Pursuing past seasons: A re-evaluation of cementum increment analysis of Paleolithic archaeology.

Abstract

In archaeological research on the Paleolithic period, it has been argued that certain developments in hominid biological and cultural evolution involved key changes in the organizational and technological strategies for exploiting <italic> seasonal</italic> resources. Among the archaeological methods suggested to address the shifts in seasonal activity patterns in the context of Pleistocene cultural and biological evolution, cementum increment analysis stands out. Initially, the analysis of microscopic seasonal growth increments in the cementum tissue of archaeologically common mammal teeth appeared to offer the recovery of valuable season-of-death and age-at-death data from Paleolithic sites. With the perspective of nearly 35 years of experience and hindsight since cementum increment analysis was first suggested as an archaeological technique (Saxon and Higham 1968) and over 20 years since the method was introduced to the study of seasonality in Paleolithic contexts (Spiess 1979), this dissertation presents a critical reassessment of cementum as an archaeological source of seasonality and mortality information. The following assertion is thoroughly examined: the commonly employed cementum increment methods are adequate to recover true season-of-death distributions from Paleolithic deposits. It is argued that previous studies of microscopic increments in archaeological teeth have not fully addressed three key issues that fundamentally bear on whether cementum increment analysis can meet its methodological promise---that is, to yield reliable information about the seasonal activity patterns of hunter-gatherers in the Paleolithic. First, the correlation between time of the year and the state of incremental cementum growth varies between animal populations and over time---from year to year---within the same population. Second, researchers have entirely ignored the potential for common biogeochemical processes to create false seasonal bands in archaeological cementum. Third, workers have not considered the potential for the sample preparation and microscopy techniques themselves to create the appearance of seasonal bands in cementum. Basically, in the analysis of a given set of archaeological tooth assemblages, we may need to develop further the means to measure the accuracy of the equation, Cementum equals Season-of-Death. The chapters that follow are presented in order to offer a guide to the key methodological facets for understanding this equation, so that Paleolithic researchers can better judge how cementum increment analysis might be employed in advancing our knowledge of seasonal activity patterns in the course of human biological and cultural evolution in the Pleistocene.