Back from the dead: Another response to the contextual bases of the Rising Star ‘deliberate body disposal’ hypothesis

Significance: The hypothesis that >1500 Middle Pleistocene hominin bones represent the remains of complete corpses deposited deliberately in Rising Star Cave by conspecifics is provocative. This is because intentional handling of dead bodies might imply these hominins had developed a uniquely human sense of mortality salience >235 000 years ago. We assess the contextual bases of this hypothesis and find they do not, in fact, provide its unequivocal support. In sum, critical assessment of relevant geological and taphonomic data disallows falsification of the null hypothesis that the assemblage formed as the result of a non-anthropogenic process(es). Because so, the ‘deliberate body disposal’ hypothesis remains unsupported

Beyond leopards: tooth marks and the contribution of multiple carnivore taxa to the accumulation of the Swartkrans Member 3 fossil assemblage

The ca. 1.0 myr old fauna from Swartkrans Member 3 (South Africa) preserves abundant indication of carnivore activity in the form of tooth marks (including pits) on many bone surfaces. This direct paleontological evidence is used to test a recent suggestion that leopards, regardless of prey body size, may have been almost solely responsible for the accumulation of the majority of bones in multiple deposits (including Swartkrans Member 3) from various Sterkfontein Valley cave sites. Our results falsify that hypothesis and corroborate an earlier hypothesis that, while the carcasses of smaller animals may have been deposited in Swartkrans by leopards, other kinds of carnivores (and hominids) were mostly responsible for the deposition of large animal remains. These results demonstrate the importance of choosing appropriate classes of actualistic data for constructing taphonomic inferences of assemblage formation. In addition, they stress that an all-encompassing model of assemblage formation for the hominid-bearing deposits of the Sterkfontein Valley is inadequate and that each must be evaluated individually using not just analogical reasoning but also incorporating empirical data generated in the preserved fossil samples

Taphonomic perspectives on hominid site use and foraging strategies during Bed II times at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

The faunal assemblages excavated by Mary Leakey in Bed II of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, have, like the more well-known Bed I assemblages, traditionally been interpreted as the result of hominid butchering activities in the lake margin and riverine settings of the paleo-Olduvai Basin. A reexamination of all of Leakey’s Bed I sites has shown that hominids played little or no role in the formation of all but one of those faunal assemblages, a finding that prompted the reanalysis of the Bed II sites presented here. We expand upon a previous taphonomic study that provided systematic data for HWK East Levels 1–2, MNK Main, and BK. In addition to these assemblages, we provide data on HWK East Levels 3–5, FC West, TK, and SHK. Our data contradict previous interpretations of MNK Main as a hominid accumulation but uphold the contention that BK represents a primarily hominid accumulation reflecting early access to carcasses. The small and poorly preserved assemblages from FC West and TK are difficult to link un-ambiguously to either hominids or carnivores. Site MNK Main and HWK East Levels 3–5 appear to be death arenas where carcasses accumulated via natural deaths and/or serial predation. Site SHK is severely biased by selective retention and therefore little can be said of its formational history. Nevertheless, no hominid modifications were documented in this assemblage. Comparisons with other Olduvai sites indicate a more conspicuous hyena taphonomic signal during Bed II times than Bed I times, which appears to mirror the changing configuration of the large carnivore guild. These findings also beg the question of what activities were being carried out by hominids with the stone tools discarded at these sites. Although it seems clear that hominids were utilizing stone tools to carry out subsistence activities unrelated to carcass butchery, more excavation and techniques such as phytolith analysis should be employed to explore alternative explanations

Testing the “shift in the balance of power” hypothesis at Swartkrans, South Africa: Hominid cave use and subsistence behavior in the Early Pleistocene

