Linked Life Data

10444350

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/10444350

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
2
pubmed:dateCreated
1999-9-16
pubmed:abstractText
Excavations at Duinefontein (DFT) 2 near Cape Town, South Africa have recovered numerous stone artefacts and animal bones on an ancient surface sealed within iron-stained eolian sands. U-series analysis of an overlying calcrete places the sands before 150 ka ago, while the large mammal taxa imply an age between 400 and 200 ka ago. The artefacts include a classic Acheulean handaxe and probable biface shaping flakes that support this age estimate. The principal mammalian species are long-horned buffalo, black wildebeest, greater kudu, Cape zebra, and grysbok/steenbok, which imply a grass-and-bush mosaic instead of the historic small-leafed shrubland. Hippopotamus and reedbuck indicate that water stood nearby, probably in dune swales. The large mammal bones are mostly vertebrae and other axial elements, often in near-anatomical order. Both proximal and distal appendicular elements are rare. Bones with carnivore damage are common, but ones with stone tool marks are scarce. The sum suggests a water-edge attritional death site where people played a minimal role and carcasses were disarticulated mainly by carnivore feeding and by trampling. Stone tool marks tend to be equally rare at other Acheulean attritional death sites, and the implication may be that Acheulean people rarely obtained large mammals, whether by hunting or scavenging. Human scavengers at DFT2 would not have encountered a disproportionate number of distal (versus proximal) limb elements, and it follows that the tendency for distal elements to dominate many archeological assemblages need not reflect scavenging versus hunting. Even if DFT2 was not itself a locus of intense human activity, it provides a useful baseline for evaluating bone damage, skeletal part representation, and other variables at sites where people were deeply involved.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Aug
pubmed:issn
0047-2484
pubmed:author
pubmed:copyrightInfo
Copyright 1999 Academic Press.
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
37
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
153-90
pubmed:dateRevised
2010-11-18
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
1999
pubmed:articleTitle
Duinefontein 2: an Acheulean site in the Western Cape Province of South Africa.
pubmed:affiliation
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305-2145, USA. rklein@leland.stanford.edu
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.