An extant example of warm-climate forager gastrophagy and its implications for extinct hominin diets.

Summary

Accounts of gastrophagy (consumption of prey stomach material) are widespread in ethnography. The practice is recorded from different latitudes, subsistence strategies and with a wide variety of prey; however, many such reports are anecdotal. Conversely, where recent authors mention gastrophagy it is typically marginal to their main research. Little is therefore known about the frequency, seasonality, demographic factors, species composition, and relative dietary contribution of gastrophagy and the true importance of the behaviour remains uncertain. Here we discuss the parameters of gastrophagy in a group of contemporary foragers (the Hadza of Tanzania) in order to put it into context. We then consider the implications of gastrophagy in hominin evolution. Given its obvious benefits to cold-adapted recent H. sapiens, gastrophagy may explain evidence of ‘non-nutritional’ plants found in Neanderthals calculus. As gastrophagy also occurs in warm climate foragers, such as the Hadza, we consider its practice in earlier hominins inhabiting tropical climates. If gastrophagy occurred at a significant level, plant remains from their (hunted or scavenged) prey could potentially confound hominin dietary interpretations based on tooth wear, calculus, lithic residues, and isotope analyses. A case in point could be the seemingly surprising evidence for bark consumption in A. sediba.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Death of Primitive Economic Man: Nutritional Archaeology for the 21st Century

Keywords

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