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"Morin, Eugène"
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Reassessing paleolithic subsistence : the Neandertal and modern human foragers of Saint-Césaire
\"In the field of human evolution, few subjects have generated as much controversy as the fate of the Neandertals. Most debates have centered on the problem of their affiliation with early modern humans. This book examines the hypothesis that Neandertals and early modern humans differed in terms of subsistence. To assess this hypothesis, the analysis focuses on animal bones accumulated by these groups at Saint-Cesaire, a collapsed cave in western France. The faunal evidence suggests that Neandertals and early modern humans exploited a similar range of game species\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Reassessing Paleolithic Subsistence
The contribution of Neandertals to the biological and cultural emergence of early modern humans remains highly debated in anthropology. Particularly controversial is the long-held view that Neandertals in Western Europe were replaced 30,000 to 40,000 years ago by early modern humans expanding out of Africa. This book contributes to this debate by exploring the diets and foraging patterns of both Neandertals and early modern humans. Eugène Morin examines the faunal remains from Saint-Césaire in France, which contains an exceptionally long and detailed chronological sequence, as well as genetic, anatomical and other archaeological evidence to shed new light on the problem of modern human origins.
eBook
Revisiting Bone Grease Rendering in Highly Fragmented Assemblages
Bone grease rendering is a low-return activity well described in the ethnohistorical and ethnographic literature. However, identifying this activity in archaeological contexts is complex because diagnostic criteria are few. The goals of this article are twofold: (1) to provide new experimental data on bone grease manufacture for assemblages associated with severe fragmentation, and (2) to assess how these data can be used to make stronger inferences about skeletal fat processing in the archaeological record. The results presented here show that, despite some variation, several forms of damage appear to be diagnostic of bone grease manufacture, regardless of the degree of fragmentation. The results indicate that extensive pounding produces many fragments that can be identified as deriving from articular ends, which conflicts with the oft-cited notion that articular ends are destroyed “beyond recognition” during this activity. Consequently, assemblages with few epiphyseal remains are not consistent with bone grease rendering, assuming that the comminuted fragments were not burned or discarded off-site after boiling. Because bone grease manufacture produces many small fragments, a close analysis of the indeterminate remains is strongly recommended, as is the use of fine mesh screens (2 mm or smaller) in excavations.
Journal Article
Presumed Symbolic Use of Diurnal Raptors by Neanderthals
In Africa and western Eurasia, occurrences of burials and utilized ocher fragments during the late Middle and early Late Pleistocene are often considered evidence for the emergence of symbolically-mediated behavior. Perhaps less controversial for the study of human cognitive evolution are finds of marine shell beads and complex designs on organic and mineral artifacts in early modern human (EMH) assemblages conservatively dated to ≈ 100-60 kilo-years (ka) ago. Here we show that, in France, Neanderthals used skeletal parts of large diurnal raptors presumably for symbolic purposes at Combe-Grenal in a layer dated to marine isotope stage (MIS) 5b (≈ 90 ka) and at Les Fieux in stratigraphic units dated to the early/middle phase of MIS 3 (60-40 ka). The presence of similar objects in other Middle Paleolithic contexts in France and Italy suggest that raptors were used as means of symbolic expression by Neanderthals in these regions.
Journal Article
Ecology of a Tool
New Guinea, and especially Papua New Guinea, is the last country in the world where ethnologists were able to closely observe, film and photograph the wholemanufacturing chaînes opératoires of polished stone felling tools, from quarryextraction to finished tool use. Research on the polished blades of PNG has evolvedover the years, following changing philosophies and research agendas. While it is clearthat an exceptional sum of information has been gathered, it remains centered on thatsmall part of the Highlands where conditions for field research were more pleasantthan elsewhere. Our presentation of Irian Jaya axes therefore tackles a topic thatremains mostly unexplored.Until now, stone tool research in New Guinea has followed an anthropocentricapproach, in which tools are seen more as vectors for social exchanges than as meansof acting on the environment. This monograph will take a different approach. Here,polished stone blades are placed at the center of the world, between, on one side, thetransformed natural environment, and, on the other, the social and economicenvironment. This approach will allow us to suggest new avenues of inference inarchaeology, as well as to test and abandon existing ones.In this volume, the stone blade is considered as a living being, existing in balancewithin its biotope. This idea is not far removed from the beliefs of Irian Jaya farmers,for whom life animates certain objects of their material culture.Following a brief presentation of Irian Jaya, we will describe the function of polishedstone blades in Irian Jaya societies and the distribution of hafting styles, define andstudy the quarrying zones and the areas of diffusion and use of their production, and,if possible, the different trends noted in each area of polished blade production andexchanges. Finally, we will conclude with a discussion of the ethnoarchaeologicalpotential of these contemporary observations.
eBook
Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans
Humans have two features rare in mammals: our locomotor muscles are dominated by fatigue-resistant fibres and we effectively dissipate through sweating the metabolic heat generated through prolonged, elevated activity. A promising evolutionary explanation of these features is the endurance pursuit (EP) hypothesis, which argues that both traits evolved to facilitate running down game by persistence. However, this hypothesis has faced two challenges: running is energetically costly and accounts of EPs among late twentieth century foragers are rare. While both observations appear to suggest that EPs would be ineffective, we use foraging theory to demonstrate that EPs can be quite efficient. We likewise analyse an ethnohistoric and ethnographic database of nearly 400 EP cases representing 272 globally distributed locations. We provide estimates for return rates of EPs and argue that these are comparable to other pre-modern hunting methods in specified contexts. EP hunting as a method of food procurement would have probably been available and attractive to Plio/Pleistocene hominins.
