Stiner M C
Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721-0030, USA.
J Hum Evol. 1998 Mar;34(3):303-26. doi: 10.1006/jhev.1997.0198.
Bear bones and Paleolithic stone artefacts often co-occur in Pleistocene cave deposits of Eurasia, raising the question of how these associations come about and the need for effective methods with which to obtain a clear answer. Building upon knowledge of modern bears, I present a method for testing two competing hypotheses about the causes of bear mortality in hibernation contexts. The first hypothesis proposes that age-dependent deaths resulted from non-violent causes (principally starvation), implying that bears' presence in a cave was not linked in time to human activities there. The second hypothesis proposes that random bear deaths in caves resulted from hunting by humans or other large predators, implying a temporal link between them; the expectation of a nonselective age pattern in this circumstance arises from the fact that the individual characters of hibernating bears are hidden from predators. Three elements of the method and its development are presented: (1) a brief review of the biological bases of hibernation-related mortality in modern Ursus, its paleontological consequences, and test expectations drawn therefrom; (2) a detailed, illustrated technique for age-scoring isolated bear cheek teeth based on tooth eruption-wear sequences, developed primarily for cave and brown bears; and, (3) a simple, accurate way to evaluate real cases in terms of contrasting mortality models. The final step is demonstrated by application to a Middle Pleistocene cave bear assemblage (Ursus deningeri) from Yarimburgaz Cave in Turkey, a large collection found in general stratigraphic association with Paleolithic artefacts. The advantages of the method include its ability to (a) handle small samples, (b) use isolated tooth specimens, and (c) evaluate cases simultaneously in terms of idealized age structure models and the variation that normally is associated with each under natural conditions. While the more obvious benefit of bear mortality analysis may be to research on ancient bear demography, the principles and procedures offered here are equally pertinent to archaeological studies of carnivore-mediated formation processes in cave sites. As is generally true in taphonomic research, however, bear mortality patterns are most effective when used in combination with independent lines of evidence to address questions about assemblage formation.
熊骨和旧石器时代的石器常常共同出现在欧亚大陆更新世的洞穴沉积物中，这就引发了一个问题：这些关联是如何形成的，以及需要有效的方法来获得明确的答案。基于对现代熊的了解，我提出了一种方法，用于检验关于冬眠环境中熊死亡原因的两种相互竞争的假设。第一种假设认为，与年龄相关的死亡是由非暴力原因（主要是饥饿）导致的，这意味着熊在洞穴中的出现与当时人类在那里的活动没有时间上的联系。第二种假设认为，洞穴中熊的随机死亡是由人类或其他大型食肉动物的猎杀导致的，这意味着它们之间存在时间上的联系；在这种情况下，非选择性年龄模式的预期源于冬眠熊的个体特征对捕食者来说是隐藏的这一事实。本文介绍了该方法及其发展的三个要素：（1）对现代熊属中与冬眠相关死亡率的生物学基础、其古生物学后果以及由此得出的测试预期进行简要回顾；（2）一种基于牙齿萌出 - 磨损序列对孤立的熊颊齿进行年龄评分的详细、有图示的技术，主要是为洞穴熊和棕熊开发的；以及（3）一种根据对比死亡率模型评估实际案例的简单、准确的方法。最后一步通过应用于土耳其亚林布尔加兹洞穴的中更新世洞穴熊组合（德宁格熊）得到了证明，该组合是在与旧石器时代文物的一般地层关联中发现的大量藏品。该方法的优点包括能够（a）处理小样本，（b）使用孤立的牙齿标本，以及（c）根据理想化的年龄结构模型以及在自然条件下通常与之相关的变异同时评估案例。虽然熊死亡率分析更明显的好处可能是对古代熊种群统计学的研究，但这里提供的原理和程序同样适用于洞穴遗址中食肉动物介导的形成过程的考古研究。然而，正如在埋藏学研究中通常的情况一样，当熊死亡率模式与独立的证据线结合起来以解决关于组合形成的问题时，其效果最为显著。
