Large mammal exploitation in Late Middle Pleistocene China

Abstract

This paper examines how studies of faunal assemblages from a hominin cave site, in conjunction with ecological data on extant taxa and comparisons with palaeontological localities and other hominin sites, can take our understanding from basic presence/absence lists to investigations of species-specific utilisation. The Rhinoceros sinensis and Stegodon orientalis components of the fauna from Panxian Dadong, a late Middle Pleistocene cave in the mountains of Guizhou Province, China, are relatively similar in their frequencies of skeletal elements represented, but the reconstructed age profiles are quite different. The S. orientalis remains are primarily from very young individuals while the R. sinensis elements are from prime age adults. These differences may be attributed to body size differences, transportability, and different uses of the two taxa for food and as sources of raw material.