Taphonomy and Zooarchaeology of a Mousterian Faunal Assemblage from La Quina, Charente, France

The 1986 excavations at the Mousterian site of La Quina, Charente, France included a witness section left intact by an earlier researcher, Germaine Henri-Martin. Zooarchaeological study of material from this witness section was designed to evaluate the effects of a number of different natural and human factors. This analysis demonstrated that the assemblage was actually the product of a number of different processes, some natural and some human, operating one after the other. The first of these processes was the accumulation offaunal remains by humans, a process that included some damage to the bones and probably some effect on the relative frequencies of different elements. This wasfollowed by damage and probably partial destruction by carnivores, and then by small-scale displacement by stream action. This complex series of events obscured details of the human activities originally responsiblefor the accumulation, although some behavioral information could still be extracted.