To all,
I've had the opportunity to read the following delightful paper, (available through Science Direct and Elsevier online from Quaternary International, In Press):
CLICK HERE ... in which Paola Villa and colleagues report on their 1993-1999 excavations at the Ambrona site. I've cut-and-pasted the abstract immediately below and my additional comment will follow:
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New data from Ambrona: closing the hunting versus scavenging debate
Paola Villa (a)*, Enrique Soto (b), Manuel Santonja (c), Alfredo Pérez-González (d), Rafael Mora (e), Joaquim Parcerisas (e) and Carmen Sesé(b)
(a) University of Colorado Museum, UCB 265, Boulder, CO 80309-0265, USA
(b) Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain
(c) Museo de Salamanca, Patio de Escuelas 2, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
(d) Departamento de Geodinamica, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain
(e) Departamento de Prehistoria, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Available online 20 August 2004.
Abstract
This paper presents a taphonomic analysis of the faunal assemblages from the 1993–1999 excavations at Ambrona (Spain), directed by Santonja and Pérez-González. The purpose of the new excavations was to achieve a better understanding of the stratigraphic sequence, general geology, sedimentary context and processes of accumulation of materials. Our objectives are to evaluate the opposing interpretations of the hominid subsistence activities at the site proposed by Freeman and Binford. The faunal and lithic remains are found in different sedimentary contexts: an alluvial fan, lacustrine muds, fluviatile clay–sands and channel deposits. Faunal remains in the lacustrine muds are often, but not always, in primary context. Remains of elephant and deer carcasses may be found in partial articulation or proximity and represent natural occurrences without any clear evidence of hominid intervention. In other contexts the faunal remains are occurrences of single anatomical elements either displaced by water or left isolated in situ. There are no carnivore marks; bones and stone artifacts show varying degrees of mechanical abrasion due to water transport. Limited evidence of human action on bones is provided by a few SEM verified cutmarks and some anthropic fractures. They document butchery of various animals, including elephants. We cannot prove hunting but we can definitely reject Binford's idea of marginal scavenging of medium-size ungulates from carnivore kills. Ambrona is a complex mix of natural and human components, the remnant of a natural landscape regularly visited by hominids, who transported some artifacts from nonlocal raw material sources and had an organized approach to meat acquisition. However, strong evidence of elephant hunting is provided only by sites younger than Ambrona.
* Corresponding author. Fax: 1+303-738-0128.
doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2004.03.001
Copyright © 2004 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA All rights reserved.
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I must say I enjoyed reading this article. Ambrona and Torralba were excavated by Howell and Freeman in 1961-1963 and their interpretation featured prominently in the common perception of my youth in the 1960s and 1970s as examples of Homo erectus hunting episodes. Later, in the 1980s, Torralba (and by implication, Ambrona) was reinterpreted by Binford, whose conclusions were the opposite of Freeman's: the main activity represented at Torralba was not hunting but marginal scavenging.
The conclusion of Villa et al. (2004) is that the fundamental weakness these two opposing behavioral hypotheses share is that neither "considered the sedimentary processes and stratigraphic context of these small assemblages".
To arrive at this conclusion, Villa et al. (2004) extensively document their data from 1993-1999 excavations. The abstract cut-and-pasted above is the conclusion, but the article with references is 28 pages in length and very detailed, with lots of figures, photos, graphs, etc. All you'd ever want to know about swampland taphonomy.
Villa et al. (2004) reinterpret Ambrona (and by extension, Torralba) as sites "regularly visited by humans who were aware of the opportunities for meat provisioning offered by this particular locale, which was also favored by herds of elephants as a watering point within their home range". They interpret the low-density of find spots and artifacts as possibly indicating "non-intensive occupation of this area".
"The hominids were bringing with them both blanks and finished artifacts from sources of raw materials used again and again. Their repeated visits throughout a span of time, impossible to define yet long enough for the deposition of a rather thick series of deposits and possibly in the order of millennia, suggest that knowledge of the opportunities of the site was passed down through generations. Whether meat was acquired through hunting or by taking advantage of natural deaths, we cannot say. But our data allows us to reject interpretations of marginal scavenging and the ad hoc exploitation of carcass remnants hypothesized by Binford. It is only at late Middle Pleistocene sites like Le Cotte de Saint-Brelade (Scott 1986) or at the Last Interglacial site of Lehringen (Veil and Plisson, 1990) that hunting of elephants (and rhinos) can be put forward as a valid hypothesis".
Another conclusion that drew my interest is that Villa et al. (2004) found that "the two sites are in different morphostratigraphic positions, do not belong to the same formation as previously believed (Butzer, 1965; Howell et al., 1995) and are not of the same age. Ambrona is older than Torralba..."
Torralba maybe correlates to ca. 240-200 ka and Ambrona to >350 ka or maybe OIS 12 (ca. 470-430 ka), according to the way I read what they present as estimates.
Along the way while issuing "The scavenging hypothesis: a postmortem", the authors take a swipe at Mary Stiner's study of Guattari and Moscerini, two Neanderthal sites in Italy, complaining that "...[T]hese Italian assemblages appear to be heterogeneous aggregates of materials accumulated over a long interval of time; they are too small and residual for making generalized behavioral inferences...". They also cite several studies showing to their satisfaction that, although they themselves can't demonstrate hunting at Ambrona, there is a growing body of evidence from the Middle Pleistocene that demonstrates that Neanderthal and earlier hominid subsistence strategies were based on hunting, not scavenging (although they admit scavenging was sometimes practiced).
Which returns us to the title of the paper: "...closing the hunting versus scavenging debate..."
As if!!!
Does any debate in paleoanthropology really close? But they do a pretty good job demolishing the idea that Middle Pleistocene hominids were capable only of aimless stumbling around breaking up bones for marrow.
Dar
