Assessing Hominid Toothmarks in Zooarchaeology (Tim D. White
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stone age institute publication series Series Editors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth Stone Age Institute Gosport, Indiana and Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Number 1. THE OLDOWAN: Case Studies into the Earliest Stone Age Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, editors Number 2. BREATHING LIFE INTO FOSSILS: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain Travis Rayne Pickering, Kathy Schick, and Nicholas Toth, editors Number 3. THE CUTTING EDGE: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Human Origins Kathy Schick, and Nicholas Toth, editors Number 4. THE HUMAN BRAIN EVOLVING: Paleoneurological Studies in Honor of Ralph L. Holloway Douglas Broadfield, Michael Yuan, Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth, editors STONE AGE INSTITUTE PUBLICATION SERIES NUMBER 2 Series Editors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth breathing life into fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain Editors Travis Rayne Pickering University of Wisconsin, Madison Kathy Schick Indiana University Nicholas Toth Indiana University Stone Age Institute Press · www.stoneageinstitute.org 1392 W. Dittemore Road · Gosport, IN 47433 COVER CAPTIONS AND CREDITS. Front cover, clockwise from top left. Top left: Artist’s reconstruction of the depositional context of Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, with a leopard consuming a hominid carcass in a tree outside the cave: bones would subsequently wash into the cave and be incorporated in the breccia deposits. © 1985 Jay H. Matternes. Top right: The Swartkrans cave deposits in South Africa, where excavations have yielded many hominids and other animal fossils. ©1985 David L. Brill. Bottom right: Reconstruction of a hominid being carried by a leopard. © 1985 Jay H. Matternes. Bottom left: Photograph of a leopard mandible and the skull cap of a hominid from Swartkrans, with the leopard’s canines juxtaposed with puncture marks likely produced by a leopard carrying its hominid prey. © 1985 David L. Brill. Center: Photo of Bob Brain holding a cast of a spotted hyena skull signed by all of the taphonomy conference participants. © 2004 Kathy Schick, Stone Age Institute. Back cover credits. Top: © 2004 Stone Age Institute. Bottom left: © 2004 Kathy Schick, Stone Age Institute. Bottom right: © 2005 Greg Murphy. Published by the Stone Age Institute. ISBN-10: 0-9792-2761-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-9792-2761-5 Copyright © 2007, Stone Age Institute Press. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher. CHAPTER 16 CARNIVORA AND CARNIVORY: ASSESSING HOMINID TOOTHMARKS IN ZOOARCHAEOLOGY TIM D. WHITE AND NICHOLAS TOTH ABSTRACT Good science consists of strategically using prior knowledge to make projections from better-known The zooarchaeological implications of hominid domains to less well-known domains. bone chewing are relatively uninvestigated despite much Binford (2001) progress in actualistic and archaeological research since C.K. Brain’s classic 1960s studies of Hottentot/canid By virtually any defi nition, Bob Brain has conducted bone modifi cation. Many investigations continue to exceptional science for nearly his entire life. His career make the unwarranted assumption that all evidence of as a paleobiologist is exemplary. There is hardly a topic chewing in zooarchaeological assemblages is attribut- in current human evolutionary studies untouched by his able to nonhominid carnivores (the term “gnawing” is work. restricted here to rodents). In this contribution we evalu- During the two decades that followed Brain’s 1981 ate some biases that may be responsible for the observa- classic The Hunters or the Hunted? An Introduction to tion that hominid chewing continues to be underestimat- African Cave Taphonomy, archaeological and actualistic ed or ignored in zooarchaeological contexts. We review studies of bone modifi cation intensifi ed and diversifi ed. the ethnoarchaeological and experimental evidence for As a consequence, a routine component of any modern hominoid chewing traces on bones. To illustrate issues analysis of bones from archaeological contexts is the ob- surrounding the role of hominid teeth in patterning zoo- servation and recording of pits, scores, and fractures cre- archaeological assemblages we consider two cases of ated by mammalian teeth. Such modifi cations are usu- inferred cannibalism in the archaeological record. Fer- ally classifi ed as “carnivore” damage. Standardization of tile ground for continuing studies is identifi ed, but given the terms used to describe the modifi cations has proven the morphological and anatomical parallels between the elusive. Furthermore, a