Animal exploitation strategies during the South African Middle Stone Age: Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort fauna from Sibudu Cave Jamie L. Clark a, * , Ina Plug b a Museum of Anthropology, 4013 Museums Building, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079, USA b Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of South Africa, c/o P.O. Box 21022, Valhalla 0137, South Africa Received 26 February 2007; accepted 11 December 2007 Abstract As one of the few sites that preserve fauna from the Howiesons Poort (HP) and the immediately post-HP Middle Stone Age (MSA), Sibudu Cave provides a unique opportunity to explore the range of variability in subsistence behaviors during this important phase in human behavioral evolution. In addition to providing information on subsistence, the faunal assemblage serves as a means of reconstructing the environmental conditions during these two periods. While the HP fauna is dominated by species that prefer closed (particularly forested) habitats, the fauna from the upper-most layers of the post-HP MSA are largely representative of open conditions. These results largely coincide with macrobotan- ical analyses and may simply indicate that the extent of the riverine forest near the site was greater during the HP. Alternatively, the pattern could be indicative of a marked intensification in the exploitation of the environment in the immediate vicinity of the shelter during the HP, perhaps resulting from a decline in the productivity of adjacent regions. We also document variation in the frequency of the different bovid size classes over time. The evidence shows a declining focus on the smallest bovids after the HP, with a parallel increase in the frequency of large and very large bovids. Beyond a heavy focus on small bovids, small mammals and suids also occur at higher frequencies during the HP. Although the HP faunal assemblage is largely unique as compared to the bulk of the MSA sequence at Sibudu, the evidence presented here suggests that the transition between the HP and the post-HP MSA may have been more gradual than abrupt. Our results indicate that the HP and post-HP MSA inhabitants of Sibudu Cave were capable hunters; however, hunting strategies appear to show marked variation over time. We propose that the variability in animal procurement strategies reflects a degree of behavioral plasticity beyond that generally attributed to MSA populations. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Zooarchaeology; Human behavioral evolution; Paleoenvironment; Late Pleistocene; Behavioral variability Introduction Although the growing database of comprehensively analyzed Middle Stone Age (MSA) fauna has considerably expanded our knowledge of the hunting abilities of the MSA inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Milo, 1998; Klein and Cruz-Uribe, 2000; Marean et al., 2000; Assefa, 2006), much remains to be discovered about the range and nature of variability in subsis- tence behaviors within this important period of human evolution. Within the southern African MSA, two phases have figured prominently in recent debates about the origins of modern human behavior: the Still Bay and the Howiesons Poort (HP). Characterized by the presence of bifacially-worked foliate or lanceolate points, the Still Bay is most recently known for the shell beads found in layers dating to w75 ka at Blombos Cave (d’Errico et al., 2005). Best known for its characteristic geomet- ric backed tools (cf. Singer and Wymer, 1982), the HP (typically dated from w65 to w55 ka) has also received attention for the incised ostrich eggshell recovered at Diepkloof (Parkington * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: jamielc@umich.edu (J.L. Clark), plugc@mweb.co.za (I. Plug). 0047-2484/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2007.12.004 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Human Evolution 54 (2008) 886e898