Using foraging theory and ethnohistoric data, the authors’ analysis supports the hypothesis that the human ability to sweat while running long distances evolved in the context of persistent, endurance-based pursuits of game.
Journal Article
Thermal adaptation and fatty acid profiles of bone marrow and muscles in mammals: Implications of a study of caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou)
Mammals have evolved several physiological mechanisms to cope with changes in ambient temperature. Particularly critical among them is the process of keeping the membrane of cells in a fluid phase to prevent metabolic dysfunction. In this paper, we examine variation in the fatty acid composition of bone marrow and muscle tissues in the cold-adapted caribou ( Rangifer tarandus caribou ) to determine whether there are systematic differences in fatty acid profiles between anatomical regions that could potentially be explained by thermal adaptation as influenced by cell function, including hematopoiesis. Our results indicate that the bone marrow and muscle tissues from the appendicular skeleton are more unsaturated than the same tissues in the axial skeleton, a finding that is consistent with physiological adaptation of the appendicular regions to thermal challenges. Because mechanisms of thermal adaptation appear to be widely shared among terrestrial mammals, we suggest that the same patterns may prevail in other species, possibly including humans.
Journal Article
Evidence for declines in human population densities during the early Upper Paleolithic in western Europe
In western Europe, the Middle to Upper Paleolithic (M/UP) transition, dated between [almost equal to]35,000 and [almost equal to]40,000 radiocarbon years, corresponded to a period of major human biological and cultural changes. However, information on human population densities is scarce for that period. New faunal data from the high-resolution record of Saint-Césaire, France, indicate an episode of significant climatic deterioration during the early Upper Paleolithic (EUP), which also was associated with a reduction in mammalian species diversity. High correlations between ethnographic data and mammalian species diversity suggest that this shift decreased human population densities. Reliance on reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), a highly fluctuating resource, would also have promoted declines in human population densities. These data suggest that the EUP represented for humans a period of significant niche contraction in western Europe. In this context, the possibility that a modern human expansion occurred in this region seems low. Instead, it is suggested that population bottlenecks, genetic drift, and gene flow prevailed over human population replacement as mechanisms of evolution in humans during the EUP.
Journal Article
Mass procurement and prey rankings: insights from the European rabbit
In the archeological record, the presence of smaller-bodied species is often assumed to indicate a decline in higher-ranked, larger-bodied prey and broadening of the diet to include lower-ranked items with higher handling costs. This shift is typically considered to be a product of a “broad spectrum revolution” that gave rise in many regions to increased sedentism, subsistence intensification, and investments in farming at the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary. However, recent evidence suggests that the use of small, fast prey may have emerged much earlier in hominin evolution than previously appreciated. Here, we assess ethnographic, historical, and actualistic observations of European rabbit hunting to explore whether such small, fast prey are inherently lower-ranked than larger ones. We find that, in combination, the type of procurement method and the population density of rabbits substantially affect foraging returns and the definition of prey types. When rabbits are locally abundant and mass-captured in the open, on-encounter returns are predictably high, sometimes higher than those of large-bodied ungulates. We suggest that rabbit hunting may have been locally and intermittently common during the European Middle and Late Pleistocene as rabbit densities waxed and waned.
Journal Article
Deconstructing Hunting Returns: Can We Reconstruct and Predict Payoffs from Pursuing Prey?
Explaining variation in hunter-gatherer livelihoods hinges on our ability to predict the tradeoffs and opportunities of pursuing different kinds of prey. Central to this problem is the commonly held assumption that larger animals provide higher returns upon encounter than smaller ones. However, to test this assumption, actualistic observations of hunting payoffs must be comparable across different social, technological, and ecological contexts. In this meta-analysis, we revisit published and unpublished estimates of prey return rates (n = 217 from 181 prey types) to assess, first, whether they are methodologically comparable, and second, whether they correlate with body size. We find systematic inter-study differences in how carcass yield, energetic content, and foraging returns are calculated. We correct for these inconsistencies first by calculating new estimates of energetic yield (kcals per kg live weight) and processing costs for over 300 species of terrestrial and avian game. We then recalculate on-encounter returns using a standardized formula. We find that body size is a poor predictor of on-encounter return rate, while prey characteristics and behavior, mode of procurement, and hunting technology are better predictors. Although prey body size correlates well with processing costs and edibility, relationships with pursuit time and energetic value per kilogram are relatively weak.
Journal Article