lack of inter-analyst consistency masticatory systems of hominids and carnivores, it ap- and replicability frequently plagues such descriptive and pears that linking chewing damage with specifi c agents comparative studies. in archaeological contexts will be more diffi cult than Even the seemingly simple classifi catory label “car- previously imagined. nivore damage” is fraught with ambiguity. This is be- cause the term “carnivore” has two meanings. One des- INTRODUCTION ignates a mammalian order. The other is a term used to denote diet. The family Hominidae is precariously posi- If the student should ask me how the tioned relative to this ambiguity. Once the hominid niche paleontologist tells the difference between was broadened by lithic technology during the Pliocene, hyaena and human teeth-marks on a bone, and consumption of large terrestrial mammals was no longer particularly a bone that has been rotting in a cave the exclusive realm of the Carnivora (see Stiner, 2002 since the everlasting hills were builded, I should for a review of what happened subsequently). This di- answer that I don’t know. etary shift is most recognizable by the stone artifacts Mark Twain 1871 (in Neider, 1961) 282 Breathing Life into Fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain with which it appears to have been associated—and by wide cultural, spatial and temporal scales would benefi t the signatures and patterns that the edges and surfaces of from the ability to discern and diagnose traces of chewing these implements leave on bones and bone assemblages. left by hominids as opposed to nonhominid carnivores. Ethnographic and primatological analogy both suggest This has been clearly recognized for over a quarter of a that muscle and marrow-eating hominids would have century (see Binford’s observations in 1981, described chewed bones of the medium and large mammals they below), but the research remains unconducted. butchered. In the sections that follow, we explore issues involv- Inspired by Bob Brain’s work in South Africa, zoo- ing the subject of hominid bone chewing. Several ex- archaeologists have made great progress in actualistic amples illustrate how analysts have ignored the role that and archaeological studies that demonstrate the impact early hominid chewing might have played in generating of both hominid and nonhominid carnivore behavior modifi cations and patterns of representation in zooar- on bone assemblages. Attributes allowing the analyst to chaeological assemblages. This lack of consideration is distinguish rodent gnawing, nonhominid carnivore, and attributable to several factors, identifi ed here as a series even ungulate chewing damage on bones have been iden- of biases that appear to have been imposed by modern tifi ed, described, and illustrated in both archaeological human culture and anatomy. Anatomically, many re- and actualistic contexts (see White, 1992 for a review). searchers have seriously underestimated the potential Analyses of these bone modifi cations play a central role of the early hominid masticatory complex to infl ict os- in ongoing discussions about early hominid behavior and teological damage during chewing. Culturally, focus on ecology. hominids as technological creatures and modern western Mammalian chewing alters individual bones and table manners may be co-conspirators in this analytical affects assemblages of bones. It modifi es bone surfaces lapse. We discuss attempts to diagnose different bone and deletes bone elements and element portions. Brain’s chewers and address the likelihood that a substantial classic work comprised both experiment and observation degree of equifi nality will ultimately be demonstrated of these effects. He studied bone assemblages generated when the requisite studies have been conducted. Our by traditional residents of the Kuiseb River’s north bank. report concludes with two presentations of case studies From the beginning, Brain recognized that these ethno- involving the possibility of human chewing of bone in archaeological bone assemblages bore the signature of contexts suggestive of cannibalism. two goat-eating agents—Hottentots and their dogs. Both agents were equipped with the masticatory means to IGNORING HOMINID CHEWING modify bone surfaces and assemblages. Brain conducted experiments to differentiate the various signatures of The presence and activities of hominids are routine- bone modifi cation and element representation patterns ly inferred by paleoanthropologists on the basis of sur- produced by these different taphonomic actors on the face modifi cations to bones in zooarchaeological assem- Hottentot ethnoarchaeological stage. He wrote: blages. Such inferences are today universally accepted. They are regularly grounded in solid actualistic research “It seemed advisable to separate the damage