Middle Palaeolithic burial is not a dead issue: the view from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh

Abstract

Inferences of purposeful Middle Palaeolithic (MP) burial are almost universally accepted, despite published arguments that the pre-1960s discoveries are equally well explained by natural processes. In the modern human origins debate (perhaps the most hotly disputed question in palaeoanthropology) inferences of MP burial are crucial in arguments for an early Upper Pleistocene emergence of modern humans. The present paper contributed to that debate by re-examining a number of post-1960s excavations of MP hominid remains. Because these were excavated with meticulous attention to depositional circumstances and stratigraphic context, most palaeoanthropologists consider these inferences of purposeful burial to be based on irrefutable evidence. This paper focuses on the reasoning behind such claims, especially the assumption that articulated sketetal material isprima facie evidence for deliberate burial. First it reviews a range of processes operating in caves and rockshelters that condition the probability of articulated skeletal material preserving without hominid intervention. Processes such as deposition, decomposition, and disturbance are inherently more variable in caves and rockshelters than is usually acknowledged. The first section concludes that purposeful protection is not necessary to account for the preservation of articulated skeletal remains. The second part of the paper examines the published record from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud and Dederiyeh, where the majority of the remains claimed to have been buried are fragmented, incomplete, and disarticulated. This re-examination suggests that in all of the post-1960s cases of putative burial, the hominid remains occur in special depositional circumstances, which by themselves are sufficient to account for the preservation in evidence at these sites. This conclusion severely weakens arguments for purposeful burial at the five sites. Moreover, the equivocal nature of the evidence in the more recent cases renders even less secure the similar claims made for discoveries of hominid skeletal remains at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Le Mousterier, La Ferrassie, Teshik-Tash, La Grotte du Régourdou, Shanidar, and several others. Finally, by highlighting the equivocal nature of the evidence, this paper underscores the ongoing need for palaeoanthropologists to specify as wide a range of taphonomic processes as possible when interpreting the archaeological record. This will aid in producing robust inferences, and will bring about increasingly accurate knowledge of when hominids became human.