Henry T. Bunn

Systematic Butchery by Plio/Pleistocene Hominids at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

Human origins research by archaeologists has expanded the evidence of the diet and subsistence activities of ancient hominids. We examine an important component of that evidence, the 1.75-million-year-old faunal assemblage from the FLK Zinjanthropus site at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Skeletal-part frequencies are used to evaluate hominid access to and differential transport of carcass portions of differing nutritional value. Cut-mark frequencies and locations are used to evaluate butchery patterns including skinning, disarticulation, and defleshing of carcasses. In contrast to other recently published assessments of the FLK Zinjanthropus data, we conclude that (1) ancient hominids had full access to meaty carcasses of many small and large animals prior to any substantial loss of meat or marrow bones through other predator or scavenger feeding; (2) ancient hominids were butchering animal carcasses by an efficient and systematic technique that involved skinning, disarticulation, and defleshing; and (3) the FLK Zinjanthropus site represents a place where the secondary butchering of selected carcass portions and the consumption of substantial quantities of meat and marrow occurred.

Characteristics of an Early Hominid Scavenging Niche [and Comments and Reply]

The characteristics of scavenging opportunities in the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater are here documented and applied to the Plio/Pleistocene East Turkana and Olduvai lake basins. The earliest stone-tool-using, meat-eating hominids are argued to have most regularly encountered abandoned felid kills of medium-sized adult herbivores in riparian woodlands during the dry season, kills from which little flesh but all marrow and head contents could have been obtained. Additionally, it is suggested that they may have encountered large quantities of scavengeable flesh if sabertooth predation was concentrated on large herbivores. Such reconstruction of a possible hominid scavenging niche is considered a prerequisite to the development of criteria for the archaeological recognition of scavenging.

Patterns of skeletal representation and hominid subsistence activities at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and Koobi Fora, Kenya

Proportions of skeletal elements from diverse taxa at some of the earliest Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and Koobi Fora, Kenya, provide a useful basis for inferring aspects of the subsistence behavior of ancient hominids. Provided that non-hominid agents affecting the accumulation, modification, and preservation of bones at the sites, including transport and gnawing by carnivores, flowing water, trampling by large animals, and differential burial, can be identified and factored out, skeletal patterning referable to hominid behavior can measure the timing of access to carcasses and the degree of transport of parts of carcasses away from death sites of prey animals to other favored localities. Skeletal patterning at the major sites at Olduvai and Koobi Fora that have been called living floors, home bases, or central place foraging sites, including FLKN levels 1–2, FLK Zinjanthropus, and several smaller sites, indicates hominid access to and transport of predominantly meat and marrow yielding limb elements of the carcasses of prey animals. Along with more direct evidence of hominid involvement with carcasses, in the form of artifact-induced cut marks and fractures on meat- and marrow-rich bones, these findings indicate that some ancient hominids obtained carcasses of prey animals soon after the animals died and transported selected parts yielding quantities of meat and marrow to favored localities for further processing and consumption.

FxJj50: An early Pleistocene site in northern Kenya

Abstract Excavation in the Upper Member of the Koobi Fora Formation in Kenya has revealed a cluster of stone artefacts and broken up bones which accumulated 1–5 million years ago on the banks of a water course. The assemblage had been preserved by layers of silt. The stone artefacts consist of flakes and flake fragments plus simple flaked cobbles. It has been possible to conjoin individual pieces linking about 10 per cent of the artefacts and 4 per cent of the identifiable bones in pairs or sets. In some cases it seems likely that the specimens were fractured on the spot. Some of the fracture patterns on the bones suggest breakage with hammers, and apparent cut marks have also been found on some bones. There are signs of the presence of scavenging carnivores as well as of tool‐making hominids, and both could have contributed to the workings of a complex input‐output system. Whether the site was a home‐base camp or simply a locality used for meat‐eating and tool‐making remains uncertain. Experimental work ...

Configurational approach to identifying the earliest hominin butchers

The announcement of two approximately 3.4-million-y-old purportedly butchered fossil bones from the Dikika paleoanthropological research area (Lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia) could profoundly alter our understanding of human evolution. Butchering damage on the Dikika bones would imply that tool-assisted meat-eating began approximately 800,000 y before previously thought, based on butchered bones from 2.6- to 2.5-million-y-old sites at the Ethiopian Gona and Bouri localities. Further, the only hominin currently known from Dikika at approximately 3.4 Ma is Australopithecus afarensis, a temporally and geographically widespread species unassociated previously with any archaeological evidence of butchering. Our taphonomic configurational approach to assess the claims of A. afarensis butchery at Dikika suggests the claims of unexpectedly early butchering at the site are not warranted. The Dikika research group focused its analysis on the morphology of the marks in question but failed to demonstrate, through recovery of similarly marked in situ fossils, the exact provenience of the published fossils, and failed to note occurrences of random striae on the cortices of the published fossils (incurred through incidental movement of the defleshed specimens across and/or within their abrasive encasing sediments). The occurrence of such random striae (sometimes called collectively “trampling” damage) on the two fossils provide the configurational context for rejection of the claimed butchery marks. The earliest best evidence for hominin butchery thus remains at 2.6 to 2.5 Ma, presumably associated with more derived species than A. afarensis.

