Seal bones as indicators of the timing and duration of hunter-gatherer coastal visits

doi:10.1016/0305-4403(95)90003-9

Journal of Archaeological Science

Volume 22, Issue 6, November 1995, Pages 727-740

https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-4403(95)90003-9 Get rights and content

Abstract

This study addresses the seasonality and duration of seal hunting at archaeological sites near Elands Bay on the west coast of South Africa. Mandible dimensions of modern seals are used to establish a method of determining the age at death of seals from archaeological sites. Cape Fur Seals have a restricted birth season. Relating the age of archaeological specimens to the date of birth provides the season of death, and hence the season of occupation of the sites. The distribution of seasonal determinations through the year and the coherence between predictions for first and second year animals provide an indication of the duration of sealing. A change from the exploitation of second year animals during the early Holocene to the exploitation of first year animals during the late Holocene is noted. This is associated with a change from occupation without any seasonal focus, to occupation most likely during the spring months of August to November. The changes in the age structure and the seasonal signature of the Elands Bay seal assemblages are related to changes in the environment as the sea level rose during the Holocene, and to changes in the mobility patterns of the inhabitants of the region.

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Cited by (30)

Coastal foraging and transgressive sea levels during the terminal Pleistocene: Insights from the central west coast of South Africa
2021, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
Citation Excerpt :
Given the rather limited set of observations, no conclusions regarding the depositional history of SBF during the early Holocene can be reached at this stage. Seal distal humeri data (n = 30) from EBC indicate that most of the individuals in packages 19–10 were procured in late winter and early spring (Klein and Cruz-Uribe 2016), while seal mandible metrical data (n = 41) reveals less of a seasonal focus (Woodborne et al. 1995; see also Parkington et al. 2020), which agrees with the evidence of more frequent and longer visitation for at least half of this sequence. Selected samples of bird species were studied within a previous chrono-stratigraphic framework, where packages 11 and 12 are not represented in this study (Avery 1990).
World shorelines were reconfigured after the Last Glacial Maximum due to rising sea levels. A few South African sites are known to document human adaptive responses on this trajectory, and Elands Bay Cave (EBC) is one among them. EBC faunal and cultural assemblages have been studied, but marine invertebrate remains have not received due attention until now. Successive stages of socio-economic and settlement changes moved in tandem with an approaching coastline. EBC chrono-stratigraphy shows an increasing use of the cave and a domestic character since ~13.2 cal BP when coastal foraging began. Terrestrial resources were common initially, but marine invertebrates were increasingly incorporated into peoples’ diet, with the heaviest predation and smallest limpet sizes by ~11.5 cal BP. Black mussels were dominant almost throughout and, because of unfavourable ecological conditions affecting their growth, sizes were small. Subsistence was reformulated immediately thereafter, around 10.9 cal BP, to include large quantities of marine and terrestrial vertebrates in order to satisfy the demands posed by frequent and long visits at EBC. Some visits seem to have had a ritual component associated with them, probably related to wide and active social networks. This trend ended ~9.0 cal BP when people stopped using EBC.
Contemporaneity and entanglement: Archaeological site structure from a Bayesian perspective
2020, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Citation Excerpt :
This reflects a different approach in which they refer to assumed seal ‘ages’ rather than presumed ‘month of death’. In our view their reference set of ‘circa 9 month olds’ contains both yearlings and second years culled together between the months of August and October, leading to a less discriminatory result than ours, reminiscent of that of Woodborne et al. (1995). It seems to us to be significant that the seal mandible signals for DFM and the Late Holocene sample from EBC are the same, whatever the seasonal nature of this may be.
Previously we (Woodborne et al., 1995) and many others have attempted to pinpoint the seasonality of hunter gatherer site visits by assessing the ‘ages at death’ of animals with a restricted birth season. We used seal remains from two late Holocene sites along the Cape west coast. In this reevaluation, including larger samples of both modern and archaeological seal bones, we rephrase the question from ‘at what age did this seal (these seals) die’? to ‘which month or months most effectively characterize the likely capture (death) date for this set of seals’? By shifting focus from ‘age at death’ to ‘month of death’ we attempt a more Bayesian approach by using contemporaneity of linked seal deaths at sites as a form of prior knowledge to inform predictions of season of visit. We also illustrate the entanglement of radiocarbon samples, shellfish remains, refitted ostrich eggshell water flasks, hearths and seal mandibles in the layout of the DFM site. Reflections of the brevity of occupation at DFM and the entanglement of observations are assembled to support the notion of contemporaneity of seal deaths there.
Subsistence strategies throughout the African Middle Pleistocene: Faunal evidence for behavioral change and continuity across the Earlier to Middle Stone Age transition
2019, Journal of Human Evolution
Citation Excerpt :
Also, variation in the typical body size of tortoises may reflect human predation pressure (Klein and Cruz-Uribe, 1983). At coastal South Africa sites, Cape fur seals and penguins were regularly consumed (Marean, 1986; Woodborne et al., 1995; Klein and Cruz-Uribe, 1996; Klein et al., 1999c; Steele and Klein, 2009). In addition, a number of MSA shell middens have now been documented, indicating that marine mollusks provided an important food resource when available (Avery et al., 2008; Kyriacou et al., 2015; Will et al., 2016).
