Tortoises As a Dietary Supplement: a View from the Middle Pleistocene Site of Qesem Cave, Israel
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Quaternary Science Reviews 133 (2016) 165e182 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary Science Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quascirev Tortoises as a dietary supplement: A view from the Middle Pleistocene site of Qesem Cave, Israel * Ruth Blasco a, b, , Jordi Rosell c, d, Krister T. Smith e, Lutz Christian Maul f, Pablo Sanudo~ d, Ran Barkai b, Avi Gopher b a Centro Nacional de Investigacion sobre la Evolucion Humana (CENIEH), Paseo Sierra de Atapuerca 3, 09002 Burgos, Spain b Department of Archaeology, Tel-Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology, POB 39040, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel c IPHES; Institut Catala de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolucio Social, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain d Area de Prehistoria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avinguda de Catalunya, 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain e Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt/Main, Germany f Senckenberg Research Station of Quaternary Palaeontology, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Am Jakobskirchhof 4, 99423 Weimar, Germany article info abstract Article history: Dietary reconstructions can offer an improved perspective on human capacities of adaptation to the Received 6 September 2015 environment. New methodological approaches and analytical techniques have led to a theoretical Received in revised form framework for understanding how human groups used and adapted to their local environment. Faunal 4 December 2015 remains provide an important potential source of dietary information and allow study of behavioural Accepted 11 December 2015 variation and its evolutionary significance. Interest in determining how hominids filled the gaps in large Available online xxx prey availability with small game or what role small game played in pre-Upper Palaeolithic societies is an area of active research. Some of this work has focused on tortoises because they represent an important Keywords: Small game combination of edible and non-edible resources that are easy to collect if available. The exploitation of Tortoises these slow-moving animals features prominently in prey choice models because the low handling costs Middle Pleistocene of these reptiles make up for their small body size. Here, we present new taphonomic data from two Taphonomy tortoise assemblages extracted from the lower sequence of the Middle Pleistocene site of Qesem Cave, Qesem Cave Israel (420-300 ka), with the aim of assessing the socio-economic factors that may have led to the in- Levant clusion of this type of resource in the human diets. We show that hominid damage on large tortoise specimens from Qesem Cave is not unusual and that evidence such as cut marks, percussion marks and consistent patterns of burning suggests established sequences of processing, including cooking in the shell, defleshing, and direct percussion to access the visceral content. These matters make it possible not only to assess the potential role of tortoises as prey, but also to evaluate collecting behaviour in the resource acquisition systems and eco-social strategies at the Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex (AYCC) in the southern Levant. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction varied diet throughout its history, studies related to earlier homi- nids do in fact provide controversial data. Analyses of the stable 1.1. Hominid diet studies isotopes of carbon and nitrogen carried out in the 1990s reinforced the idea of nutritional rigidity, especially in Neanderthal fossils. The evolution of the human diet has long been a core research These techniques were primarily applied to hominids who lived in topic in many archaeological and palaeoanthropological studies. northern latitudes under cold climatic conditions, as these envi- Although it is generally assumed that Homo sapiens subsisted on a ronments seemed to preserve collagen better than temperate ones. The considerable amount of dietary uniformity revealed by these studies cemented the view of Neanderthals as top predators and * Corresponding author. Centro Nacional de Investigacion sobre la Evolucion consumers of large game meat (e.g., Richards et al., 2000; Humana (CENIEH), Paseo Sierra de Atapuerca 3, 09002 Burgos, Spain. Bocherens et al., 2005; Lee-Thorp and Sponheimer, 2006). E-mail address: [email protected] (R. Blasco). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.12.006 0277-3791/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 166 R. Blasco et al. / Quaternary Science Reviews 133 (2016) 165e182 However, this approach had a strong methodological limitation, as provided the bulk of the dietary protein, but they demonstrate the the lack of specimens from warmer periods and more southern inclusion of available plant foods. latitudes may skew the overall dietary picture (Hardy, 2010). Studies of vegetal remains are a growing body of work that Adaptation to the local environment is usually observed in the diet sheds light on the inclusion of alternative food sources in the diet of of hunter-gatherers, which tends to fit the biogeographic region pre-modern humans (Hardy and Moncel, 2011; Henry et al., 2011, where they live (e.g., Ho et al., 1972; Gould, 1981; Tanaka, 1998). 2014; Hardy et al., 2012, 2013, in press). Some of the earliest indi- Thus, geography and climate seem to have played an important role rect evidence comes from the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot in nutrition, and therefore analyses must consider the ecological Ya'aqov in Israel, where seven species of nuts and pitted stones for conditions in which past communities lived. Refined techniques nut cracking were recovered (Goren-Inbar et al., 2002). Macro- made it possible for stable isotope studies of carbon and nitrogen to botanical remains in the form of charred seeds have been found in be extended to southern European specimens and to address this sites of subsequent periods, such as Kebara Cave in Israel (Lev et al., gap. The results obtained by Salazar-García et al. (2013) in some 2005) and Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar, which include cone scales or Mediterranean sites showed similar isotope values to those living nutshells derived from stone pine (Pinus pinea)(Ward et al., 2013). in colder environments, implying again, a diet that was predomi- But the most direct evidence for use of plants comes from studies of nantly based on terrestrial foods. Similarly, other data from Middle residues on stone tools (Hardy and Moncel, 2011; Henry et al., 2011, Pleistocene localities in south-eastern France, such as Payre, sug- 2014) and dental calculus, which contain trapped phytoliths and gest the same conclusions with a clear preference for large herbi- starch grains (Henry et al., 2011; Hardy et al., 2012). The results vores in the Rhone^ Valley (Ecker et al., 2013). However, Hardy presented by Henry et al. (2014) suggest that both Neanderthals (2010) highlights the risk of relying on d15N alone to define nutri- and early modern humans from Europe and the Near East ate a tional habits, since isotope-based analysis on bulk collagen repre- similarly wide array of plant foods, including those considered low sents only the protein contribution to the diet, which is rapidly ranked, such as underground storage organs (USO) and grass seeds. dominated by meat protein dthus, the relationship between the In the case of Shanidar, Neanderthals seem to have cooked and dietary meat ratio and d15N in bone collagen is nonlinear consumed grass seeds from the Triticeae tribe (Henry et al., 2011). (Bocherens, 2009). Such analyses should always be complemented Animal bones provide another important source of dietary in- by data from other disciplines for a complete dietary picture. formation. In fact, most studies of paleodiet come from zooarch- Dental (macro- and micro-) wear studies have also shed light on aeology, which by virtue of its long history has generated a the human diet, suggesting a more complex diet during the Middle significant body of data allowing researchers to draw behavioural and early Late Pleistocene. Lalueza-Fox et al. (1996) analysed the inferences related to the evolution of human subsistence strategies. non-occlusal microwear pattern of a sample of 153 M teeth from The recovery of numerous herbivore remains associated with lithic various modern hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, and agriculturalist tools has led to focused research on the dietary contribution of groups with different diets, and compared them with 20 Middle ungulates (e.g., Stiner et al., 2000; Patou-Mathis, M., 2000; Valensi and Late Pleistocene fossils, mainly from Europe. The results indi- and Psathi, 2004; Gaudzinski-Windheuser and Roebroeks, 2014). cated that Neanderthal specimens in the sample had a pattern close Studies of large mammal assemblages have shown variation based to that of modern carnivorous hunter-gatherers (such as Inuit and on the eco-geographical location of the archaeological sites and the Fueguians), while archaic Homo sapiens seemed to have a more climate (Lorenzen et al., 2011) da situation that reflects the hom- abrasive diet. In spite of this, they also noted certain variability in inid capacity to adapt to different landscapes and environments the Neanderthal specimens from Saint-Cesaire, Marillac, and (e.g., Blasco et al., 2013a). An example is that in settlements of Malarnaud, which fell within the distribution of mixed diet hunter- northern latitudes reindeer are normally abundant, while in gatherers. The notion of Neanderthal nutritional homogeneity was southern latitudes deer and horses tend to dominate;