C.K. Brain documented two interesting patterns in the Pleistocene faunas of Swartkrans Cave, South Africa: (1) The earliest depositional units, Members 1 and 2, preserve high numbers of hominid fossils, while the numbers drop sharply in the more recent Member 3. (2) Burned bone specimens, which seem to have been altered in fires tended by hominids, appear for the first time in Member 3. It was suggested that mastery of fire provided a ?shift in the balance of power?, allowing hominids to carry out activities in the cave for the first time unmolested by predators. A lack of butchered bones in Members 1 and 2 and their presence in Member 3 provided support for the hypothesis. However, we have now identified butchered bones in all three units. Further, our findings reveal a lack of variability in butchery patterns through time at Swartkrans; in all cases hominids appear to have been proficient carcass foragers. The real ?shift? at Swartkrans does not appear to be one of eventual hominid dominance over carnivores, but rather one of a predominance of leopards at Swartkrans in Member 1 times to the alternating presence of leopards and hyenas in Members 2 and 3. Consistent leopard presence in Member 1 seems to have discouraged hominid activity in the vicinity of the cave. In contrast, by the time Members 2 and 3 were forming hominids may have temporarily used the cave, taking advantage of those periods of carnivore absence

Unraveling hominid behavior at another anthropogenic site from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania): new archaeological, taphonomic and technological research at BK, Bed II

New archaeological excavations and research at BK, Upper Bed II (Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania) have yielded a rich and unbiased collection of fossil bones. These new excavations show that BK is a stratified deposit formed in a riverine setting close to an alluvial plain. The present taphonomic study reveals the second- largest collection of hominin-modified bones from Olduvai, with abundant cut marks found on most of the anatomical areas preserved. Meat and marrow exploitation is reconstructed using the taphonomic signatures left on the bones by hominins. Highly cut-marked long limb shafts, especially those of upper limb bones, suggest that hominins at BK were actively engaged in acquiring small and middle-sized animals using strategies other than passive scavenging. The exploitation of large-sized game (Pelorovis) by Lower Pleistocene hominins, as suggested by previous researchers, is supported by the present study

Carcass processing intensity and cutmark creation: An experimental approach

Cutmarks observed in archaeofaunal assemblages are an important source of evidence in the reconstruction of prehistoric butchery strategies. Inherent in these reconstructions is the assumed covariance of the intensity of butchery activities and the resulting cutmarks. This study proposes a simple measure of processing (butchery) intensity-the number of tool strokes amassed during defleshing activities-in an attempt to test this assumption. Data on this measure of processing intensity were collected during the experimental butchery of 16 appendicular carcass segments from large ungulates. Based on the measure of processing intensity utilized here, there seems to be no clear-cut relationship between the number of tool strokes and the resulting frequency of cutmarks or the frequency with which specific bone specimen classes are cutmarked. The results presented here have substantial implications for the interpretation of cutmarks and concomitant assessments of prehistoric human diet and subsistence behavior

Experimental patterns of hammerstone percussion damage on bones: implications for inferences of carcass processing by humans

The common occurrence of hammerstone percussion damage (pits, striae, notches and impact flakes) on the fossil limb bones of ungulates indicates that marrow extraction has been an important component of hominid butchery for over two million years. Beyond this level of basic inference, it would be behaviorally informative if three deeper aspects of marrow harvesting were understood more clearly: (1) whether inter-element patterns of bone fragmentation vary when processing intensity is held constant; (2) whether butcher investment in marrow extraction correlates positively with the number of percussion marks generated; (3) whether taphonomic effectors can be identified based on percussion mark morphology, frequency and placement. Some experimental work has been conducted previously in service of exploring these questions, but we set out here to address them explicitly through the analysis of a large sample of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) limb elements fractured by hammerstone percussion. Our results indicate that (1) measures of bone fragmentation, which supposedly reflect processing intensity, are highly contingent on the research question being posed. This stresses the fact that researchers must be explicit in their definition of processing intensity. (2) In addition, hypothesized covariance between number of hammerstone blows and percussion mark frequencies are not met in our sample, corroborating previous conclusions of a lack of covariance between cutting strokes and cutmark frequencies. These results highlight the contingent nature of butchery mark production, and emphasize the need to investigate carcass resource exploitation by posing questions that do not rely on mark frequencies, but instead utilize other zooarchaeological measures. (3) Finally, our results—showing high incidences of impact notches and flakes created by direct anvil contact and “anvil scratches” created by direct hammerstone contact—suggest caution in using specific categories of percussion damage to infer their taphonomic effectors

