IBERHUNT · Palaeolithic ungulate hunting strategies in the eastern Iberian Peninsula through advanced proteomic profiling

Palaeolithic ungulate hunting strategies in the eastern Iberian Peninsula through advanced proteomic profiling

Recent zooarchaeological analyses have suggested that Neanderthals were skilled hunters. Yet, there is still a vivid debate on whether Middle Palaeolithic human groups were also capable of more effective, and diverse, sophisticated food-processing behaviours, in particular through specialised hunting. Traditionally, archaeologists have relied on the osteological analysis of bone assemblages to determine prey mortality patterns, where species variability, age, and seasonality data are calculated. Although this approach has yielded a great deal of important information about the Pleistocene hominin hunting strategies, there is a considerable lack of sex-based prey data for most Pleistocene bone assemblages, key information that has direct implications for hominin planning depth, anticipatory abilities, mobility, and land use. The IBERHUNT project conducted advanced biomolecular analyses of ungulate dental assemblages and sediments from different rich-faunal Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites on the eastern Iberian Peninsula. Our specific goals were to 1) determine the biological sex of ungulate remains by reading protein sequences through the analysis of tooth enamel amelogenin and 2) identify palaeoenvironmental biomarkers by the analysis of sediments’ compound-specific isotope ratios. This unique combination of state of the art techniques will provide contextualised and quantifiable high-resolution data on Pleistocene human foraging efficiency, enabling a re-evaluation of Neanderthal predatory economics through an optimal foraging perspective that includes climate adaptations. In conclusion, IBERHUNT results broadened the discussion of evolutionary relationships between Neanderthals and modern humans and contributed to the development of new methods for archaeological research. The results were successfully achieved through the implementation of: 1) proteomic analytical and interpretation skills; 2) Recovering and matching amelogenin genes from AMELX and AMELY isoforms from annotated UniProt protein accession numbers to establish peptide sequences and variations; 3) Collection, interpretation, and organisation of mass chromatograms from nano-liquid tandem mass-spectrometry; 4) Extraction and analysis of palaeoenvironmental biomarkers; and 5) Multivariate statistics training in R software programming.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз