The evolution of human culture during the later Pleistocene: Using fauna to test models on the emergence and nature of ‘‘modern’’ human behavior Jamie L. Clark ⇑ Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, PO Box 750336, Dallas, TX 75275, United States Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Box 2050 Wits, South Africa article info Article history: Received 21 November 2010 Revision received 11 April 2011 Available online 11 May 2011 Keywords: Zooarchaeology Middle Stone Age Sibudu Cave Howieson’s Poort abstract It has often been argued that the success and spread of modern humans 50,000 years ago was due to a series of key behavioral shifts that conferred particular adaptive advantages. And yet, particularly during the African Middle Stone Age (MSA), some of these ‘‘modern’’ behaviors see only patchy expression across time and space. Recent models have proposed a link between the emergence of modern behaviors and environmental degradation and/or demographic stress. Under these models, modern behaviors represent a form of social/economic intensification in response to stress; if this were the case, signs of subsistence intensification should be more common during periods in which these behaviors are manifested than when they are not. In order to test these models, I analyzed faunal remains from Sibudu Cave (South Africa), focusing on the Howieson’s Poort (HP), a phase in which modern behaviors are evidenced, and the post-HP MSA, when classical signatures of such behavior have disappeared. Significant variability in hunting behavior was identified. While much of this variability appears to correspond with changes in the local environment, evidence for resource stress was more common during the HP. The implications of these results to our understanding of the evolution of human culture are discussed. Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction Debates about what it means to be human have a very long his- tory within the field of anthropology. While physical anthropolo- gists look to the fossil record to understand the evolution of our species, one of archaeology’s main contributions lies in investigat- ing the evolution of human culture. The traditional model placed the origins of a fully modern cultural system around 40 kya as part of what is known as the ‘‘Upper Paleolithic Revolution’’ (see Bar- Yosef, 2002, for a review). This view was based on the European re- cord, in which there was a flowering of evidence for art, ritual, and technological innovation around the time of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic, which also happened to coincide with the earliest appearance of anatomically modern humans on that continent. Under this model, ‘‘modern’’ behaviors were those that distinguished the UP (presumably made by modern humans) from the MP (presumably produced by Neanderthals), including art, personal ornamentation, ritualized burial of the dead, bone tool technology, and advanced stone tool technology (e.g., Bar-Yosef, 2002; Mellars, 1973, 2002; White, 1982). As evidence suggesting that our species evolved first in Africa began to accumulate (see McBrearty and Brooks (2000) for a sum- mary of the fossil evidence and Relethford (1998) for a summary of the genetic evidence), some of those interested in modern behav- ioral origins began to shift their attention to that continent. Most famously, Richard Klein proposed that an advantageous genetic mutation in the brain resulted in the shift to a ‘‘fully modern behavioral mode’’ around 50 kya (Klein, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2008). He argued that this shift played a role in the evolution of modern language; besides conferring the ability to communicate symboli- cally, the increase in cognitive capacity promoted technological innovation and more efficient resource use. Under Klein’s model, it was the evolution of modern human culture that allowed ana- tomically modern humans to leave Africa and to successfully out- compete archaic populations such as the Neanderthals. Others have argued that the evolution of a fully modern cultural system was the outcome of a more gradual process, pointing to a growing body of evidence for the appearance of several ‘‘modern’’ traits prior to 50 kya—and for an apparent accumulation of these traits over time. While much of the focus has been on the African record (e.g., Marean et al., 2007; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; McBrearty and Stringer, 2007), others have pointed out that similar patterns are evidenced in the Eurasian MP (d’Errico, 2003; Langley et al., 2008). In addressing this issue, one cannot escape the question of what it is that constitutes ‘‘modern’’ behavior (see Nowell (2010) for a recent review). Many scholars have questioned the classic trait list approach (e.g., d’Errico, 2003; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Hen- shilwood and Marean, 2003; Clark and Riel-Salvatore, 2009; Shea, 0278-4165/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2011.04.002 ⇑ Present address: 4330 Keller Road, #98, Holt, MI 48842, United States. E-mail address: jamielc@umich.edu Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 30 (2011) 273–291 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa