title: A tool for determining duration of mortality events in archaeological assemblages using extant ungulate microwear.
abstract: The seasonality of human occupations in archaeological sites is highly significant for the study of hominin behavioural ecology, in particular the hunting strategies for their main prey-ungulates. We propose a new tool to quantify such seasonality from tooth microwear patterns in a dataset of ten large samples of extant ungulates resulting from well-known mass mortality events. The tool is based on the combination of two measures of variability of scratch density, namely standard deviation and coefficient of variation. The integration of these two measurements of variability permits the classification of each case into one of the following three categories: (1) short events, (2) long-continued event and (3) two separated short events. The tool is tested on a selection of eleven fossil samples from five Palaeolithic localities in Western Europe which show a consistent classification in the three categories. The tool proposed here opens new doors to investigate seasonal patterns of ungulate accumulations in archaeological sites using non-destructive sampling.
authors.affiliation: Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain.|Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), C. Marcellí Domingo s/n, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain.|Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Area de Prehistoria, Avinguda de Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain.
authors.forename: Florent
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rivals
authors.affiliation: Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), C. Marcellí Domingo s/n, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain.|Departament de Física Fonamental, Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat de Física-C. Martí i Franqués 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Luce
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Prignano
authors.affiliation: Bay Path University, 588 Longmeadow Street, Longmeadow, MA 01106, USA.
authors.forename: Gina M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Semprebon
authors.affiliation: Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), C. Marcellí Domingo s/n, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain.|Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Area de Prehistoria, Avinguda de Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain.
authors.forename: Sergi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lozano
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001106:Archaeology; D005580:Fossils; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans