Changes in reindeer body part representation at Grotte XVI, Dordogne, France J. Tyler Faith * Hominid Paleobiology Doctoral Program, CASHP, Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, 2110 G St NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA Received 28 November 2006; received in revised form 29 January 2007; accepted 31 January 2007 Abstract Foraging theory models are used to examine changes in reindeer body part representation in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic ungulate assemblages at Grotte XVI (Dordogne, France). Previous research suggests that climate change resulted in progressive increases in reindeer abundances throughout the region. If increased forager encounter rates with reindeer resulted in decreased transport distances and search times, central-place forager models predict that field processing at the kill site will decline and reindeer body part transport will become less selective. This prediction is supported, and reindeer skeletal element abundances are shown to become increasingly even and incorporate higher frequen- cies of low utility elements through time. The progressive shift in reindeer transport strategies operates across technological and hominin species boundaries including the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Zooarchaeology; Foraging theory; Climate change; Skeletal element abundances; Carcass transport strategies; Reindeer; Grotte XVI; France 1. Introduction The relative abundances of large-mammal skeletal elements in archaeological bone assemblages have long been studied by zooarchaeologists in an effort to interpret butchery and trans- port decisions (Perkins and Daly, 1968; White, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955). In more recent years, such examinations have figured strongly into zooarchaeological applications of forag- ing theory as a means of examining subsistence change and the human impacts on vertebrate faunas (e.g., Broughton, 1994a,b; 1999; Cannon, 2003; Nagaoka, 2002, 2005). The analysis of skeletal element abundances within a foraging the- ory framework stems largely from Binford’s ethnoarchaeolog- ical study of the Nunamiut (Binford, 1978). Although Binford dismissed archaeological applications of foraging theory (Binford, 1983: 220), his development of utility indices as a method for examining relationships between the economic utility of body parts and their frequencies in bone assemblages assumes that ‘‘people optimally forage across the body of an animal, as some believe people optimally forage across larger landscapes’’ (Grayson, 1989: 643; see also Grayson, 1988). It is now widely presumed that butchery and transport decisions are mediated by some recognition of the nutritional value associated with different body parts in relation to the energetic costs of transporting them (e.g., Bartram, 1993; Binford, 1978; Metcalfe and Jones, 1988; O’Connell et al., 1988, 1990). In this study, foraging theory models are used to examine how Middle and Upper Paleolithic humans adapted their rein- deer (Rangifer tarandus) butchery and transport strategies in response to environmental change at Grotte XVI in the Dor- dogne region of southwest France. A novel method for exam- ining skeletal element abundances (Faith and Gordon, 2007), termed skeletal element evenness, is applied to provide a quan- titative measure of the changes in reindeer body part represen- tation over time. * Tel.: þ1 202 994 0154. E-mail address: tfaith@gwu.edu 0305-4403/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2007.01.014 Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007) 2003e2011 http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas