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Carcass Transport Decisions in Homo Antecessor Subsistence Strategies

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Carcass Transport Decisions in Homo Antecessor Subsistence Strategies Journal of Human Evolution 61 (2011) 425e446 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Human Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol Carcass transport decisions in Homo antecessor subsistence strategies Palmira Saladié a,b,*, Rosa Huguet a,b, Carlos Díez c, Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo a,b,d, Isabel Cáceres a,b, Josep Vallverdú a,b, Jordi Rosell a,b, José María Bermúdez de Castro e, Eudald Carbonell a,b,f a IPHES, Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, C/Escorxador s/n, 43003 Tarragona, Spain b Area de Prehistoria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avinguda de Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain c Laboratorio de Prehistoria, IþDþi, Universidad de Burgos, Plaza Misael Bañuelos s/n, 09001 Burgos, Spain d Equipo Primeros Pobladores de Extremadura, Casa de la Cultura Rodríguez Moñino, Avda, Cervantes s/n, 10003 Cáceres, Spain e Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Paseo Sierra de Atapuerca s/n, 09002 Burgos, Spain f Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of Beijing, China article info abstract Article history: Pleistocene foragers used several prey acquisition and processing strategies. These strategies and their Received 23 November 2009 associated decisions are elucidated by taphonomic studies that cover animal transport, modifications by Accepted 26 May 2011 different agents and archaeological remains. Interpretative models of archaeological sites are by necessity based on natural and experimental observations. Ethno-archaeological data shows that several Keywords: factors influenced decisions about carcass transport from the kill site to the home site. These factors often Differential transport have little archaeological visibility. Díez et al. (1999) has previously interpreted the general character- Anatomical profiles istics of the macro-mammal remains from Gran Dolina Level TD6-2 (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain) Archaic Homo fi Zooarchaeology as the result of anthropic accumulation, in which the anatomical pro les appeared to be the result of ’ Hunting selective transport based on the animals weight. Recent taphonomic analysis has shown that carcasses Pleistocene with different weights may be subject to similar transport strategies, suggesting that other factors influenced these choices. The hominins that occupied TD6-2 (the TD6-2 hominin group), at least sometimes, transported large carcasses to the cave in their entirety, implying participation by groups of individuals in hunting parties. These individuals delayed their consumption of large amounts of food, instead moving it to Gran Dolina, where it was shared with other group members. These decisions are evidence of social cooperation and food sharing amongst early European hominins. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction 1994; Milo, 1998, 2005), c) carnivore gnawing and ravaging (e.g., Binford, 1981; Marean and Spencer, 1991; Marean et al., 1992; It is uncommon to find whole carcasses in archaeological Blumenschine and Marean, 1993; Madrigal and Holt, 2002; assemblages. Anatomical connections are usually scarce, with Munson and Garniewicz, 2003; Marean and Cleghorn, 2003; Faith a high level of broken remains and a bias in the animals’ anatomical and Behrensmeyer, 2006), and/or d) differential destruction of profiles. This may be due to: a) hominins selecting certain elements some bones or their portions by post-depositional processes (e.g., for transport (e.g., Yellen, 1977; Binford, 1978; Bunn and Kroll, 1986; Brain, 1981; Klein and Cruz-Uribe, 1984; Marean, 1991; Lyman, O’Connell et al., 1988, 1990; Gifford-Gonzalez, 1993; Oliver, 1993; 1994). The aforementioned causes can hinder the reconstruction of Monahan, 1998; Faith and Gordon, 2007), b) activities that occur at the original anatomical composition. the home base, e.g., bone cooking, cremation, bone breakage and/or Skeletal-part profiles can help to interpret the type of access to food sharing (e.g., Todd and Rapson, 1988; Blumenschine and animals (Bunn and Ezzo, 1993) and the transport strategy patterns Selvaggio, 1988; Gifford-Gonzalez, 1993; Oliver, 1993; Marshall, used by Pleistocene hominins. Unfortunately, strict behavioral conclusions based on anatomical profiles may only be valid at sites with a simple taphonomic history (Lupo, 1999). Biological and non- * Corresponding author. biological processes subjected the majority of fauna assemblages, E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Saladié), [email protected] (R. many of which consisted of multiple events, to destruction and Huguet), [email protected] (C. Díez), [email protected] (A. Rodríguez-Hidalgo), modification