Resumen de Beating the Dead Horse? Using Ethnography for Middle Palaeolithic Zooarchaeological Contexts in North-West Europe
Evidence for ontologies and ideologies in the Middle Palaeolithic (300,000 to 30,000 years BP) can be elucidated from zooarchaeological contexts, as hunting is rarely just utilitarian but is often informed by a culture’s worldviews. Four open-air kill-sites presented by White et al. (2016) indicate that Neanderthals repeatedly engaged in large-scale, big-game hunting of gregarious species, resulting in ‘overkill’. Speth (2019) suggested that at other sites, similar practices reinforced socio-cultural bonds; however, this concept of ‘waste’ is furthermore indicative of belief systems, which traditional zooarchaeology is unable to address in its own right. This paper will re-examine the zooarchaeological evidence at these sites and argue that it is possible to compare them to ethnographic accounts, in this case the Yukaghir. In this animistic hunter-gatherer society, overhunting is not perceived as negative; instead, hunting encourages the regeneration of elks’ souls, thereby satisfying a cosmological rite. This exercise underscores the power of pairing zooarchaeological and taphonomic data with ethnography in order to offer fresh insights into the uncharted territory of Neanderthal ideology.
