Sofía C. Samper Carro

Human Palaeoecological Interactions and Owl Roosting at Tron Bon Lei, Alor Island, Eastern Indonesia

ABSTRACT We report on tetrapod (Reptilia, Amphibia, Mammalia, Aves) vertebrates recovered during excavations at Tron Bon Lei rockshelter on the south coast of Alor Island, eastern Indonesia. These include both archaeological specimens recovered from a 1 m² test pit dating from ∼21 kya cal BP to the late Holocene, and a modern eastern barn owl deposit recovered nearby. To discern between the depositional processes that accumulated the small numbers of micro- and macrovertebrate remains from the archaeological deposits, the taphonomic signature of the natural assemblage was quantified and compared to the archaeological record. The taphonomic data indicates that the tetrapod archaeofaunal remains are a combination of barn owl predation of microfauna and human predation of larger fauna. This approach provides new information on human-tetrapod interactions on Alor in Wallacea during the late Quaternary, including an apparent increase in cave site use and hunting intensity during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, sea turtle butchery and probable transport, and extinctions of previously unknown giant to large rat species.

Hominin Dispersal and Settlement East of Huxley’s Line: The Role of Sea Level Changes, Island Size, and Subsistence Behavior

The thousands of islands east of Huxley’s Line have never formed a single land mass or been connected to Sunda or Sahul. The earliest records of hominins in this area are stone tools recovered from Pleistocene deposits on Flores and Sulawesi. Subsistence by these hominins as well as the later subsistence patterns exhibited by Homo floresiensis suggest that exploitation of marine resources was, at best, rare and opportunistic. Likewise, the fragmentary hominin remains recovered from Late Pleistocene deposits from Callao Cave in the Philippines exploited large game at the expense of marine resources. In contrast, the earliest zooarchaeological records of modern humans are dominated by marine fish and shellfish and include the earliest evidence of pelagic fishing using shell tools, implying complex fish-capture technology. Pleistocene lithic assemblages on these islands are unspecialized, indicating reduction of predominantly locally available stone to produce flakes and irregularly retouched pieces. By the terminal Pleistocene, records of human subsistence on very small islands indicate almost total reliance on marine foods for protein. We propose that strong links exist between subsistence strategies and dispersal throughout Wallacea, with subsistence strategies available to pre-sapiens hominins in the region being a major limiting factor in their dispersal.

Fishing in life and death: Pleistocene fish-hooks from a burial context on Alor Island, Indonesia

Abstract Fish-hooks discovered among grave goods associated with an adult female burial at the Tron Bon Lei rockshelter on the island of Alor in Indonesia are the first of their kind from a Pleistocene mortuary context in Southeast Asia. Many of the hooks are of a circular rotating design. Parallels found in various other prehistoric contexts around the globe indicate widespread cultural convergence. The association of the fish-hooks with a human burial, combined with the lack of alternative protein sources on the island, suggest that fishing was an important part of the cosmology of this community. The Tron Bon Lei burial represents the earliest-known example of a culture for whom fishing was clearly an important activity among both the living and the dead.