HOMININ-CARNIVORE INTERACTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM MODERN CARNIVORE BONE MODIFICATION AND EARLY PLEISTOCENE ARCHAEOFAUNAS (KOOBI FORA, KENYA; OLDUVAI GORGE, TANZANIA) by BRIANA LEE POBINER A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School–New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Anthropology written under the direction of Robert J. Blumenschine and approved by ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey January 2007 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION HOMININ-CARNIVORE INTERACTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM MODERN CARNIVORE BONE MODIFICATION AND EARLY PLEISTOCENE ARCHAEOFAUNAS (KOOBI FORA, KENYA; OLDUVAI GORGE, TANZANIA) by Briana Lee Pobiner Dissertation Director: Robert J. Blumenschine Interactions between Oldowan hominins and larger carnivores likely shaped important aspects of hominin adaptation including morphology, foraging patterns, habitat preferences, and social behavior. Hypotheses of Oldowan hominin carcass procurement strategies include scavenging large muscle masses, flesh scraps and/or bone marrow from larger felid kills. Efforts to evaluate these hypotheses are hindered by a current inability to recognize zooarchaeologically the specific carnivore taxa with which hominins interacted. This dissertation helps redress this limitation by documenting and quantifying taxon-specific traces of modern African carnivore consumption of Thomson’s gazelle through buffalo-sized prey carcasses, including gross bone damage patterns, the incidence and patterning of tooth marking, and tooth mark measurements. Integrating these taphonomic traces facilitates the construction of hypotheses concerning the ii involvement of particular carnivores with Oldowan hominins. These results are applied to four Plio-Pleistocene archaeofaunas from East Africa to test hypotheses of hominin- carnivore interaction and document hominin carcass procurement strategies. Oldowan hominin carcass foraging strategies were variable. New studies of three site-scale archaeofaunal assemblages from Koobi Fora, Kenya (FwJj14A, FwJj14B, and GaJi14) document hominin extraction of meat and marrow from several prey carcasses at each site, probably with little involvement from carnivores, which seems to have been restricted to off-site limb epiphyseal destruction by hyaenids following hominin butchery. The precise carcass resource procurement method (hunting, power scavenging, passive scavenging) is indecipherable, but it is likely that hominins were acquiring considerable quantities of meat and marrow. The lack of bona fide stone tools at these sites is surprising, despite apparent on-site hominin butchery, and may relate to raw material scarcity. In contrast, analyses of a landscape-scale sample from lowermost Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, suggests involvement of a variety of carnivores with comparatively less hominin activity. Carnivore activity does not seem to have varied though time during lowermost Bed II, but it does appear to have varied over space in accordance with current predictions of vegetation regimes in different geographic locales. A model of diagnosing carnivores from bone damage and tooth mark patterns, using methodology derived from my modern studies, is applied to carcass parts from individual prey animals found in Beds I and II. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have been possible without the support of countless people and many organizations. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Rob Blumenschine, and my dissertation committee, Jack Harris, Craig Feibel, and Margaret Lewis for their assistance and encouragement throughout this research project. I would especially like to thank Rob Blumenschine for his guidance, enthusiasm, and especially his willingness to discuss my dissertation in a variety of settings and on different continents while I was finishing my writing. My fieldwork at Sweetwaters could not have succeeded without the help and company of the staff there, especially Richard Vigne, the late James Koskei, Nathan Gichohi, James Lobenyoi, and Dixon Kariuki; fellow researchers Felix Patton, Brad Cain, Justine Cordingly, and Aaron Wagner; the MMU MSc students; Alan Birkett, Linus Gatimu, and the Earthwatch volunteers. A big thanks to my assistant Tongoria and to Catherine for keeping me well fed! Thanks go to the staff of the Nairobi Animal Orphanage for their help and good spirits during my feeding experiments there. I thank Felista Mangalu for logistical support during my laboratory analysis of the Olduvai fauna at the Natural History Museum in Arusha, as well as Brittany Stephen, Lupo Santasilia, John Cavallo, and everyone at Maasai Camp in Arusha for good company. I