New data and ideas on the foraging behaviour of Early Stone Age hominids at Swartkrans Cave, South Africa

New data and Interpretations presented in this paper update and augment the previous state of knowledge of early hominid subsistence behaviour at Swartkrans Cave during the formation of the Member 3 depositional unit (c. 1.0 million years 8g0). Unlike previous reconstructions of passive scavenging by early Pleistocene hom In ids In the Sterkfontein Valley. our new data lead to an Inference of early access by hominids to the carcasses of variously sized ungulates. Early access, In turn, suggests Swartkrans hominids might have possessed the capabilities to hunt and/or scavenge aggressively from primary carnivore predators by c. 1.0 Myr, a pattern that is also increasingly apparent In the penecontemporaneous archaeological record of other parts of Africa

Disentangling Early Stone Age palimpsests: determining the functional independence of hominid- and carnivore-derived portions of archaeofaunas

Determining the extent to which hominid- and carnivore-derived components of fossil bone palimpsests formed independently of each other can provide valuable information to paleoanthropologists interested in reconstructing the foraging adaptations of hominids. Because stone tool cutmarks, hammerstone percussion marks, and carnivore tooth marks are usually only imparted on bone during nutrient extraction from a carcass, these bone surface modifications are particularly amenable to the types of analyses that might meet this goal. This study compares the percentage of limb bone specimens that preserve evidence of both hominid- and carnivore-imparted bone damage from actualistic control samples and several Plio-Pleistocene archaeofaunas, including new data from Swartkrans Member 3 (South Africa). We argue that this procedure, which elucidates the degree of hominid-carnivore independence in assemblage formation, will allow researchers to extract for focused analyses high integrity components (hominid and carnivore) from presumably low integrity sites. Comparisons suggest that the hominid- and carnivore-derived components from sites in Olduvai Gorge Bed II (Tanzania), the ST Site Complex at Peninj (Tanzania), and Swartkrans Member 3 formed largely independent of each other, while data from the FLK 22 Zinjanthropus (FLK Zinj) site (Olduvai Gorge Bed I) indicate significant interdependence in assemblage formation. This contrast suggests that some Early Stone Age assemblages (e.g., the Olduvai Gorge Bed II sites, the Peninj ST Site Complex, and Swartkrans Member 3) are probably more useful than others (e.g., FLK Zinj) for assessing the maximal carcass-acquiring abilities of early hominids; in such assemblages as those in the former set, sole hominid-contribution is more confidently discerned and isolated for analysis than in assemblages such as FLK Zinj

An inter-site comparison of enamel hypoplasia in bison: implications for paleoecology and modeling Late Plains Archaic subsistence

Bison bison mandibular molars from the Late Plains Archaic kill/butchery sites of Buffalo Creek (Wyoming) and Kaplan-Hoover (Colorado) exhibit significant frequencies of dental enamel hypoplasia (DEH), a defect believed to reflect information about physiological status of individual animals. This study provides a methodology to estimate the ontogenetic and seasonal timing of DEH formation in bison dentition. Integration of these estimates with data from bison life history and grassland ecology allows inferences on age- and season-specific factors exacerbating periodic physiological declines that were recorded in the form of enamel hypoplasias. Differences between assemblages indicate regional variability in grassland conditions, with data from Buffalo Creek pointing to recurrent drought that reduced forage capacity and contributed to physiological stress in bison over two consecutive years. Seasons of physiological stress reflected in the DEH correspond to each of the three kill events at the locality, suggesting that predictability of bison behavior in this location was a critical factor in influencing the seasonal timing and location of repeated hunting episodes. Unlike Buffalo Creek, timings of stress episodes are not consistent with season of death in the Kaplan-Hoover bison assemblage, suggesting that favorable grassland conditions were the primary factor influencing timing of this large single-kill event in order to provision for the upcoming winter. DEH analysis represents a developing approach in the construction of models addressing key aspects of local grassland and bison ecology as well as offers unique insights into the hunting strategies and subsistence decisions of Late Plains Archaic foragers