A long-term perspective on Neanderthal environment and subsistence: insights from the dental micro-texture analysis of hunted ungulates at Combe-Grenal (Dordogne, France)

• Published in: PLOS ONE
• Main Authors: Berlioz, Emilie, Capdepon, Eugénie, Discamps, Emmanuel
• Other Authors: Grupo de I+D+i Evolución Humana y Adaptaciones Económicas y Ecológicas durante la Prehistoria (EVOADAPTA ), Universidad de Cantabria Santander, Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés (TRACES), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès (UT2J), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (MCC)-Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives (Inrap)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), ANR-18-CE03-0007,DeerPal,Groupes humains et cervidés au Paléolithique: intégrer la variabilité de l'écologie et de l'éthologie des proies dans l'étude des interactions homme-environnement dans le passé(2018)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: Combe-Grenal; Neanderthal; Middle Palaeolithic; subsistence strategies; feeding ecology; ungulates; paleoenvironmental reconstructions; Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA); [SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory; [SDU.STU.PG]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Paleontology; [SDV.BA.ZV]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Animal biology/Vertebrate Zoology; Rangifer tarandus
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03908371; https://hal.science/hal-03908371/document; https://hal.science/hal-03908371/file/Berlioz%20et%20al%202023.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278395

International audience Large bovids and cervids constituted major components of the European Middle Palaeolithic faunas and hence a key resource for Neanderthal populations. In paleoenvironmental reconstructions, red deer (Cervus elaphus) occurrence is classically considered as a tree-cover indicator while Bovinae (Bison priscus and Bos primigenius) and reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) occurrences are typically associated with open landscapes. However, insights into the ecology of extant ungulate populations show a more complex reality. Exploring the diet of past ungulates allows to better comprehend the hunting strategies of Palaeolithic populations and to reconstruct the modifications through time of past landscapes. By reflecting what animals have eaten during the last days or weeks of their life, dental microwear textures of herbivores link a population and its environment. Here we analyzed, via Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA), the diet of 50 Bos/Bison, 202 R. tarandus and 116 C. elaphus preyed upon by the Neanderthals that occupied Combe-Grenal rock-shelter, one of the most important Mousterian archaeo-sequences in southwestern France considering its long stratigraphy, abundance of faunal remains and the variations perceptible in Palaeolithic material culture. Grazers and mixed-feeders are the most represented dietary categories among Combe-Grenal’s guild of herbivores, highlighting the availability, along the sequence, of open landscapes. The absence of clear changes in the use of plant resources by hunted ungulates through time, even though palaeoenvironmental changes were well-documented by previous studies along the sequence, is interpreted as resulting from the hunting of non-randomly selected prey by Neanderthals, preferentially in open environments. Thus, these results provide further insight into the hunting strategies of Neanderthals and modify our perception of potential links between subsistence and material culture. Combe-Grenal hunters “stayed in the open” through millennia, and were not ...