Upper Paleolithic rabbit exploitation and landscape patchiness: The Dordogne vs. Mediterranean Spain Emily Lena Jones * Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, Utah State University, 0730 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-0730, USA article info Article history: Available online 13 July 2011 abstract In inland France, diets dominated by the wild European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) enter the archaeological record around the PleistoceneeHolocene transition, whereas zooarchaeological faunas from Mediterranean Spain typically contain rabbit in abundance much earlier in the Upper Paleolithic. This paper compares data from these two times and places, drawing particularly on faunal data from the Soultrean site of Cueva de Ambrosio (Almería Province, Spain) and the Magdalenian site of Moulin du Roc (Dordogne, France), to consider biogeographic, environmental, and cultural factors that might contribute to the development of rabbit-dominated diets in southwestern Europe. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The story of the Upper Paleolithic in Southwestern Europe has long been one of specialist big game hunters. Recent work, however, has demonstrated that Upper Paleolithic hunting strate- gies were far from monolithic (Kornfeld, 1996; Cochard, 2004; Jones, 2006; Costamagno et al., 2008). Although in some parts of Southwestern Europe, big game hunting does seem to have been the predominant mode of subsistence (Straus, 1995a,b, 1996; Altuna, 1999), variability in diet breadth across Paleolithic Europe is also notable (e.g., Richards et al., 2001; Jones, 2009; Aura et al., 2010; Bicho et al., 2010). In general, diets on the Mediterranean coast of Europe seem to have been broader than those in the interior and on the Atlantic, but few systematic investigations of this have been completed at a regional scale (though see, for example, Stiner and Kuhn, 2006). The wild European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) can be consid- ered a “type” species for understanding variation in diet breadth in this region. Broad faunas from the Upper Paleolithic in Southwestern Europe often contain this taxon in abundance. Although there are a number of sites where rabbit hunting seems to have been an important part of the subsistence strategy, however, both methods of rabbit hunting and reasons for doing so seem to have varied consid- erably (Cochard, 2004; Cochard and Brugal, 2004; Jones, 2006). This paper aims to take a small step towards understanding Upper Paleolithic landscape use and diet variability in Southwestern Europe. Paleolithic rabbit hunting at Moulin du Roc, a rockshelter in the Dordogne of southwestern France, is compared to that at Cueva de Ambrosio (Almería Province) in the Mediterranean bioclimatic zone of Spain (Fig. 1). These examples are then placed in the larger context of landscape use as demonstrated by the non-leporid components of these zooarchaeological assemblages. 2. O. cuniculus in Southwestern Europe The modern species O. cuniculus includes both the wild Euro- pean rabbit and its descendant, the domestic rabbit. Throughout history, both these rabbits have been economically important, and widely used as a food source throughout Southwestern Europe (Callou, 2003). Oryctolagus originated on the Iberian peninsula during the late Pliocene/early Pleistocene (Corbet, 1994), and both paleontological (Zeuner, 1963; Corbet, 1986; Flux, 1994) and DNA research (Monnerot et al., 1994; Hardy et al., 1995) suggest that the rabbit was confined to the Iberian peninsula for much of the Pleistocene, with occasional colonization and extirpation events in southern France. Prior to 13,000 BP, rabbits appear to have been rare (though not unknown) in the Dordogne, but quite abundant on the Iberian Peninsula (Lopez-Martinez, 2008). The reasons for this biogeographical distribution are likely related to climate and environment. Although the European rabbit is remarkably environmentally tolerant, it is not well-adapted to cold, damp climates with thin soils, presumably because this restricts burrowing (Rogers, 1981). Today, O. cuniculus lives at alti- tudes below 1000 m, preferring areas of mixed grassland and scrubby vegetation, though it can occupy areas with minimal plant cover as long as aerial predators are not abundant (Corbet, 1994; * Present address: Department of Anthropology, MSC01-1040, Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA. E-mail address: elj@unm.edu. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.06.044 Quaternary International 264 (2012) 52e60