Faunal input for evolutive dynamics of Neandertal populations in France

• Main Authors: Fernandez, Philippe, Brugal, Jean-Philip, Magniez, Pierre, Cabut, Sandrine, Condemi, Silvana, Degioanni, Anna
• Other Authors: Laboratoire méditerranéen de préhistoire Europe-Afrique (LAMPEA), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Ministère de la Culture (MC), Anthropologie bio-culturelle, Droit, Ethique et Santé (ADES), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-EFS ALPES MEDITERRANEE-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), PEPS 2016 Réseau National des MSH
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2016
• Subjects: Upper Pleistocene; ecological trends; Europe; palaeoecological analysis; [SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory; Parkland; Tundra
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01438129

International audience The disappearance of Neandertal in Western Europe is a main issue that has been debated for decades in many studies with no clearresolution until now. Three years ago we started the project NeDeMo (Neandertal Demise Modelisation) in a pluridisciplinaryresearch group with the explicit goal of identifying crucial demographic parameters that resulted in Neandertal demise. We usedclassical ecological models to test different values of vital statistics and we verified [1, 2, 3] that very small changes in fertility and/orsurvival rates were sufficient to account for the disappearance of the Neandertal population. In order to improve our models thegroup NeMoMo (Neandertal Mobility Modelisation) was created to take into account the different bioclimatic context and mam-malian associations during the Upper Pleistocene. Thus a preliminary palaeoecological analysis was undertaken starting from theNeMoMo faunal database of available archaeological and natural French sites. This database includes more than 100 stratigraphicsequences/levels containing approximatively 90 large and 50 small mammals from OIS 5 to OIS 2. Our study is founded on their ba-sic trophic preferences regarding habitat (waterside; mountain; meadow-parkland-forest; meadow-steppe-tundra), diet (browsers;grazers; mixed-feeders; frugivorous-granivorous-insectivorous which concern most of the small mammals; carnivores; omnivores)and body-weight (from <1 to >850 kg); all variables being inferred on the basis of modern species. From a methodological pointof view, we combined evolution of weight-classes, prey/predator ratio, index of Sorensen, species richness and relative diversity totest the similarity between faunal associations through time and space. Factorial analysis is used to detect underlying structuresfrom these associations in order to identify the dynamics and the main ecological trends for each temporal unit during Upper Pleis-tocene (OIS 5 to 2). In this poster we address two key questions: is there clear pattern of ...