Can HBE Help Explain Variation in the Presence of Blue Duiker (Philantomba monticola) throughout the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave (South Africa)?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Blue duiker (Philantomba monticola) is a small, forest dwelling bovid present throughout Central and southern Africa. The species remains an important source of bushmeat in Central Africa, and in southern Africa, its exploitation dates at least as far back as 77,000 years ago. At the Middle Stone Age site of Sibudu Cave (South Africa), blue duiker is variably present throughout the sequence—its frequency increases from 17% of the total number of identifiable specimens (NISP) in the pre-Still Bay ( ~77 ka) to 41% in the Still Bay (~71 ka); it begins to decline thereafter, and by the late and final MSA (~48ka and ~38 ka, respectively) it accounts for <2% of the NISP. Under traditional optimal foraging models, blue duiker (~5 kg) would typically be low-ranked prey. In this paper, I will explore whether the evidenced variation in blue duiker at Sibudu fits the expectations of optimal foraging theory. In so doing, I will also address how (and if!) we can parse apart the relative impacts of variation in 1) the local environment, 2) human occupation intensity, 3) human mobility patterns/landscape use, 4) weaponry systems, and 5) non-human predator activity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24228