Site formation and faunal remains of the Middle Pleistocene site Bilzingsleben

Müller, Werner A.; Pasda, Clemens

doi:10.7485/qu58_02

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“…Cuenca-Bescós et al, 2021;Lebreton et al, 2017). Notably, beavers might have played a currently underappreciated role in the sustenance and lifeworlds of at least some interglacial Neanderthals (Hérisson et al, 2015;Kindler, personal communication;Müller and Pasda, 2011). Brown et al (2017) have drawn attention to a possible autoecological entanglement of beavers, eels, and horses underpinning mobiliary art-making in some European Late Upper Palaeolithic contexts, and beavers have been considered as potential high-value prey items for some Late Glacial, especially Allerød, foragers in Northern Europe (Baales and Street, 1996;Charles, 1997;Weber et al, 2011).…”

Section: Beavers In the Early And Mid-holocene Of Northern Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Human-beaver cohabitation in the Early and Mid-Holocene of Northern Europe: Re-visiting Mesolithic material culture and ecology through a multispecies lens

Hussain,

Brusgaard

2023

The Holocene

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The Eurasian beaver ( Castor fiber) was an important member of Early and Mid-Holocene landscapes and animal communities in Northern Europe. Previous zooarchaeological research has established the alimentary roles of beavers for Mesolithic societies and their importance for fur procurement. In this paper, we develop an integrated biocultural approach to human-beaver interactions, examining the position of humans and beavers in Mesolithic and Early Neolithic multispecies systems. We contextualize beaver landscape agency in hydroactive environments with human behaviour, synthesizing currently available data on mammalian assemblages, ichtyofauna and beaver-related material culture across Northern Europe. This cross-cultural, diachronic analysis reveals previously overlooked facilitations of human behaviour by beaver practices and ecological legacies. We show that long-term trajectories of human-beaver cohabitation differed between northern European regions. While in Southern Scandinavia, human-beaver intersections witnessed major re-organizations during the Mid-Holocene, beavers retained a key role for human societies across Northeastern Europe throughout much of the Holocene and played an important part at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Dutch wetlands. Divergent pathways are also evidenced by Mesolithic beaver-related material culture, highlighting the cultural keystone status of Castor fiber in higher latitude European landscapes. We argue that this keystone status is grounded in the supply of human hunting, fishing, and gathering affordances by the animals, pointing to the generative commensality between Mesolithic foragers and their beaver neighbours. Taken together, our findings demonstrate the importance of the beaver in the making of Early and Mid-Holocene forager societies in Northern Europe and illustrate the fruitfulness of deploying an integrated multispecies approach.

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