after hominin activity (Marean and Cleghorn, 2003). [email protected] (I. Cáceres), [email protected] (J. Vallverdú), jordi.rosell@ urv.cat (J. Rosell), [email protected] (J.M. Bermúdez de Castro), ecarbonell@iphes. Many other circumstances can also affect transport decisions cat (E. Carbonell). and therefore influence different anatomical profiles. The results 0047-2484/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.05.012 426 P. Saladié et al. / Journal of Human Evolution 61 (2011) 425e446 obtained by (O’Connell et al., 1988, 1990 and Bunn and colleagues Decisions that are the basis of human behavior may be highly Bunn and Kroll, 1986, 1988; Bunn, 1993), who both presented variable and subject to different determining factors. These opposing interpretations of Hadza carcass transport after studying factors can lead to various results in the archeological record, similar samples obtained in relatively similar time frames, which are sometimes superimposed. These superimpositions can demonstrates this problem. These contradictions are partially due hinder the legibility of archaeological assemblages from specific to their use of different study methods. They did agree on issues events and when combined with the possible involvement of such as the relationship between transport type and animal weight, other agents, makes inferences about subsistence strategies by and the dependence of the final decision about bone transportation prehistoric hominins very difficult. This paper presents on fat and marrow content. Bunn (1993) also found a link between a zooarchaeological perspective on an updated analysis of the several decisions and the anatomy of specific species regardless of remains from Level TD6-2 at Gran Dolina (Sierra de Atapuerca, the animal’s weight. Monahan (1998) reassessed the data pub- Burgos, Spain). Our aim is to interpret Homo antecessor subsis- lished by Bunn and Kroll (1986); O’Connell et al. (1988,1990),ashe tence strategies (access to and transport of prey), and to high- believed that the two data sets were not sufficiently different to light several social factors that may have been involved. A justify contradictory interpretations. Monahan (1998) concluded previous study of TD6-2 (Díez et al., 1999) proposed that the that the Hadza do not transport the carcasses on the basis of the transport decisions made by H. antecessor were related to prey schlepp effect (i.e., tendency to only transport limbs, Perkins and weight. Current data make this hypothesis more complex, and Daly, 1968). Instead, he determined that the transport and pro- enables us to consider whether the selection decisions of early cessing costs, as well as the levels of usefulness of various items, hominins regarding carcass transport may have involved other helped to explain the transport behavior of these groups and factors. variations in their decisions. According to Monahan (1998: 422), the anatomical profiles of the items transported based on animal weight: “.do not reflect a single, uni-modal pattern of carcass The Gran Dolina site and Level TD6-2 transport, but the sum total of different transport modes”. Addi- tionally, the distance between the kill/butchering site and the home Gran Dolina is a cave located in the Railway Trench (Sierra de base (Bunn and Kroll, 1988; O’Connell et al., 1990; Monahan, 1998), Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain). Eleven lithostratigraphic units have been the number of animals to be processed, the number of participants documented in the sedimentary deposits, defined as TD1-TD11 in the expeditions, the location and time of day of carcass acqui- from the base to the top (Parés and Pérez-González, 1999; Pérez- sition (Yellen, 1977; Binford, 1978, 1981, 1984; Bunn and Kroll, 1986, González et al., 2001). See Parés and Pérez-González (1999) and O’Connell et al., 1988, 1990; Bunn, 1993; Gifford-Gonzalez, 1993; Rodríguez et al. (2010) for detailed descriptions of the site Oliver, 1993; Monahan, 1998; Faith et al., 2009) and the risk of lithostratigraphy. predation by other carnivores during the initial processing Magnetic polarity dating has situated Level TD6 in the (Monahan, 1998) are other variables that may have strongly influ- Matuyama Chron, more than 780 thousand years ago (ka) (Parés enced transport decisions. and Pérez-González, 1995, 1999). Combined with ESR and Researchers must consider the relative presence of various uranium series, these results show an age of between 780 and elements and preserved portions in the archaeological assemblages 857 ka (Falguères et al., 1999). The most recent thermo- in order to assess the anatomical profiles. For this purpose, luminescence and infrared stimulated luminescence data suggest researchers mainly use the repetition of bone portions to estimate an age of 960 Æ 120 ka (TL) (Berger et al., 2008). the Minimum Number of Elements (MNE)
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