Holocene large mammal mass death assemblage from South Africa

BACKWELL, LUCINDA; STEININGER, CHRISTINE; NEVELING, JOHANN; ABDALA, FERNANDO; PEREIRA, LUCY; MAYER, ELVER; ROSSOUW, LLOYD; DE LA PEÑA, PALOMA; BRINK, JAMES

QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Año: 2017

1040-6182

A fossilised large mammal bonebed was discovered eroding out of a gully in the Free State of SouthAfrica. The bonebed is ~1.5 m below the modern land surface, and extends over an area 35 13 m.Surface scatters of stone tools occur in a 1 km radius of the site, and a large fire place associated withspirally fractured burnt bone is preserved to one side. The purpose of this research was to excavate andtaphonomically analyse the faunal sample to elicit the cause of death, and radiocarbon date it to establishwhen it happened. The bonebed is represented by black wildebeest, including juvenile and adult individuals.Faunal remains are randomly oriented and many are complete. Weathering stage 1 on most ofthe bones together with the articulation pattern suggest that the carcasses were exposed for more than ayear and less than three before being buried by hillslope sediment. Two-thirds of those fractured record aspiral breakage pattern. There are a few trample marks on bones and evidence of some termite activity.No stone tools were found in the section of bonebed we excavated, and there is no evidence of manmadeor carnivore damage on the fauna. Calcrete nodules in the underlying deposits and phytoliths representativeof desertification throughout the sedimentary sequence suggest that the animals died underdrought conditions between 3840 ± 40 and 3500 ± 40 cal BP, and that human activity at the site wasmarginal.