Daniel S. Adler

Ahead of the Game: Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Hunting Behaviors in the Southern Caucasus

Over the past several decades a variety of models have been proposed to explain perceived behavioral and cognitive differences between Neanderthals and modern humans. A key element in many of these models and one often used as a proxy for behavioral modernity is the frequency and nature of hunting among Palaeolithic populations. Here new archaeological data from Ortvale Klde, a late Middleearly Upper Palaeolithic rockshelter in the Georgian Republic, are considered, and zooarchaeological methods are applied to the study of faunal acquisition patterns to test whether they changed significantly from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic. The analyses demonstrate that Neanderthals and modern humans practiced largely identical hunting tactics and that the two populations were equally and independently capable of acquiring and exploiting critical biogeographical information pertaining to resource availability and animal behavior. Like lithic technotypological traditions, hunting behaviors are poor proxies for major behavioral differences between Neanderthals and modern humans, a conclusion that has important implications for debates surrounding the MiddleUpper Palaeolithic transition and what features constitute modern behavior. The proposition is advanced that developments in the social realm of Upper Palaeolithic societies allowed the replacement of Neanderthals in the Caucasus with little temporal or spatial overlap and that this process was widespread beyond traditional topographic and biogeographical barriers to Neanderthal mobility.

Setting the record straight: Toward a systematic chronological understanding of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic boundary in Eurasia

The Middle to Upper Paleolithic boundary marks an important threshold in human cultural and biological evolution with the establishment of Anatomically Modern Humans and the termination of Neandertal settlement in Eurasia between 40–30 ka C BP. The demographic and cultural processes underlying this ‘‘transition’’ throughout Eurasia are among the most intensively debated issues in Paleolithic Archaeology and Human Paleontology. Of key importance to this debate are issues related to the last surviving Neandertals and the end of the Middle Paleolithic (e.g., Adler et al., 2008) on the one hand, and the first appearance of modern humans (e.g., Jacobi and Higham, 2008), ‘‘modern human behavior’’ (e.g., Pettitt, 2008), and Upper Paleolithic industries (e.g., Adler et al., 2008; Conard and Bolus, 2008; Hoffecker et al., 2008; Pinhasi et al., 2008) on

Seasonal Patterns of Prey Acquisition and Inter-group Competition During the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of the Southern Caucasus

Zooarchaeological and taphonomic analyses provide an essential backdrop to discussions of Late Middle Palaeolithic and Early Upper Palaeolithic patterns of mobility, land-use, and hunting, and the degree and manner(s) of Neanderthal and modern human competition within the southern Caucasus. Recent research at Ortvale Klde has documented the hunting of prime-age adult Capra caucasica and the organization of hunting activities according to this species’ migratory behaviors, which made them locally abundant on a seasonal basis. Our analyses suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans occupied the same ecological niche and were equally capable of learning and exploiting key biogeographic information pertaining to the feeding, mating, migratory, and flight behaviors of this species. In these respects there appear to have been few alterations in medium/large game hunting practices between the Late Middle Palaeolithic and Early Upper Palaeolithic, with ungulate species abundance in the entire stratigraphic sequence of Ortvale Klde reflecting seasonal fluctuations in food supply rather than specialization, differences in diet breadth, hunting ability, or technology. Attention is paid to faunal data from neighboring sites to test whether patterns identified at Ortvale Klde are in any way representative of larger regional subsistence behaviors. We find that such patterns are only replicable at sites that have experienced similar zooarchaeological and taphonomic study. We conclude that Neanderthal and modern human populations occupied and exploited the same ecological niches, at least seasonally, and that the regional archaeological record documents a clear spatial and temporal disruption in Neanderthal settlement resulting from failed competition with expanding modern human groups. In terms of niche and resource preference, we suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans were sympatric to the point of exclusion. Neanderthal-Modern Human Subsistence and Competition The data presented in this paper are considered in light of ongoing questions concerning Neanderthal and modern human foraging behaviors and inter-group competition. At its core, the following discussion centers on the relative degree of niche overlap, prey choice, and population size between indigenous Neanderthals and expanding modern humans. Consideration of the primary literature relating to human behavioral ecology, the specific ethnographic data employed, and its application in archaeological contexts is beyond the scope of this paper, but detailed summaries are provided elsewhere (e.g., Winterhalder and Smith, 2000; Shennan, 2002; Bird and O’Connell, 2006). Particularly relevant to the main issues addressed here are several recent studies that consider the issue of forager competition from an ecological and evolutionary perspective. These focus on resource exploitation and 9. Seasonal Patterns of Prey Acquisition and Inter-group Competition During the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of the Southern Caucasus Daniel S. Adler University of Connecticut Department of Anthropology U-2176 Storrs, CT 06269 USA daniel.adler@uconn.edu

New chronology for the Middle Palaeolithic of the southern Caucasus suggests early demise of Neanderthals in this region.

Neanderthal populations of the southern and northern Caucasus became locally extinct during the Late Pleistocene. The timing of their extinction is key to our understanding of the relationship between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMH) in Eurasia. Recent re-dating of the end of the Middle Palaeolithic (MP) at Mezmaiskaya Cave, northern Caucasus, and Ortvale Klde, southern Caucasus, suggests that Neanderthals did not survive after 39 ka cal BP (thousands of years ago, calibrated before present). Here we extend the analysis and present a revised regional chronology for MP occupational phases in western Georgia, based on a series of model-based Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dated bone samples obtained from the caves of Sakajia, Ortvala and Bronze Cave. This allows the establishment of probability intervals for the onset and end of each of the dated levels and for the end of the MP occupation at the three sites. Our results for Sakajia indicate that the end of the late Middle Palaeolithic (LMP) and start of the Upper Palaeolithic (UP) occurred between 40,200 and 37,140 cal BP. The end of the MP in the neighboring site of Ortvala occurred earlier at 43,540-41,420 cal BP (at 68.2% probability). The dating of MP layers from Bronze Cave confirms that it does not contain LMP phases. These results imply that Neanderthals did not survive in the southern Caucasus after 37 ka cal BP, supporting a model of Neanderthal extinction around the same period as reported for the northern Caucasus and other regions of Europe. Taken together with previous reports of the earliest UP phases in the region and the lack of archaeological evidence for an in situ transition, these results indicate that AMH arrived in the Caucasus a few millennia after the Neanderthal demise and that the two species probably did not interact.

Archaeology: The earliest musical tradition.

Music is a ubiquitous element in our daily lives, and was probably just as important to our early ancestors. Fragments of ancient flutes reveal that music was well established in Europe by about 40,000 years ago.