Zooarchaeology and the elusive feast: from performance to aftermath

Ethnographic descriptions of feasts reveal that consumption of meat is usually prominent. Zooarchaeological evidence may thus provide the best way of seeing feasts in the archaeological record. The accumulation of trophy arrays and ongoing high-status activities are confusing behaviours that may be misconstrued as archaeological evidence of feasts. A four-fold classification of zooarchaeological evidence for feasts is put forward: ‘over the top’ (high status); ‘ritually charged garbage’ (often religious); ‘small but special’ (nevertheless sometimes visible); and ‘was this feasting?’ (sometimes equivocal). This typology may allow archaeologists to distinguish between the ethnographic categories of competitive feasts and solidarity feasts

Use of domesticated pigs by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in northwestern Europe

Acknowledgements We thank the Archaeological State Museum Schleswig-Holstein, the Archaeological State Offices of Brandenburg, Lower Saxony and Saxony and the following individuals who provided sample material: Betty Arndt, Jo¨rg Ewersen, Frederick Feulner, Susanne Hanik, Ru¨diger Krause, Jochen Reinhard, Uwe Reuter, Karl-Heinz Ro¨hrig, Maguerita Scha¨fer, Jo¨rg Schibler, Reinhold Schoon, Regina Smolnik, Thomas Terberger and Ingrid Ulbricht. We are grateful to Ulrich Schmo¨lcke, Michael Forster, Peter Forster and Aikaterini Glykou for their support and comments on the manuscript. We also thank many institutions and individuals that provided sample material and access to collections, especially the curators of the Museum fu¨r Naturkunde, Berlin; Muse´um National d0 Histoire Naturelle, Paris; Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C.; Zoologische Staatssammlung, Mu¨nchen; Museum fu¨r Haustierkunde, Halle; the American Museum of Natural History, New-York. This work was funded by the Graduate School ‘Human Development in Landscapes’ at Kiel University (CAU) and supported by NERC project Grant NE/F003382/1. Radiocarbon dating was carried out at the Leibniz Laboratory, CAU. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hunter-Gatherer Variability: Developing Models for the Northern Coasts

Hunter-fisher-gatherer (HFG) variability has received a lot of attention. We review the key developments in the theories of variability, which have usually resulted in binary classifications. We argue that a range of variation based on the degree of territorial ownership is preferable to these classifications. Hunter-fisher-gatherers of the world’s northern coasts have only been partially explored in this way with regard to variability. A major reason for this is that such coastal groups use boats, so normative models of inland terrestrial foraging are not immediately applicable. We suggest that the Saxe-Goldstein hypothesis, the cautious linking of territoriality to funerary behaviour, may be a useful avenue to explore. Much work has been done by scholars of the northern coasts on boats and maritime transport, and some conclusions could be extrapolated to regions farther south.La variabilité caractérisant les chasseurs-pêcheurs-cueilleurs (CPC) reçoit beaucoup d’attention. Nous passons en revue les principaux développements en ce qui a trait aux théories de la variabilité, qui se traduisent habituellement par des classifications binaires. Nous soutenons qu’une plage de variations fondée sur le degré de propriété territoriale est préférable à ces classifications. La variabilité caractérisant les chasseurs-pêcheurs-cueilleurs des côtes nord de la planète n’a été étudiée qu’en partie. Cela s’explique majoritairement par le fait que ces groupes côtiers se servent d’embarcations, si bien que les modèles normatifs de recherche de nourriture à l’intérieur des terres ne sont pas immédiatement applicables. Nous suggérons que l’hypothèse de Saxe-Goldstein, soit le lien prudent entre la territorialité et le comportement funéraire, pourrait présenter une piste valant la peine d’être explorée. Les spécialistes des côtes nord ont beaucoup étudié le transport maritime et le transport au moyen d’embarcations, si bien qu’il pourrait être possible d’extrapoler certaines conclusions quant aux régions situées plus au sud

Mesolithic domestic pigs at Rosenhof – or wild boar? A critical re-appraisal of ancient DNA and geometric morphometrics

We challenge the claim by Krause-Kyora et al. (2013) that there were domestic pigs at Mesolithic sites in northern Germany. A small number of animals from Rosenhof and Poel have ancient DNA and geometric morphometric signatures elsewhere associated with domestic animals. At this time Neolithic farming settlements were present 150km to the south, but the Mesolithic specimens are, however, metrically wild boar, much larger than domestic pigs, and cannot be domestic individuals acquired from the farmers. A more likely explanation for these ‘domestic’ traits is that animals that escaped from farmers’ pig herds interbred with local wild boar. Their descendants were morphologically and behaviourally wild, and were shot by Mesolithic foragers in the course of normal hunts. Their presence at Mesolithic sites is not a precursor to agriculture