The Middle Palaeolithic and late Pleistocene Tasmania hunting behaviour: a reconsideration of the attributes of modern human behaviour

Abstract

Abstract The murky biological status of Neanderthals has inspired many behavioural paradigms. We ask if it is possible to differentiate behavioural changes in an evolutionary sense (archaic to modern) from innovative/evolutionary changes in behaviour due to localised adaptations to changing environments. Our approach to Neanderthal ecology here is comparative. Both lithic and faunal analyses of Pleistocene Tasmanian sites dating back to 35,000 BP show patterns similar to Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia. Yet the anatomically modern humans who first populated Australia exhibited modern cultural behaviour by crossing from Southeast Asia to Greater Australia by boat and colonising every environmental zone on the continent by at least 35,000 BP. If the Tasmanian archaeological sequence parallels that of the Mousterian, then the earliest Aboriginal colonisers of Greater Australia were either archaic in a behavioural sense (a notion that does not fit with the available evidence), or the interpretation of what indicates archaic behaviour must be reassessed. Results from dental growth‐increment analyses of large game from Franco‐Cantabrian Palaeolithic sites show shifts in human mobility and subsistence strategies. Compilation of control samples of teeth of recent animals (e.g. Cervus, Rangifer, Equus, Capreolus, Bos) of known age and date‐of‐death has been requisite to these growth‐increment studies. Here we apply skeletochronological analysis to Bennett's wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus) from Tasmania's earliest sites, presenting results of aging techniques of molar eruption and seasonal annuli growth. These suggest that hunting pressure was relatively low on wallaby populations and that hunters occupied these upland valleys principally between autumn and early spring. We expect these data to support more robust hypotheses of both mortality and seasonal hunting patterns of this principal macropod prey species, as well as consideration of the question of ‘archaic’ versus ‘modern’ ecological adaptations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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