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HAYNES—RECONSTRUCTING HUMAN PREDATIONFIGURE 4—Toothmarks of Canis lupus (wolf) ona femur shaft fragment from Bison bison (bison).The marks were created by the carnassial teethstripping meat, and are very similar to marksproduced by humanly made butchering tools.1980; Blumenschine et al., 1996; Haynes, 1981;Shipman and Rose, 1983), although some marksare not easily distinguished (Fig. 4). The presenceof cutmarks on the meat-bearing portions of bonesis an indication that meat was still present andcarnivores had not fed on or “ravaged” the remainsfirst. The cuts imply that relatively complete andfresh carcasses were processed, and suggest thathumans either made the kills or acquired thecarcasses immediately after the kills were madeby other carnivores.Very well preserved killsites need not alwayscontain complete toolmarked skeletons becausehumans often transport body parts to homesites orconsumption areas removed from the kill/processingstations. “Utility” indices have been devised(Binford, 1978) to predict how the various parts ofanimal carcasses would be valued for meat,mesentery and muscle fat, and marrow, and thusimply the likelihood of specific bones or body partsbeing transported away from kills (Lupo, 2001; seealso Grayson,1989, and Lyman, 1985 for otherconsiderations). These indices differ by animal taxon(see, for example, Outram and Rowley-Conwy, 1998on horse; Binford, 1978 on domestic sheep andcaribou; Metcalfe and Jones, 1988 on caribou;Lyman, 1994 lists indices for several other taxa).These quantitative measures help explain humandecisions to remove or not to remove anatomicalparts from killsites; plus, they are also potentiallyuseful for suggesting whether humans actuallykilled the animals or found them dead aftercarnivores had ravaged the remains. Bones foundin situ with very few butchering marks andconsisting mainly of low-utility elements such aslower legs would not have provided meat or muchuseful skin. If the animal remains had beenencountered by human foragers only aftercarnivore feeding (in other words, if the humansscavenged them), relatively few butchering markswould have been made when the last scraps ofusable tendon or meat were cut off, or when limbelements were broken for salvageable marrow. Thelocation and intensity of butcher-marking plus thelow utility of the butcher-marked body parts wouldsuggest that the animal carcass was found aftercarnivore feeding.Carcasses butchered when dried, frozen, or stiffwith rigor mortis may be butcher-marked byhumans in ways different from fresh carcasses.Lupo (1994) has identified a category of stiffcarcasscutmarks seen on bones butchered whencarcasses were not fresh. Relatively more forcefulcutting or chopping may leave unique marks whenfrozen or dry tissue is difficult to remove; certainbones may be chopped through rather thansectioned at joints (ethnographic examples are inBinford, 1978, 1984, 1988; and Lupo, 1994;Saunders and Daeschler, 1994 illustrate what theyconsider to be an archeological example). Hunterswho use poison-tipped projectiles may not be ableto butcher animals immediately after they die ifthe prey must be tracked for a long distance (Lupo,1994); this technology could be associated withstiff-carcass buchering relatively often. Binford(1978, p. 480) also noted different placement andintensity of marks on bones when carcasses werebutchered to feed dogs rather than people.Another possible cause of variability inbutchering is the quantity of animal prey killed atone time. In the large prehistoric mass kills of bisonon the North American High Plains, such as Olsen-57