The very low occurrence of burning, chopping, and cutting that defines the mainly hyena sites compared with the relatively much greater frequencies in the two types of archaeological sites leads us to question the definition of a late Pleistocene Siberian archaeological site. Some of our mainly hyena sites have been presented as archaeological (Derev’anko et al. 1998). Deciding on what constitutes an archaeological site is an old and incompletely resolved question in American archaeology, especially for legally important archaeological surveys.
In the American Southwest, the phrase “one pot sherd does not an archaeological site make” sums up the problem. In late Pleistocene Siberia, the analogy could be: a few stone flakes do not constitute an archaeological site. A standardized threshold or minimal content has not been defined (Fish 1993) for distinguishing between discoveries of two or three potsherds or stone chips or a few lines scratched into a rock surface (i. e., cultural “float”), and the more abundant amounts of pottery, worked stone debris, rock art, or other material culture remains that everyone would agree is at minimum an archaeological site. Patently, the further back in human evolution we go, the more the definition must be adjusted to the level of presumed cultural evolution.
Is chimpanzee “ant fishing” any more evidence of tool using than stick selection by desert doves in constructing their nests? Here, we could take the position that any sign of ancient human activity is important and should be preserved by some sort of classification and recording standard. On the other hand, the sites herein are largely conserved and concentrated within protective stone walls and roofs of caves, whereas open sites are many times less likely to be preserved due to lack of protection fTom decay and scatter. In this sense it could be said that humans have been everywhere in our study area, so finding a few stone chips or cut bones here and there is to be expected almost anywhere.
Humans, as well as animals, seek out shelter in times of bad weather, so we should expect to find tiny amounts of human refuse wherever shelter existed. To kill time, those waiting out a passing summer rainstorm or a winter blizzard may chip away at a stone core, whittle on a bone, build a fire when possible, or do any number of other things. Does the refuse from this sort of relief fTom boredom constitute an archaeological site? Does it tell us anything other than one or more people sat around waiting for a storm to pass or for a pack of hyenas or threatening cave lion to go away?
Try as we did to find some sort of cultural information in our human perimortem damage stigmata, we noticed nothing. There is no identifiable cultural information within a cut itself. Cut variations such as being wide or narrow, deep or shallow, long or short are idiosyncratic and random, not cultural. Location says something about butchering practices, but we feel that butchering techniques had become universal around the world by the end of the Pleistocene. So really, we have no specific cultural information in either a cut or its location, in a chop mark or its location, or in a burned bit of bone. Said
Another way, while our mainly hyena sites have a trace of human-generated perimortem damaged bone debris, that debris tells us nothing other than that it was left by stone-toolusing, meat-eating humans. Is that enough information to designate a low-yielding location as an archaeological site? This question is, of course, critically important from a statistical viewpoint. Small samples often are considerably different from larger ones, even when drawn from the same statistical universe. Some researchers think the differences are due to cultural differences, ignoring or being unaware that small samples simply cannot contain all the variation that a larger sample may possess. Kara-Bom might be a good example of too much significance being given to a relatively small archaeological collection.
On the other hand, the mixed archaeological-hyena sites and the archaeological-no hyena sites have on average yielded nearly identical amounts of human-processed bone. The presence of hyenas does not seem to have any overall effect on the amount of human-processed bone. However, there is some interesting inter-site variation in the frequencies of burning, cutting, and chopping. Okladnikov Cave and Kara-Bom stand out because of their low frequencies of these stigmata. The Kara-Bom situation could be explained on the grounds that it is an open site, and as such was perhaps not a location where butchering was practiced to the extent that it was in the more permanent shelter and safety of a cave. But this does not help explain the small stigmata frequencies of the sheltered Okladnikov cave. Perhaps here there may have been some manner of hyena effect. One effect that we can imagine is that hyenas could have carried many more bones of their own kills and scavenging back to Okladnikov Cave than were carried to the other mixed hyena-archaeology sites. The hyena effect would be to change the ratio of cut to uncut bones, etc. Finally, Shestakovo has almost no identifiable human-caused perimor-tem damage, because despite the presence of stone artifacts, it is considered to be a mammoth natural death site, not a kill site resulting from human hunting. The very small amount of cutting at Shestakovo probably indicates bone or ivory extraction more than butchering of meat, although both could have occurred. Do those few cuts make it an archaeological site?
By way of comparison, Michael C. Wilson (1983) analyzed bone damage in a 3000-year-old bison bone bed in Alberta, Canada, for the purpose of determining whether it was a kill site or the result of a natural catastrophic die-off. Even though a small collection of stone artifacts were found with the bison bones, Wilson concluded the remains represented a die-off. The bone damage he attributed mainly to carnivore scavenging on the basis of tooth marks, end-hollowing, and other damage types caused by carnivores. The stone artifacts were not hunting weapons, and there were no cut marks. He allowed that the stone artifacts represented some scavenging by humans also. In our terms, the bison bone bed was a paleontological site, not an archaeological one. As in our earlier discussion, sites may contain a small number of stone artifacts, but they are only marginally at best an archaeological site.
Following is one final example of assessing whether faunal remains in a site that also had stone artifacts were damaged by carnivores or humans. This example comes from the Yukon Territory of Canada. The site is called Blue Fish Cave I. Bone damage was analyzed by B. F. Beebe (1983). She found much carnivore damage, mainly tooth
Scratches. There was bone breakage also, but Beebe could not tell if it was done by humans or carnivores. The absence of cut marks, chop marks, and burning would favor the view that the bone damage was done by wolf-sized carnivores. In other words, there is no link between the 15 000-year-old Pleistocene fauna and the stone artifacts. These and other such assemblages lead us to think that claims for bone damage and bone accumulations as having been done by humans are not acceptable in the absence of cut marks, chop marks, and burning. The assumption that bone accumulations are evidence of human presence should be carefully considered at all times. For example, Kanowski (1987:52-53) years ago warned:
Among the non-human agencies responsible for producing bone collections, archaeologists have to take into account such predators as leopards in Africa and hyenas in European caves. But probably strangest of all bone gatherers are African porcupines - compulsive collectors of bone and similar material. These large, mainly vegetarian creatures, are like rats and other rodents in that they spend a lot of time gnawing at suitable objects to wear down their teeth, their incisors would otherwise grow out of control to unusable lengths.
Although porcupine presence has been recognized by Ovodov in our study, the very low frequency of gnawing (Table A1.22) pretty much eliminates them as significant players in our perimortem taphonomy investigation.
In conclusion, the Siberian late Pleistocene perimortem taphonomic signature of human butchering and cooking can be defined as accidental bone burning, and intentional chopping and cutting. Assuming our samples are representative, we propose that a ratio of burning, chopping, and cutting of approximately 1:9:12, respectively, could be used in future excavations to distinguish between primary site usage by humans and nonhumans. Non-human usage would be indicated if the actual numbers of these three traits were very low and the ratio lower, perhaps on the orderof 1:5:5 or less. We suggest that an archaeological site such as our assemblages be defined by the 1:9:12 ratio.
World History
