View - Kowalewski, M. - Virginia Tech

PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY PAPERS, V. 8, 2002ABFIGURE 2—A, Cutmarks on the distal end of a metapodial of Alces alces (moose). The marks werecreated by a steel knife used to skin the animal. B, Cutmarks on fragment of diaphysis of Equus caballus(domestic horse) experimentally butchered with stone tools. The marks were made during meat-stripping,and preceded the breaking of the element with a hammerstone. The signs of skinning versus meat-strippingare distinguished not by the morphology of each mark, but by the placement and intensity of the marks.(Haynes, 1995, 1999)—are sources of multivariatemeasures that might one day provide criteria fordistinguishing predation from scavenging ofprehistoric proboscideans, still an unsettled issue forsome time periods and world regions (Leshchinskiy,2001; Niven, 2001; Péan, 2001; Vasil’ev, 2001). Thepotential variables in ongoing neotaphonomic fieldstudies, such as whether the elephant bone sitescontain transported or in situ bones, whether theywere created serially or en masse, or whether theywere culturally or nonculturally produced, are stillbeing identified.2. Cutmark analysis may provide evidence thatdistinguishes hunting from scavenging.When tools are used to cut away meat fromthe skeleton, distinctive marks are often made atspecific attachment points on bone surfaces.Likewise, the removal of skin or the separation ofbody parts at joints leaves different marks ondifferent parts of the skeleton, which thus identifythe particular processes the carcasses underwent—skinning versus meat-stripping versus body-partsectioning (Fig. 2). Most carnivore toothmarks maybe distinguished from toolmarks by either visualor microscopic examinations (Fig. 3) (Binford,FIGURE 3—Scanning electron microscope (SEM)photomicrograph of cutmarks created by a stone toolused to strip meat from the femur of an experimentallybutchered Equus caballus (domestic horse).56