the potential factors influencing wood selection and fire use through time at the site. A detailed understanding of the relationship between wood charcoal remains and archaeological context yields significant information on changes to environmental context and site occupation patterns over time.     

Testing the “shift in the balance of power” hypothesis at Swartkrans, South Africa: Hominid cave use and subsistence behavior in the Early Pleistocene

C.K. Brain documented two interesting patterns in the Pleistocene faunas of Swartkrans Cave, South Africa: (1) The earliest depositional units, Members 1 and 2, preserve high numbers of hominid fossils, while the numbers drop sharply in the more recent Member 3. (2) Burned bone specimens, which seem to have been altered in fires tended by hominids, appear for the first time in Member 3. It was suggested that mastery of fire provided a “shift in the balance of power”, allowing hominids to carry out activities in the cave for the first time unmolested by predators. A lack of butchered bones in Members 1 and 2 and their presence in Member 3 provided support for the hypothesis. However, we have now identified butchered bones in all three units. Further, our findings reveal a lack of variability in butchery patterns through time at Swartkrans; in all cases hominids appear to have been proficient carcass foragers. The real “shift” at Swartkrans does not appear to be one of eventual hominid dominance over carnivores, but rather one of a predominance of leopards at Swartkrans in Member 1 times to the alternating presence of leopards and hyenas in Members 2 and 3. Consistent leopard presence in Member 1 seems to have discouraged hominid activity in the vicinity of the cave. In contrast, by the time Members 2 and 3 were forming hominids may have temporarily used the cave, taking advantage of those periods of carnivore absence.     

Pleistocene connexions between Africa and Southwest Asia: an archaeological perspective

This paper investigates the archaeological evidence for direct prehistoric connexions between Southwest Asia and Africa during the Palaeolithic period. The importance of the ‘Levantine Corridor’ bridging the two continents is stressed in describing the dispersal ofHomo erectus. The continental bridge could have been through the Nile Valley during the Late Acheulian and the emergence of earlyHomo sapiens. Upper Palaeolithic and especially Epi-Palaeolithic dispersal during the terminal Pleistocene are discussed. The role of Egyptian-Levantine connexions in the context of the complex situation which led to sedentism is stressed.     

Late Pleistocene Crocuta crocuta spelaea (Goldfuss, 1823) clans as prezewalski horse hunters and woolly rhinoceros scavengers at the open air commuting den and contemporary Neanderthal camp site Westeregeln (central Germany)

Late Pleistocene Ice Age Crocuta crocuta spelaea ( Goldfuss, 1823) hyenas from the open-air gypsum karst site Westeregeln (Saxony-Anhalt, central Germany) is dated into the early to middle Late Pleistocene. Hyena clans apparently used the karst for food storage and as “commuting den”, where typical high amounts (15% of the NISP) of hyena remains appear, also faecal pellets in concentrations for den marking purposes. Additionally small carnivores Meles, Vulpes and Mustela appear to have used some cavities as dens. Several hundreds of lowland “mammoth steppe fauna” bones (NISP = 572) must have been accumulated primarily by hyenas, and not by Neanderthals at the contemporary hyena/human camp site. Abundant caballoid horse remains of “E. germanicus Nehring, (1884)” are revised by the holotype and original material to the small E. c. przewalskii horse. Woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis remains are also abundant, and were left in several cases with typical hyena scavenging damages. Rangifer tarandus (11%) is mainly represented by numerous fragments of shed female antlers that were apparently gathered by humans, and antler bases from male animals that were collected and chewed in few cases (only large male antlers) by hyenas. The large quantities of small reindeer antlers must have been the result of collection by humans; their stratigraphic context is unclear but such large quantities most probably resulted from schamanic activities. The hyena site overlaps with a Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal camp, as well as possibly with a later human Magdalénian site.