PRIMER PLAN OPERATIVO ANUAL (2001-2002) CLUSTER NARANJA DE MESA DE NUEVO LEÓN

COLLECTIONS

As already stated, European and some Argentinean fossil collections have been reviewed. The first ones are composed by the fossil traffic of 19th century and early 20th century, as was explained before. Argentinean collections, not only have some important historical collection, but also are composed of isolated donated findings. In the Museo de La Plata case two Ameghino`s collection with more contextual information were included.

Taphonomic information and actualistic studies regarding non-biological activity and biological interventions have been used to confront the different collections. Cast for some of the elements, the use of hand glasses and different microscopes was applied for the identification of biological interventions. Dating was realized in the University of Berkeley (California) for most of the bones (even though until now not results were obtained) (Appendix Table 1) and also in Centre for Isotope Research‟ (Groningen) but also no positive results were obtained.

Table 1.2 summarizes the total quantity of the reviewed material in each museum, the quantity of anthropic and carnivore intervention. It can be observed few biological intervened marks in relation with the amount of material reviewed. However the results obtained are highly valuable in the light of the mentioned past excavations bias and the low quantity of biological marks in the region. In addition, it supports the premise that these collections still have important data to be used in current research.

Based on the biased nature of this material and scarce information of this type for the region, coarse- grained scale was used to explore past human-megafauna interaction. The evidence was interpreted at different levels

1. Human‟s marks can be related with the different butchering stages, as defined by Binford (1981). This step is important because of the general lack of this kind of information for native South American fauna (Jackson et al. 2011). It is also necessary, in order to detect which parts of the

Chapter 1: Introduction

26 herbivores‟ bodies humans were accessing and to compare them with carnivore‟s exploitation of the different body parts.

Chapter 1: Introduction

27

Table 1.2. Detail of the material reviewed per museum and quantity of biological marks found.

2. This information can be useful in a second level of interpretation. Butchering stages and bony intervened elements can be analyzed to understand types of access by both humans and carnivores. Marks left by both agents are in relationship not only with the size of the herbivore, but also with the presence/absence of muscles, viscera or marrow. Thus, identification of the processing stages (in humans‟ case) and of the marked bony elements are useful to evaluated different esceneries of primary and secondary access (hunting and scavenging) in general terms.

3. At last, this general data can give some insights about the relationships among the species. Ultimately marks are signs of food intake, thus, they can be interpreted in terms of predation/competition relationships among species (Brugal and Fosse 2004) in possible hunting/ scavenging situations.

As human-megafauna interaction is beyond archaeological sphere itself (Burney and Flannery 2005; Surovell et al 2016), its study needs an interdisciplinary approach. Ecological information of present and past biodiversity is useful to characterize both humans and the native fauna. This, at the same time, allows integrating the evidence found in more general terms with the lifestyle of the species. In this sense, the presence of a unique Homo species in the Americas can be seen as an invasive species (Lanata et al. 2008a and b; Lanata 2011; Goldberg et al. 2016). These are organisms that disperse through exotic environments, overcoming both biotic and abiotic barriers, setting up in new environments and with a high reproduction rate. These novel organism establish new types of predation/competition/mutualism interactions with native fauna (Shea and Chesson 2002; Cadotte et al. 2006; Lockwood et al. 2007; Davis 2009; Sodhi et al. 2009), and this can imply modification, diversification and colonization of existing niches (Mooney and Cleland 2001; Odling-Smee 2003) as could have been the case of Homo sapiens in the Americas. By the way the megamammal species are a group that share especial ecological characteristics. They have a slow reproductive rate which means they have a delay sexual maturity and few offspring per individual (Johnson 2002; Sodhi et al. 2009). Their populations are less abundant than smaller species and their size can be a natural defense to carnivore predation (Johnson 2002; Surovell et al. 2005; Owen-Smith and Mills 2008; Cione et al. 2009; Sodhi et al. 2009; Vizcaíno et al. 2012). In this way, Homo sapiens as new and invasive species in these ecosystems found, coexisted and exploited this fauna that was adapted for a certain type of ecological situation. Humans would have taken advantage over this community. This is materialized in the archaeological record by the presence of different sites, but also by the cut-marked bones that will be presented here. Carnivores also were part of this past tropic web, and its relation with the megafauna and, indirectly with Homo sapiens will be explored with the carnivores marks found. Thus, taphonomical revision of this material can provide with “raw data” as cut marks that can helps to understand humans-megafauna relation or carnivores‟ marks to know how the relation among the

Chapter 1: Introduction

28 different mammal species was. Through this way, these collections can be revalued and integrate at a coarse-grain level and impulse new ideas and studies axis (Bonomo et al. 2009).

Next sections will complete the ideas developed here. In the next chapter, the antecedents of American peopling and megafauna extinction will be presented. Afterward, in Chapter 3, Materials and Methods will be described. For the former, the different collections will be presented and the general locations of fossil‟s extraction, according to archive information, will be mention. For the latter the used methodology will be described. Taphonomical concepts used, along with the different non-biological and biological surface modification identified will be explain. Also, the different techniques utilized will be presented. In Chapter 4 the theoretical framework will be expanded. In this section, the concepts of invasive species, niches, paleoecological relationships of competition and predation will be explained. In Chapter 5 published and not published information results will be described. Chapter 6 will discuss the obtained results in relationship with the expectations. At last, this information will be used to give some insights about relationship of Homo sapiens with the native fauna. Also, some comparison with the Old World will be mentioned. At last, in Chapter 7, the Conclusions will be developed.