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Site Use and Maintenance in the Middle Palaeolithic at Lakonis I (Peloponnese, Greece)

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Abstract

Lakonis I (ca. 100,000-40,000 BP) is a collapsed Middle Palaeolithic cave on the coast of the Mani Peninsula of southern Greece. The site contains three distinctive components: a hearth context, upper bone breccia, and lower bone breccia. The bone breccias contain concreted deposits and large numbers of lithic and faunal materials, though the upper bone breccia preserves more evidence of dumping from hearth features. The hearth context is comprised of hearth lenses interspersed with mixed ashy sediments, which we interpret as the remnants of raked out and trampled combustion features. Bones and lithics in the hearth context have higher rates of burning, and the lithics are smaller and more broken. The large numbers of burned bones are probably not the result of accidental burning or the use of bone as a fuel source, rather they seem to relate to site maintenance. The incorporation of multiple lines of evidence points to two different site maintenance strategies at Lakonis: (1) the intentional burning of food refuse and (2) the cleaning of hearths, and dumping remnant deposits elsewhere at the site. We therefore consider Lakonis I to be amongst the growing list of sites that contain evidence for Neandertal behavioral complexity.

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Acknowledgements

First of all, we would like to thank Karen Ruebens, Geoff Smith, Teresa Steele, and Tamara Dogandžić for organizing a stimulating session at the 2017 SAA meeting in Vancouver. We would also like to thank the excavation team for their hard work through the years. Thanks also to Nick Thompson for keeping the faunal analysis interesting and Vangelis Tourloukis, Jamie Clark, and Gilbert Marshall for ideas and input on this paper. Thanks to two anonymous reviewers and the editor, Nuno Bicho, for constructive suggestions that helped to strengthen this manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank all of the bodies that contributed to funding this research: the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Leakey Foundation, Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), Greek Ministry of Culture, and the Psycha Foundation for excavation (grants to EP), and the Senckenberg Naturmuseum (BMS), Leakey Foundation (BMS), INSTAP (BMS), Wiener Laboratory at the American School for Classical Studies at Athens (PE, PK), and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (PE) for analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, Tübingen, Germany

    Britt M. Starkovich

  2. Institute for Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Britt M. Starkovich

  3. School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Britt M. Starkovich

  4. Malcolm H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science, American School of Classical Studies, Athens, Greece

    Paraskevi Elefanti & Panagiotis Karkanas

  5. Ephory of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology, Ministry of Culture and Sports, Athens, Greece

    Eleni Panagopoulou

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Starkovich, B.M., Elefanti, P., Karkanas, P. et al. Site Use and Maintenance in the Middle Palaeolithic at Lakonis I (Peloponnese, Greece). J Paleo Arch 3, 157–186 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-018-0006-x

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