At the risk of yet again blowing my own trumpet, I dealt with a rather extreme
variant of this problem in the British Late Upper Palaeolithic site of Robin
Hood Cave. At this site a 1970s study had used MNI numbers to calculate meat
weights which were subsequently used to ascribe economic importance to
individual species. A picture of Woolly Rhino hunting had been constructed.
The issue of carnivore predation & accumulation had not really been
considered. Reviewing the fauna I found that there was not a lot in the way of
woolly rhino, and that 1 tooth frag could = MNI of 1 in one layer.
Consequently I had a good rummage for cut marked bones, assuming that at least
you could postulate a direct link with human predation on these, and came up
with a rather different interpretation - predominantly centred on the
exploitation of arctic hares. Obviously the cut marked bones can only reflect
a subset of human activity/exploitation, but its the bit that can be
documented unambiguously.
This feeds into a couple of the discussions which have been running here. The
study was published in 1994 jointly by myself & Roger Jacobi and is in Oxford
Journal of Archaeology.
Ruth
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_____________________________________
Dr Ruth Charles,
Dept. of Archaeology,
University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU.
Tel: +44-191-222-5754
Fax: +44-191-222-8561
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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