Variability in Camp Structure and Bone Food Refuse Patterning at Kua San Hunter-Gatherer Camps

As part of a widening interest in site formation processes, archaeologists have turned to ethnoarchaeology for insight into the factors that contribute to variability in the spatial makeup of prehistoric hunter-gatherer sites (e.g., Binford 1978a, 1983; Gould 1980; O’Connell 1987; Schiffer 1983; Spurting and Hayden 1984; Yellen 1977a). The structure of this volume reflects the fact that ethnoarchaeology complements archaeology in the development of methods for the discovery, description, and interpretation of intrasite spatial patterns. Together these approaches constitute an effective method for investigating prehistoric hunter-gatherer sites.

The Structure of the Lower Pleistocene Archaeological Record: A Case Study From the Koobi Fora Formation [and Comments and Reply]

Since the late igth century archaeologists have struggled to understand the behavioural significance of material remains surviving from the distant reaches of time. A study of the archaeological debris scattered through the lower Okote Member of the Koobi Fora Formation in northwestern Kenya reveals a serious mismatch between the interpretive models being applied to the earliest archaeological data and the empirical structure of those data. Both the low-density scatters and the high-density patches that make up this record are palimpsests of material remains that accumulated over tens of thousands of years. There is a remarkable similarity in the composition and characteristics of the archaeological assemblages recovered from the scatters and the patches. Both represent the material residues of many different and unrelated behavioural episodes, influenced by a different set of variables to those that produced the patterned distributions that archaeologists identify in these data. To decode the behavioural significance of these behavioural traces archaeologists need to investigate both the relationship between the material re mains created by an infinitely variable set of behavioural episodes and the patterns and trends in these data created over long time spans and to develop a theory of human action over the middle to long term.

Unraveling hominin behavior at another anthropogenic site from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania): new archaeological and taphonomic research at BK, Upper 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.

First Partial Skeleton of a 1.34-Million-Year-Old Paranthropus boisei from Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

Recent excavations in Level 4 at BK (Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania) have yielded nine hominin teeth, a distal humerus fragment, a proximal radius with much of its shaft, a femur shaft, and a tibia shaft fragment (cataloged collectively as OH 80). Those elements identified more specifically than to simply Hominidae gen. et sp. indet are attributed to Paranthropus boisei. Before this study, incontrovertible P. boisei partial skeletons, for which postcranial remains occurred in association with taxonomically diagnostic craniodental remains, were unknown. Thus, OH 80 stands as the first unambiguous, dentally associated Paranthropus partial skeleton from East Africa. The morphology and size of its constituent parts suggest that the fossils derived from an extremely robust individual who, at 1.338±0.024 Ma (1 sigma), represents one of the most recent occurrences of Paranthropus before its extinction in East Africa.

A critical re-evaluation of bone surface modification models for inferring fossil hominin and carnivore interactions through a multivariate approach: Application to the FLK Zinj archaeofaunal assemblage (Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania)

Over the past three decades, controversial interpretations of the behavioral meaning of bone Surface modifications at FLK Zinj regarding primary or secondary access to carcasses by hominins have stemmed from the independent use of mark types (cut, percussion, and tooth marks) to evaluate opposing models. Such controversy has also been based on an over-reliance on tooth mark frequencies (mostly generated by non-hominin carnivores), which have been documented to be high when hyenids are primary bone modifiers, low when felids have primary access to carcasses, and high when suids feed primarily or secondarily on carcass parts. In addition, it has also been argued that the frequency of tooth marks on the FLK Zinj bones has been overidentified by some researchers, by mistaking tooth marks with biochemical marks created by plant roots. Some methodological approaches have hampered the use of cut marks to identify hominin behavior. Most of the reasons for purported equifinality of experimental scenarios are strictly methodological and are also caused by the separate rather than joint analysis of mark types. In the present work, for the first time cut marks, tooth marks, and percussion marks will be jointly analyzed, both experimentally and at FLK Zinj. Primary and secondary access to carcasses by hominins yields different frequency associations of all of these marks, which can be diagnostic of the type of access. Such mark-type relationships can only be detected when all mark types are analyzed simultaneously and not as separate sets. This multivariate approach provides a robust interpretation of primary access to carcasses by hominins at FLK Zinj.