Long-distance carcass transport at Olduvai Gorge? A quantitative examination of Bed I skeletal element abundances
Introduction
Ethnographic observations indicate that hunters faced with carcass transport constraints must select a limited number of body parts for transportation from the kill site to the consumption site (Yellen, 1977, Binford, 1978, Bunn et al., 1988, O'Connell et al., 1988a, O'Connell et al., 1990, Bartram, 1993b, Abe, 2005). These observations provide underlying support behind the long-standing zooarchaeological tradition of examining the relative abundances of skeletal parts in order to interpret butchery and transport decisions (White, 1952, White, 1953, White, 1954, White, 1955, Perkins and Daly, 1968). The incorporation of skeletal element analysis into foraging theory models has provided faunal analysts with the tools to examine butchery and transport decisions in relation to energetic costs and returns (Broughton, 1994, Broughton, 1999, Grayson and Cannon, 1999, Cannon, 2003, Marean and Cleghorn, 2003, Egeland and Byerly, 2005, Nagaoka, 2005, Nagaoka, 2006, Faith, 2007). Examination of skeletal element abundances within the context of foraging theory stems largely from Binford's ethnoarchaeological study of the caribou-hunting Nunamiut (Binford, 1978). Binford reasoned that the nutritional value of different body parts plays a critical role in determining Nunamiut butchery and transport decisions. He collected data from caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and sheep (Ovis aries) carcasses to develop indices of the economic utility of skeletal portions as a tool for examining their frequencies in bone assemblages. Binford's development of economic utility indices assumes that people optimally forage across carcasses of large prey in the same manner that people optimally forage for prey across larger landscapes (Grayson, 1988, Grayson, 1989). It is now widely accepted that butchery and transport decisions are mediated by the economic value of different body parts in relationship to the energetic costs of transporting them (Bunn et al., 1988, Metcalfe and Jones, 1988, O'Connell et al., 1988a, O'Connell et al., 1990, Bartram, 1993b, Cannon, 2003).
The analysis of skeletal element frequencies within a foraging theory framework can be used to examine the carcass transport decisions of Plio-Pleistocene hominins. Were butchery and transport decisions constrained by long-distance carcass transport, similar to that documented for modern hunter-gatherers (e.g., Bunn et al., 1988, O'Connell et al., 1988b, O'Connell et al., 1990, Bartram, 1993b), or by rather short-distance carcass transport, perhaps on the scale of only tens to hundreds of meters? Among carnivores, short-distance transport has been defined as that regularly documented in their peripheral transport of prey from kill sites, less than 500 meters, in contrast to longer-distance transport to their dens (Domínguez-Rodrigo, 1994). In human foragers, short-distance transport of complete carcasses has been documented among the Hadza to be between 3 and 5 km, and long-distance transport, which includes discard of carcass remains at the kill site, from 5 km to more than 14 km (Bunn et al., 1988). Answers to the question of carcass transport behavior is relevant to one of the most contentious issues in Plio-Pleistocene archaeology: What is the behavioral significance of Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites (e.g., Domínguez-Rodrigo et al., 2007, O'Connell et al., 2002, and references cited therein)? Do they represent “central places” to which Plio-Pleistocene hominins transported fully fleshed animal carcasses from long distances (Isaac, 1978, Isaac, 1983)? Or were they “near-kill accumulations” to which hominins brought small quantities of meat and marrow from carcasses defleshed and abandoned by carnivores nearby (O'Connell et al., 2002)? The goal of this study is to assess Plio-Pleistocene hominin carcass transport strategies through a quantitative examination of skeletal element abundances recovered from five sites in Bed I, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.
Section snippets
Historical background
Associations of fragmented faunal remains with flaked stone artifacts in Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites traditionally justified the interpretations of these sites as “living floors” (Leakey, 1971), “home bases”, or “central-place foraging sites” (Isaac, 1978, Isaac, 1983), to which hominins transported a variety of foods, especially meat acquired from big-game hunting. This interpretation provided the basis for assigning numerous modern human behavioral characteristics to early Homo,
The Bed I study sites
Leakey (1971) excavated numerous archaeological sites from Bed I, dating to ca. 1.85–1.75 Ma (Walter et al., 1991). Here we examine skeletal element abundances from five assemblages: FLK North: Levels 1/2, 3, and 4; FLK-Zinjanthropus; and FLK NN: Level 1 (Table 1). The skeletal element data represent the efforts of the most recent examination of the Bed I archaeofaunas, undertaken by Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. (2007).
The first three faunal assemblages were recovered from various levels in the FLK
Explaining carcass transport decisions
For large prey that cannot be transported intact, foragers must make decisions about which body parts to transport. In the case of large vertebrates, foragers can increase energetic return rates by processing the prey at the point of acquisition in order to maximize the proportion of high-utility elements selected for transport (e.g., White, 1954, Perkins and Daly, 1968, Binford, 1978, Thomas and Mayer, 1983). Theoretical models have been developed to examine the trade-offs between transport
Methods
Examination of skeletal element abundances was accomplished here through the integration of a taphonomic model of bone survivorship with a novel approach for quantifying skeletal element frequencies (Faith, 2007, Faith and Gordon, 2007). Details are provided below.
Results
High-survival skeletal element abundances for small and large mammals are provided in Table 2. All analyses of the Bed I assemblages are based on the values reported in this table.
Prior to inferring how skeletal element abundances reflect human behavioral patterns, it is necessary to demonstrate that their abundances have not been altered by density-mediated attrition (Lyman, 1984, Lyman, 1985, Lyman, 1993, Lyman, 1994, Grayson, 1989). Here we examine whether or not the high-survival subset of
Discussion
The analysis of Bed I skeletal element abundances reveals that the frequencies of crania, mandibles, and long-bone elements cannot be distinguished from a perfectly even distribution of elements. Thus, there is no evidence for selective transport within the high-survival subset in any of the five Bed I assemblages. These patterns contrast strongly with skeletal element frequencies at later MSA/MP assemblages, which show clear evidence for preferential transport within this subset of elements.
Conclusions
Within the subset of skeletal elements most likely to resist attritional processes, there is no evidence for selective transport of small and large mammal carcasses at any of the five Bed I assemblages examined. At FLK-Zinjanthropus, where there is an established functional relationship between flaked stone artifacts and the faunal remains, these results suggest that carcass remains were transported over relatively short distances. This suggests FLK-Zinjanthropus and perhaps the other sites
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Kay Behrensmeyer, Alison Brooks, Salvatore Capaldo, R. Lee Lyman (reviewer), and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on this paper. JTF thanks the National Science Foundation for supporting this research under a Graduate Research Fellowship. MDR is thankful to the Office of the President of Kenya, the National Museums of Kenya, and COSTECH for their permission to study the Olduvai faunal collections.
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2021, Quaternary Science ReviewsCitation Excerpt :To determine the distance carcasses were transported, the Shannon Evenness Index (E) (Faith and Gordon, 2007) was calculated for high-survival elements (i.e. skull, mandible, upper, intermediate and lower limb bones) (Marean and Cleghorn, 2003). Given the problems associated with the method (Marín et al., 2017), it was used to analyse the relative transport (Faith et al., 2009; Yravedra and Domínguez-Rodrigo, 2009) rather than the transport strategies employed (Binford, 1978; Faith and Gordon, 2007). Calculations were performed using the PAST software “Equitability_J″ function (Hammer et al., 2001), which also provide a 95% confidence interval.