Abstract
Mobility of people and goods during the Upper Paleolithic has proven difficult to reconstruct given the relative rareness of remains. Nevertheless, archaeological contexts like the Late Pleistocene horizon of Borsuka Cave (Southern Poland) represent a unique opportunity to explore patterns of objects’ transportation across Central Europe. We investigated the origin of four ornaments made of European elk (Alces alces L.) incisors recovered at Borsuka Cave – the oldest known burial site in Poland, possibly a child grave. Laser-ablation plasma source mass spectrometric analyses of trace elements and Sr isotopic compositions revealed that one elk was roaming within a geologically uniform area while the others changed their pastures during their lifetimes. The non-local origin of the elk teeth is inferred from their exotic Sr isotopic compositions and the lack of evidence for the presence of elk in this territory during the Pleistocene. Instead, the elks’ Sr isotopic composition show good agreement with sites near the Austria-Slovakia border region and northern Hungary, ~250 km away from the study site. We argue that the artefacts were most likely brought to Borsuka Cave by humans or by a network of exchange, so far never reported in the time range 32.5–28.8 ka cal BP for Southern Poland.
Highlights
Burial practices involving deposition of grave goods emerged all over the European continent during the Upper Palaeolithic[1,2,3,4,5,6]
In this study we conducted a histological examination alongside spatially-resolved Sr isotope composition and trace element analyses of dental enamel by laser ablation inductively-coupled-plasma mass spectrometry (LA-(MC-)ICPMS) in order to investigate the origin of some of the pendants made of European elk (Alces alces L.) incisors at Borsuka Cave dated to 32.5–28.8 cal BP7 (Fig. 1)
The enamel extension rate gradually decreases towards the cervix from about 83–60 μm day−1 to about 12–8 μm day−1, which is associated with the gradual increase of the angle between the Retzius lines and the enamel-dentine junction (EDJ) from about 2–3 degrees near the crown tip up to 25 degrees near the cervix
Summary
Burial practices involving deposition of grave goods emerged all over the European continent during the Upper Palaeolithic[1,2,3,4,5,6]. By determining regional variations in Sr isotope composition using teeth of quasi contemporaneous non-migrating rodents, we suggest that the elks’ teeth most probably originated in the southern region of the Western Carpathians and were likely brought by humans in the Borsuka Cave area, due to the known limited mobility of the elks. This evidence makes Borsuka Cave an important reference site for deciphering artefacts’ and human mobility patterns during the Upper Palaeolithic. The analysis of dental wear patterns indicates that the teeth most likely belonged to animals younger than 3.5 years[40]
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