View - Kowalewski, M. - Virginia Tech

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY PAPERS, V. 8, 2002archeological sites contain no human bones, or thebones’ chemistry has been completely altered bydiagenesis. Thus isotopic studies are impossible inmost cases. For that reason, I do not discuss isotopicgeochemistry in this paper (see DeNiro, 1987 foran introduction to the literature).Here I describe the methods used to addressquestions about humans as predators, with greaterattention given to the research relating to humanpredation on terrestrial animals.A TRICKY ISSUE:WHAT IS “PREDATION”?When humans prey on animals, they oftenbehave extraordinarily. Not only do humansactively pursue and kill animals for food, they alsokill animals for skins, fur, and other by-products,even when no meat is to be eaten. These practicesare unique forms of predation. A modern exampleof predation for purposes other than human feedingis the case of the subadult caribou killed by Alaska’snative Nunamiut Eskimo people in late summerand fall (Binford, 1978, p. 86) to acquire the softskin for clothing; no meat is taken except fromheads, and the Nunamiut people’s dogs are allowedto eat the rest of the carcasses.A prehistoric example of procurement forproducts other than food may be found in EurasianUpper Paleolithic assemblages containing bonesfrom fur-bearing animals (Soffer, 1985, p. 310-327),usually interpreted as the result of hunting for furs.The common fur-bearers—fox, wolf, bear, andwolverine—do not provide much meat and are notabundant compared to herbivores. Most commonlyrepresented at such sites are the bones from the furbearers’lower limbs, presumably still attached tothe furs after skinning. Further support for the furhuntinghypothesis may also come from seasonalitydata—the optimal season for best fur yield wouldbe winter—and bone cutmark distributions, whichshould show a pattern resulting from carcassskinningrather than meat-stripping or body-partsectioning; this topic will be discussed below.Another prehistoric example can be seen inUpper Paleolithic sites in central Europe whichcontained huge concentrations of woolly mammothbones (see Soffer,1985 for site descriptions andoriginal references). The tons of bones are thoughtto have functioned as walls and supports for dwellingstructures. The conventional archeologicalinterpretation is that some or most of the mammothsdied natural deaths and their bones were gatheredfor buildings and fire-fuel because little wood wasavailable regionally (Soffer, 1985; also see Haynes,1989). Support for scavenging rather than huntingis found in the different degrees of weathering onthe bones (suggesting the mammoths died over anextended period of time), plus the general scarcityof butchering marks on bone surfaces and the sheervolume of bones from dozens of animals, whichmany archeologists do not see as a rational foragingchoice for spear-wielding humans.THE EVOLUTION OF HUMANPREDATION: SCAVENGING ANDHUNTING IN PREHISTORYThe prehistoric record of human meat-eatingis far from clear about the prevalence of scavengingin the earliest human economies. One faction ofprehistorians (including Binford, 1981;Blumenschine, 1995; Blumenschine and Cavallo,1992; Selvaggio, 1994; and Selvaggio and Wilder,2001) argue that Plio-Pleistocene hominids atOlduvai Gorge, Tanzania, were scavengers whosought defleshed carcasses abandoned by leopards,hyenas, or other carnivores. However, anotherfaction (including Bunn and Kroll, 1986; Bunn andEzzo, 1993; Bunn 2001) disagrees and proposesthat the hominids at Olduvai Gorge actively huntedor aggressively chased competing four-leggedcarnivores away from recent kills in order toprocure meat. The disagreement is not resolved,but methods for making the distinctions are stillbeing developed.By the end of the Lower Paleolithic (latemiddle Pleistocene times, around 200,000-400,000years ago), hominid behavior is thought to haveincluded relatively less passive scavenging andmore active hunting (Klein, 1999), althoughscavenging was occasionally done (Grayson and52