thank Fidelis Masao, Jackson Njau, Goodluck Peter, and Augustino Venice for guidance during my fieldwork at Olduvai Gorge, 1999-2002. Many people assisted with the Koobi Fora archaeofaunas in so many ways… I first thank the students of the Koobi Fora Field School from 1998-2004 for their enthusiasm and hard work in helping to get the fossils out of the ground, and the entire iv KFFS staff for helping to make those summers so enjoyable. Thanks to Mike Rogers, Chris Monahan, Steve Merritt, David Braun, Mike Pante, and Mzalendo Kibunjia for helping to supervise the excavations, and to the late Mick Cronhelm for wonderful field memories. Rhonda Quinn and Chris Lepre provided invaluable information on the geological context of these sites. Chris Monahan, Michael Rogers, Steven Merritt, Paul Watene, and Emmanuel Ndiema granted assistance with analysis. I also acknowledge Jack Harris for inviting me to participate in this research at Koobi Fora. During laboratory analysis of the fossils, I received logistical support from staff of the NMK Archaeology Division, including I. Karega-Munene, Purity Kiura, Mulu Muia, Simon Katisya, Paul Watene, and Rose Owegi; Emma Mbua of the Paleoanthropology Division; and Mary Muungu and staff of the Paleontology Division. Ogeto Mwebi and staff of the NMK Osteology Division deserve much thanks for their help with tough taxonomic identifications. I am grateful to the following individuals for help with taxonomic identifications: Jean-Phillipe Brugal (equids), Nina Jablonski (who helped identify Theropithecus brumpti specimens from FxJj 83, a site in the KBS Member from the Karari Escarpement, which will be described elsewhere), Becky Fisher (hippos), and Laura Bishop (suids, especially for the confirmation of the identification of Kolpochoerus limnetes/olduvaiensis from GaJi14A and the identification of the Theropithecus canine root from FwJj14A). Margaret Lewis and Lars Werdelin get a special mention for last- minute help with the fossil carnivore taxonomic lists and ecomorphological interpretations. I am grateful for the office and lab space in the NMK Archaeology Division during this analysis, which was provided for by the Memorandum of Understanding between the NMK (Archaeology) and Rutgers University. v I am grateful to Rick Potts for numerous helpful and enjoyable discussions and guidance, especially during the data analysis and writing stages of my dissertation. I am also thankful to the members of the Olorgesailie field crew for making dissertation writing not only possible, but pleasant, while managing a field camp. Funding for the various phases of this research and related research during my graduate school tenure was generously provided by the following sources: National Graduate Research Fellowship (National Science Foundation); Dienje Kenyon Fellowship (Society for American Archaeology); Bigel Fellowships, Center for Human Evolutionary Studies Student Grant, and Center for African Studies Graduate Research Grant (Rutgers University); Commonwealth African Scholarship Fund (Bryn Mawr College); Award for Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (Fulbright-Hays); Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Wenner-Gren Foundation); Research Grant (L. S. B. Leakey Foundation); Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (Smithsonian Institution Human Origins Program). I stand on the shoulders of many giants, and I want to thank those who taught, guided, gave advice, and shared ideas: Rick Davis, Janet Monge, and Alan Mann during my undergraduate years at Bryn Mawr College; Leslie Aiello, when I was studying abroad at University College London; Lee Berger, Colin Menter, Darryl deRuiter, James Brink, and Lloyd Roussouw while on my field school and then learning African fauna at Florisbad Quaternary Research Station in South Africa; Susan Antón, Ryne Palombit, and Carmel Schrire while I was at Rutgers University; Rick Potts, Kay Behrensmeyer, Jennifer Clark, Chris Campisano, Matt Tocheri, Tyler Faith (who gets special mention for statistical advice), and Alison Brooks and John Yellen (whose hospitality went a long vi way) - a great community of paleoanthropologists in Washington DC; fellow Rutgers graduate students, including David Braun, Rhonda Quinn, Joanne Tactikos, Chris Lepre, Chris Campisano (again!), Jackson Njau, Angela Van Rooy, Liz Gryzmala (Jordan), Hillary Pielet (Delprete), Purity Kiura, Steve Merritt, Mike Pante, and Jack McCoy. Other people not already mentioned with whom I have enjoyed companionship and conversation at Koobi Fora, Amboseli, Nairobi, Indonesia, conferences, or elsewhere, include René Bobe, Joe Ferraro, Denne Reed, Josh Miller, Ari Grossman, Will Harcourt- Smith, Curtis Marean, Travis Pickering, and Etty Indriati. A note to my female