The African Middle Pleistocene (781–126 ka) is a key period for human evolution, witnessing both the origin of the modern human lineage and the lithic turnover from Earlier Stone Age (ESA) Acheulean bifacial tools to Middle Stone Age (MSA) prepared core and point technologies. This ESA/MSA transition is interpreted as representing changing landscape use with greater foraging distances and more active hunting strategies. So far, these behavioral inferences are mainly based on the extensive stone tool record, with only a minor role for site-based and regional faunal studies. To provide additional insights into these behavioral changes, this paper details a pan-African metastudy of 63 Middle Pleistocene faunal assemblages from 40 sites. A hierarchical classification system identified 26 well-contextualized assemblages with quantitative paleontological and/or zooarcheological data available for detailed comparative analyses and generalized linear mixed modeling. Modeling of ungulate body size classes structured around three dimensions (context, antiquity and technology) illustrates no one-to-one correlation between changes in lithic technology (Acheulean vs. MSA) and changes in prey representation. All assessed faunal assemblages are dominated by medium-sized bovids, and variations between smaller and larger body size classes are linked to site context (cave vs. open-air), with an increase in cave sites during the Middle Pleistocene. Current data do not signal a broadening of the hominin dietary niche during the Middle Pleistocene; no meaningful variation was visible in the exploitation of smaller-sized bovids or dangerous game, with coastal resources exploited when available. Proportions of anthropogenic bone surface modifications, and hence carcass processing intensity, do increase over time although more zooarcheological data is crucial before making behavioral inferences. Overall, this paper illustrates the potential of broad scale comparative faunal analyses to provide additional insights into processes of human behavioral evolution and the mechanisms underlying patterns of technological, chronological and contextual change.
Marine and terrestrial foods as a source of brain-selective nutrients for early modern humans in the southwestern Cape, South Africa
2016, Journal of Human Evolution
Many attempts have been made to define and reconstruct the most plausible ecological and dietary niche of the earliest members of the human species. While earlier models emphasise big-game hunting in terrestrial, largely savannah environments, more recent scenarios consider the role of marine and aquatic foods as a source of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and other brain-selective nutrients. Along the coast of southern Africa, there appears to be an association between the emergence of anatomically modern humans and accumulation of some of the earliest shell middens during the Middle Stone Age (200–40 ka). Fragmentary fossil remains classified as those of anatomically modern humans, along with marine food residues and numerous material cultural indicators of increased social and behavioural complexity have been recovered from coastal sites.
In this paper, new information on the nutrient content of marine and terrestrial foods available to early modern humans in the southwestern Cape is presented and compared with existing data on the nutritional value of some wild plant and animal foods in Africa. The results suggest that coastal foraging, particularly the collection of abundant and predictable marine molluscs, would have allowed early modern humans to exploit some of the richest and most accessible sources of protein, micronutrients and longer-chain omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Reliable and accessible sources of omega-3 eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acid are considerably more restricted in terrestrial foods.
On the origins and significance of Pleistocene coastal resource use in southern Africa with particular reference to shellfish gathering
2016, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
The search for human origins in Africa has partly narrowed down to probing into the origins of the modern human lineage and the identification of a set of behaviours that characterises it. Much research effort is now dedicated to coastal southern African Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites. This record is still relatively small compared with the Middle Palaeolithic of Europe, and much of the original sites have been lost due to erosional sea level changes tied to glacial to interglacial cycles. However, more explicit conceptual frameworks for understanding coastal adaptation and its evolutionary role in this region have recently been put forward. Partly stimulated by human nutrition studies, coastal resources, especially shellfish, have acquired an unchecked high status in research agendas. Limited local ethnography on coastal foragers and a lack formalised methodologies for inter-site comparison on coastal resource procurement are evident. In this paper, aspects unique to coastal adaptation with particular reference to shellfish collection are explored. Models on the origin and evolution of coastal adaptations must consider cross-cultural ethnographic studies, move away from the simplistic use of shell densities for evaluating procurement intensity and use the much richer Later Stone Age record as a profitable source for testing hypotheses.
Exploring body size of modern South American fur seal (Arctocephalus australis) for osteometric studies in zooarchaeological remains from northern Patagonia, Argentina
2016, Quaternary International
In order to assess the role of pinnipeds in prehistoric subsistence of hunter–gatherers from northern Patagonia, traditional osteometric studies based on modern collections of Arctocephalus australis (Aa) and Otaria flavescens (Of) with known age and sex are being employed with the aim of identifying species, sex and age-classes found in zooarchaeological assemblages. A preliminary research based on a very small sample of Aa from the Uruguayan coast suggested the absence of changes in the skull size of this species during the last five decades. Of skull size reduction through time was observed as a consequence of a density-dependence process in northern and central Patagonia. In this study we discuss the use of modern analogues for the study of zooarchaeological remains of Aa. With this objective in mind, osteometrical data from modern skulls of 30 adult male Aa collected along northern and central Patagonia were analysed to assess potential diachronic changes in body size of this species. The results showed that there is no evidence of change in the body size during the last three decades (1990–2013) in the Aa population from northern and central Patagonia. This result supports the relevance of investigations if there are differences in the body size of living individuals that will be employed as analogues, for evaluating the potential of these measurements before using them in the analysis of zooarchaeological remains. The use of modern animals of Aa in osteometric analysis of fur seal assemblages recovered in archaeological sites at northern Patagonia is reasonable.

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Seal bones as indicators of the timing and duration of hunter-gatherer coastal visits

Abstract

Journal of Archaeological Science

Seals

The age and origin of the “Younger Dryas climate event” in Greenland ice cores

Paleoceanography

Seasonal mobility in the Late Stone Age

African Studies

Follow the San: an analysis of seasonality in the prehistory) of the south-western Cape, Cape Province, South Africa

Soaqua: hunter-fisher-gatherers of the Olifants River Valley, western Cape

South African Archaeological Bulletin

The effect of environmental change on the scheduling of visits to the Elands Bay Cave, Cape Province, South Africa

On “Isotope assessment and seasonal mobility in the south-western Cape of South Africa”

Current Anthropology