Rabbits in the grave! Consequences of bioturbation on the Neandertal “burial” at Regourdou (Montignac-sur-V  ez  ere, Dordogne) Maxime Pelletier a, * , Aur  elien Royer b , Trenton W. Holliday c, d , Emmanuel Discamps e , St  ephane Madelaine f, g , Bruno Maureille g a Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Minist Culture & Com, LAMPEA, Aix-en-Provence, France b Universit e Bourgogne Franche-Comt e, CNRS, EPHE, PSL Research University, Biog eosciences, UMR 6282, 21000, Dijon, France c Department of Anthropology,101 Dinwiddie Hall, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA d Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits, 2050, South Africa e CNRS UMR 5608 TRACES, Universit e Toulouse Jean Jaur es, 31058, Toulouse Cedex 9, France f Mus ee national de Pr ehistoire, 1 rue du Mus ee, 24620, Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, France g CNRS, Universit e de Bordeaux, Minist Culture & Com, PACEA, UMR 5199, 33615, Pessac, France article info Article history: Received 17 November 2016 Accepted 5 April 2017 Keywords: Oryctolagus cuniculus Taphonomy Attritional accumulation Burrow Middle Palaeolithic Bioturbation abstract The understanding of Neanderthal societies, both with regard to their funerary behaviors and their subsistence activities, is hotly debated. Old excavations and a lack of taphonomic context are often factors that limit our ability to address these questions. To better appreciate the exact nature of what is potentially the oldest burial in Western Europe, Regourdou (Montignac-sur-V ez ere, Dordogne), and to better understand the taphonomy of this site excavated more than 50 years ago, we report in this contribution a study of the most abundant animals throughout its stratigraphy: the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). In addition to questions surrounding the potential bioturbation of the site's stratigraphy, analysis of the Regourdou rabbits could provide new information on Neandertal subsistence behavior. The mortality profile, skeletal-part representation, breakage patterns, surface modification, and comparison with modern reference collections supports the hypothesis that the Regourdou rabbit re- mains were primarily accumulated due to natural (attritional) mortality. Radiocarbon dates performed directly on the rabbit remains give ages ranging within the second half of Marine Isotope Stage 3, notably younger than the regional Mousterian period. We posit that rabbits dug their burrows within Regour- dou's sedimentological filling, likely inhabiting the site after it was filled. The impact of rabbit activity now brings into question both the reliability of the archaeostratigraphy of the site and the paleoenvir- onmental reconstructions previously proposed for it, and suggests rabbits may have played a role in the distribution of the Neandertal skeletal remains. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The reconstruction of prehistoric human societies' behavior toward their dead has for a long time attracted the attention of paleoanthropologists and prehistorians (e.g., de Nadaillacde, 1886; Bouyssonie et al., 1908; Breuil, 1921, 1951; Peyrony, 1921; Bouyssonie, 1954; Arensburg et al., 1985; Defleur, 1993; Vandermeersch, 2006; Maureille and Vandermeersch, 2007; Pettitt, 2011; Maureille et al., 2016a). In particular, the question of whether Neandertals intentionally buried their dead has attracted great attention and is an issue still hotly debated today (Sandgathe et al., 2011; Rendu et al., 2014, 2016; Dibble et al., 2015). This ongoing debate is so heated most likely because this funeral gesture is thought to represent one of the most complex human symbolic behaviors, and as such many find it difficult to believe it was practiced by non-anatomically modern hominins. In several sites across the paleospecies' range, the discovery of nearly complete Neandertal skeletons has been interpreted as ev- idence of intentional primary burials (e.g., Vandermeersch, 1995; Maureille and Tillier, 2008; Pettitt, 2011). Such cases are consid- ered by some to reveal a funerary behavior shared between Ne- andertals and modern humans that appeared near the end of the Middle Paleolithic (ca. 100 kyr for anatomically modern humans * Corresponding author. E-mail address: maxime.pelletier@etu.univ-amu.fr (M. Pelletier). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Human Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.04.001 0047-2484/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Human Evolution 110 (2017) 1e17