Late Holocene Settlement Dynamics and Trans-Saharan Connections in Southeastern Mauritania: A Remote Sensing Approach

Human societies have long engaged in complex social and ecological interactions with other animals. Social carnivores, particularly wolves, are fascinating, considering how Pleistocene hunter-gatherer groups have considered them as ecological competitors, preys, but also as potential pets and useful hunting allies. Current scholarship in domestication studies considers that free-ranging wolves most likely followed a neither deliberate nor directed commensal pathway to domestication after being attracted to refuse generated by human camps. The aim of my research will be to identify material evidence underpinning a long-term canid commensality in hominin ecosystems, which afforded humans the socio-ecological opportunity to eventually participate in the transformative bonding of domestication.
The late Early Pleistocene saw the arrival and consolidation of social hunters (hominins, spotted hyenas, and canids) as the main predators of European ecosystem, after the extinction of the large solitary hypercarnivores. An important part of my doctoral thesis focuses on the taphonomic study of the remarkably well-preserved late Early Pleistocene faunal assemblage at the site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Rio Quipar (Spain), which has yielded a highly fragmented bone assemblage with clear anthropogenic traces, secondary scavenging by carnivores, and hyena accumulations. Discerning whether the secondary scavenging of human refuse was at least partially the result of canid activity, and exploring this pattern of secondary scavenging throughout the Pleistocene, would shed light into the temporality of foundational human-canid ecological interactions before domestication.
The agency of secondary scavenging can be inferred from dual-patterned bone assemblages, even in the absence of canid remains: First, I would consider the nature of the assemblages within the theoretical and experimental frameworks set by the hunting-scavenging debate for Early Pleistocene hominins. The frequency and location of tooth-marks and cut-marks can inform us about the primary agent of accumulation. Furthermore, their relative superimposition is paramount for discerning carcass access temporality. Secondly, the intensity and nature of the tooth-marks can help distinguish the action of bone-eating carnivores from large-sized felids. Statistical assessments using 3D geometric morphometrics, skeletal part survivorship, and the spatial analysis of the distribution patterns of the tooth-marks on the bones further contribute to discerning carnivore agency.
In the context of Late Pleistocene interactions, bone taphonomy and skull morphology can be complemented with genetic evidence and the isotopic signatures of wolf remains, to assess whether a closer, symbiotic association with humans would offer canids a greater dietary breath and a steadier food supply throughout the year, particularly during the Upper Palaeolithic.
This opportunistic commensal canid behaviour is hinted at in many other sites across the Eurasian Pleistocene, based on the alteration patterns described in monographs and publications. However, these interactions have been largely overlooked, due to a research focus on ascertain the primary origin of dual-patterned bone accumulations as either anthropogenic or resulting from a hyena den. Once the anthropogenic nature of the assemblage is established, the presence of secondary carnivore alterations is often mentioned but not explored in any meaningful detail.
I believe this discussion of Pleistocene human-canid interactions can make significant contributions to the fields of Palaeolithic archaeology and canid palaeontology by demonstrating how long-term canid commensality in hominin ecosystems shaped the evolutionary trajectories of wolves and humans, while also contributing to our understanding of both the faunal record at many Pleistocene sites and the socio-ecological foundations of dog domestication.