Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Tracking Climate-Driven Changes in Neandertal Subsistence Behaviors and Prey Migration Patterns

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The Neandertals were a species of ancient human that occupied Europe during the last ice age. By ~30,000 years ago, they were fully replaced by modern humans who emigrated from Africa, but the ultimate reason for their disappearance remains controversial. The process of the extinction of Neandertals in Europe remains an unanswered anthropological topic of considerable scientific interest. The proposed project contributes by testing the "Climatic Stress Model", which holds that successive cold phases doomed Neandertals to extinction before modern humans entered Europe. Specifically, this project tests the models assumptions that 1) cold climates stressed Neandertal populations, and 2) global climate changes affected local Neandertal habitats. If cold climates stressed Neandertals, their subsistence behaviors may have changed, requiring intensified use of prey. Additionally, if global climates disrupted local Neandertal habitats, they should have affected local mammal migrations. To test the hypothesis that Neandertals were stressed by cold climates, an analysis of Neandertal butchering will be completed on red deer and reindeer skeletal material deposited during global warm and cold phases from the French site of Roc de Marsal (RDM)). Comparing butchering strategies during different climates will address whether cold climates induced hyper-processing of bones. Because mammals migrate less in warm, well vegetated environments, but more in cold, open, and resource-poor environments, the hypothesis that global climates affected local habitats may be tested through isotopic reconstruction of large mammal (e.g. horse, red deer, reindeer and bison) migration patterns. These reconstructions are based on the principle that living tissues absorb chemical isotopes in the water and nutrients that are unique to the region in which they are consumed. Identifying isotopic variation in mammalian fossils enables home range size and migration distance to be inferred, providing an indication of whether environments at Pech and RDM tracked global climates. This project uses independent, multi-proxy methods to address the climate stress hypothesis.Understanding climate-mediated behaviors of Neandertals and their prey will help to explain how climatic fluctuations influenced Neandertal extinction and the colonization of their habitats by modern humans. This interdisciplinary project will incorporate zooarchaeological, isotopic, and paleoecological research to generate an easily accessible relational database (Microsoft Access). In addition, a strontium isotope ratio map of France will be developed as a critical aide for tracking the migration routes of Pleistocene mammals and inferring the mobility patterns of European hominids.