| Summary: | Since their discovery over a century ago, Neandertals have been the subject of myriad studies concerning their behavior, biology, and evolutionary relationship with humans. Despite decades of intensive research, the behavior of our closest relatives remains among the more contentious topics of paleoanthropology. Beginning in the mid-20th century, researchers began to recognize the complexity of the growing Middle Paleolithic archaeological record associated with Neandertals, particularly the variability in their lithic assemblages. Lithic studies have remained a cornerstone of behavioral investigations, but the faunal record is also recognized as a crucial component for exploring Neandertal lifeways. Changes in prey resource type and availability in differing environmental contexts likely impacted how Neandertals navigated their landscape, affecting both hunting and prey processing practices as well as tool-making decisions. Quina Mousterian lithic assemblages in southwestern France are often associated with faunal assemblages with high proportions of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), leading to suggestions that the characteristic Quina scrapers with intensive retouch signify a flexible, adaptable, and highly mobile toolkit appropriate for seasonal hunting of this possibly migratory species. This idea must be more fully explored through systematic zooarchaeological studies of mobility-related topics such as seasonality and prey carcass transport.This study begins to address these questions through zooarchaeological analyses of Quina-associated faunal assemblages from three sites in southwestern France: Roc de Marsal Level 4, Jonzac Level 22, and Pech de l'Azé IV Level 4a. Previous studies looked at subsets of these assemblages but I sought to generate complete datasets using consistent methodology, which required a full analysis of Roc de Marsal and an analysis of small materials from screening at Jonzac and Pech d l'Azé IV. Seasonality is investigated through studies of teeth (dental eruption and wear and cementum ...
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