Commingled Bone Assemblages: Insights from Zooarchaeology and Taphonomy of a Bone Bed at Karain B Cave, SW Turkey

Abstract

This chapter aims to initiate a dialogue between paleontologists, forensic anthropologists, human osteologists, and zooarchaeologists and to explore a shared methodological framework. Borrowing conceptual and methodological frameworks developed and used by vertebrate paleontologists and embedding them within a taphonomy- and zooarchaeology-oriented explanatory framework, I present a multivariate taphonomic approach and a comprehensive quantitative matrix using an Epipaleolithic archaeological bone bed from Karain B Cave, Turkey, as a case study. The multivariate taphonomic analysis probes the effect(s) of complex, interacting, depositional, and preservation agents. This methodological framework can be applied to both animal and human bone assemblages, can reveal assemblage formation processes, and can identify natural and cultural agents of bone accumulation, modification, and destruction. In this chapter, I first present a conceptual framework in which I review paleontological approaches to studying bone beds. Then I briefly present the necessary archaeological background to Karain B Cave and the Epipaleolithic bone bed as a case study. Lastly, I elaborate my taphonomic and zooarchaeological methodology. Drawing upon two lines of specific evidence, taxonomic composition and assemblage formation, the present work shows that the Epipaleolithic stratum PI.2 at Karain B is a macrofossil bone bed with multispecific, multitaxic, or multidominant taxonomic representation. As far as the genesis and formation processes are concerned, the archaeofaunal assemblage from the Epipaleolithic bone bed at Karain B provides a good example of human-accumulated and human-modified assemblage exhibiting differential bone preservation.