View - Kowalewski, M. - Virginia Tech

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY PAPERS, V. 8, 2002(bones shaded in thick vegetation weather moreslowly than bones in direct sunlight).Microstratigraphic studies of buried in situspecimens may indicate if there was an actualtemporal association of human tools and animalbones. Radiometric dating of bone specimens,depositional strata, and organic artifacts also canserve to establish contemporaneity and association.But “association” or “contemporaneity” are not thesame as predation (Haynes and Stanford, 1984);humans may make use of animal bones as buildingmaterials or raw materials for artwork even when theyhave not killed the animals. To establish whetheractual hunting was done, the next necessary step afterestablishing contemporaneity and association is arelatively fine-scale taphonomic analysis.Here I list several direct methods of analyzingthe extent of human predation on animal remains.These methods were developed mainly throughexperimental and observational research. Studies ofthe processes undergone by recent animal carcassesin natural and cultural contexts are termed“neotaphonomy” and experimental archeology,respectively. Blumenschine (1986), Selvaggio(1994), Shipman (1981), and Haynes (1981, 1991),among many others, have brought archeologists’concerns to the study of animal bones. They havecounted modern carcasses in different habitats ofthe world, conscientiously recorded the actions ofscavengers and predators, examined carnivoretoothmarks on bone surfaces, modeled carcassfeedingby carnivores under a variety of differentconditions, experimentally butchered dead animalsto examine toolmarks or observed foragersprocessing animal carcasses, and measured potentialyields from butchered and scavenged animal parts.In an ideal analysis, archeologists would firstvisually or microscopically examine every animalbone fragment (all of which are saved fromexcavations, no matter how scrappy) for thepresence of marks made by butchering tools,carnivore teeth, hammerstones, or other objects.Also, the element name and body side of allspecimens, whole or fragmentary, would beidentified so a minimum number of individualanimals could be established. Much of this workmust be by comparison to reference collections andrequires training and practice (Lyman, 1994; seeespecially Blumenschine et al., 1996). The goalsof such labor-intensive analyses are very specific;I list them here in no special order:1. Spatial associations and congruent absolutedating of animal bones and human-made implements(“artifacts”) may suggest predation or scavenging.I list this method first but temper its apparentusefulness with the observation that even thetightest spatial/stratigraphic and temporalassociation of skeletal elements with human-madeartifacts such as killing implements or butcheringtools may be the most overvalued potentialindicator of predation. Artifact associations can beover-interpreted to indicate behavioral actions thatnever happened, such as the killing and butcheringof animals. Artifacts discarded at the same placeswhere animals died natural deaths do not alwaysreflect human involvement with the deaths.Careful consideration must be given to thelandscape settings of associated artifacts and animalbones, because animal remains may be naturallyabundant in certain localities such as around watersources or in caves and rockshelters where bothhumans and carnivores provisioned their young orbrought prey body parts to eat. In these locationsanimal bones and human tools or bones often cooccurbut may reflect neither human scavenging norpredation, and instead result from a generalterrestrial mammalian inclination to find shelter orresources in similar places. Thus the co-occurrenceof artifacts and animal bones does not clearly implyhuman predation in many settings, as demonstratedfor such sites as the famous South African Plio-Pleistocene hominid-bearing cave deposits (Brain,1981, 1993; de Ruiter and Berger, 2000).An interesting example of how a uniquelandscape setting actually conditioned humans toscavenge large terrestrial vertebrates is theShestakova site in western Siberia, dated to justbefore the Last Glacial Maximum (18-25,000radiocarbon years BP). Derevianko et al. (2000)proposed that woolly mammoths preferentiallycongregated at a salt-rich rock exposure in a hollowon a riverbank, where at least 18 animals died of54