Neanderthal and carnivore occupations in unit II from the Upper Pleistocene site of Ramandils Cave, (Port-la-Nouvelle, Aude, France)

Too good to go? Neanderthal subsistence strategies at Prado Vargas Cave (Burgos, Spain)

“…In addition, the traceological analysis indicates hide scraping, wood processing, and meat processing, so we see that the activities carried out at the site go beyond those carried out in short-term occupations. The presence of burnt flint, such as that found at Prado Vargas, is also a long-term feature (Rusch et al 2019). Likewise, the presence of a left Ldm1 of Homo Neanderthalensis (Navazo et al 2021) indicates the presence of children in the group, something that would not necessarily be expected in shortterm or hunting camps, as opposed to long-term or more residential camps.…”

“…However, the presence of cut marks-tooth marks overlaps indicates that carnivores are not the main accumulating agent, but that, in the case where they are responsible, they were able to access the remains left by hominids. Although some authors propose that if tooth marks affect the same species and body sizes, carnivore access to remains is rapid (Rusch et al 2019), and access does not appear to be immediate, as some remains are incorporated into the technological sphere, being used as retouchers (Alonso-García et al 2020).…”

Neandertal camps and hyena dens. Living floor 150A at Grotta dei Santi (Monte Argentario, Tuscany, Italy)

“…This assumption is supported by the different weight and structuration of the hyenarelated and human-related evidence and by the stratigraphic overlapping of the ileum of red deer with cut-marks and the trampled coprolites in G6/III. The ephemeral evidence of carnivore activities contrasts with the typical pattern showed by Units with massive and/or exclusive presence of Crocuta crocuta, both at Grotta dei Santi (Moroni et al, 2015(Moroni et al, , 2019Spagnolo et al, 2016b) and in other Pleistocene hyena dens (Arribas and Palmqvist, 1998;Conti et al, 2012;Crezzini et al, 2016;Diedrich, 2010Diedrich, , 2011Fourvel, 2012;Potts et al, 1988;Rusch et al 2019;Saladié et al, 2017;Sanchis et al, 2019).…”

“…On the other hand, sites with living-floors and/or other sort of short-term palimpsests, where different "bone accumulators" are present, embody a very suitable frame of reference for developing efficient analytical protocols aimed to disentangle the human and natural components of the Stratigraphic Units (e.g. Conti et al, 2012;Crezzini et al, 2016;Enloe, 2012;Moroni et al, 2019;Rusch et al 2019;Sanchis et al, 2019). Moreover, in the scientific literature, several scholars have paid attention to the archaeological meaning of carnivores in action, approaching this issue by means of actualistic/taphonomic methods, both from an extant and an archaeological standpoint, sometimes also taking into account the spatial variable.…”

“…Most of these works are focused on the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), as this predator is the main bone-accumulator contending with humans for caves and shelters (e.g. Arribas and Palmqvist, 1998;Binford et al, 1988;Crezzini et al, 2016;Diedrich, 2010Diedrich, , 2011Fourvel, 2012;Potts et al, 1988;Rusch et al, 2019;Saladié et al, 2017;Sanchis et al, 2019). Other studies involve the ethological and taphonomic analysis of other boneaccumulators/modifiers, such as the leopard (Ruiter and Berger, 2000;Sauqué and Sanchis, 2017), red fox (Krajcarz and Krajcarz, 2014), bear (Camarós et al, 2013(Camarós et al, , 2017Rosell et al, 2019) and badger (e.g.…”