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18 - Investigating Seasonal Competition between Hominins and Cave Hyaenas in the Belgian Ardennes during the Late Pleistocene: Insights from Cementum Analyses

from Part III - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2022

By
Elodie-Laure Jimenez  and
Mietje Germonpré
Edited by
Stephan Naji ,
William Rendu  and
Lionel Gourichon
Stephan Naji
Affiliation:
New York University
William Rendu
Affiliation:
University of Bordeaux (CNRS)
Lionel Gourichon
Affiliation:
Université de Nice, Sophia Antipolis
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Summary

Deciphering the seasonality of predation is a key question in prehistory to understand spatiotemporal human strategies to overcome fluctuating ecological and environmental pressure. In NW Europe, despite periodic rough environmental conditions, the Belgian Ardennes were regularly occupied by humans in the Late Pleistocene, using numerous natural shelters of the karstic valleys and the ungulate biomass reservoir. However, humans competed with several large predators, in particular cave hyaenas. In this multi-taxon, multi-site cementochronological study, we tested season-at-death of different prey accumulated by either hyaenas or hominins during the second half of MIS 3 in the Belgian Ardennes. In conjunction with a classic seasonal study on ungulate species, this study's specificity is that carnivore (hyaena) dental cementum was tested on 19 teeth from three anthropogenic and hyaena-accumulated assemblages. Despite a low proportion of interpretable data, this attempt shows that cave hyaena can yield seasonal information and can successfully be analyzed to explore top predators' differential spatial strategies.

Keywords

Late Pleistocenetop predatorscompetitioncarnivore dental cementumspatial strategieslandscape useexperimentationBelgiumhyena
Type
Chapter
Information
Dental Cementum in Anthropology , pp. 288 - 305
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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