The earliest direct evidence of mammoth hunting in Central Europe – The Kraków Spadzista site (Poland)

When Lithics Hit Bones: Evaluating the Potential of a Multifaceted Experimental Protocol to Illuminate Middle Palaeolithic Weapon Technology

“…Bones have the potential to preserve direct evidence of projectile hunting through bone lesions, traumata or embedded weapon tips. Their appearance in the archaeological record is well-documented from the Late Upper Palaeolithic onwards (Table 1) and here could be linked to the increased use of bow and arrow technologies (Moirenc et al 1921;Noe-Nygaard 1974;Bratlund 1990Bratlund , 1991Milo 1998;Morel 1998;Boeda et al 1999;Münzel and Conard 2004;Zenin et al 2006;Letourneux and Pétillon 2008;Nikolskiy and Pitulko 2013;Gaudzinski-Windheuser 2016;O'Driscoll and Thompson 2018;Wojtal et al 2019;Синицын et al 2019Синицын et al , Sano et al 2019. However, potential projectile impact wounds from Lower, Middle and early Upper Palaeolithic contexts are sparse and several well-known examples remain disputed, mainly from a taphonomic perspective (see Gaudzinski-Windheuser 2016 for a discussion of Boxgrove and Umm el Tlel).…”

New Radiocarbon Dates for the Late Gravettian in Eastern Central Europe

“…While animal bones in open-air sites associated with lithic artifacts are generally considered to be the results of human activity, accumulations of Mammuthus primigenius subfossil skeletal parts in Central and eastern Europe sometimes have been interpreted as collections made from naturally deceased animals (e.g., Steenstrup 1889; Wankel 1890; Absolon 1945;Kozłowski et al 1974;Klima 1963;Haynes 1991;Soffer 1993;Svoboda et al 2005;Wojtal and Sobczyk 2005;Oliva 2009). No consensus has been reached about the origins of sites yielding large amount of mammoth bones, but recent evidence strongly suggests that Gravettian hunters were able to kill mammoths with stone-tipped weapons (Kufel-Diakowska et al 2016;Nuzhnyi et al 2016;Sinitsyn et al 2019;Wojtal et al 2019). Mammoth bone accumulations that have been taphonomically analyzed allow reconstruction of butchering activity based on cut marks and green-bone breaks.…”

Proboscideans on Parade: A review of the migratory behaviour of elephants, mammoths, and mastodons

“…Proboscideans first appeared in the archaeological record nearly 2 million years ago (Backwell & D'Errico, 2004;Berthelet & Chavaillon, 2001;Domínguez-Rodrigo et al, 2007;Shipman, 1989), but direct, unambiguous evidence for hunting -in the form of proboscidean bones with hunting lesionsremains sparse until the Upper Palaeolithic (Mothé et al 2020;Nikolskiy & Pitulko 2013;Pitulko et al 2016;Sinitsyn et al 2019;Wojtal et al 2019;Zenin et al 2006;but see Adam 1951 andThieme &Veil 1985). Mass accumulations of mammoths at archaeological sites in Eurasia like Kraków Spadzista (Wilczyński et al, 2012;Wojtal et al, 2019), and Yana RHS (Basilyan et al, 2011;Nikolskiy & Pitulko, 2013) may have been produced entirely by human hunting practices, although some natural input cannot be excluded. In North America, no direct evidence has yet been found for mammoth or mastodon hunting by humans, at least not in the form as defined here and elsewhere (e.g.…”