Evidence for Bone Grease Rendering During the Upper Paleolithic at Vale Boi (Algarve, Portugal)

Recently excavated faunas from the Upper Paleolithic site of Vale Boi in Algarve (southern Portugal) provide early evidence of resource intensification in the form of bone grease rendering, a labor-intensive technique for maximizing the fat yield from ungulate carcasses, alongside exploitation of rabbits. The geography and chronology of the occurrences of these subsistence phenomena may indicate expanding dietary breadth in Upper Paleolithic foragers. Evidence of bone grease rendering begins with the early Gravettian period at Vale Boi, based on the co-occurrence of abundant fire-cracked rock, stone anvils, and the systematic fragmentation spongy bone. Tests for density-mediated attrition in rabbits and ungulates indicate that the patterns of body part representation in the ungulate remains were not biased substantially by postdepositional processes. The onset of resource intensification and dietary expansion in the Algarve is in general agreement with patterns observed for the northern Mediterranean Rim. However, the coupling of heavy rabbit exploitation and bone grease-rendering in the early Gravettian at Vale Boi is distinctive and, as such, occurs relatively early for the Upper Paleolithic overall. INTRODUCTION Changes in human predator-prey interactions can take many forms but are perhaps most demonstrable with how nutrition is squeezed from ungulate carcasses, specifically the addition of bone greaserendering, a labor-intensive technique, to the long established practice of cold marrow extraction (Stiner 2002, 2003). Another source of evidence may come from changes in foragers’ emphasis on certain classes of small game (e.g., Davis et al. 1994; Munro 2004; Stiner 2001, 2003; Stiner et al. 2000; Tchernov 1998). Because these shifts in human diet and predator-prey ecology did not occur everywhere at once during the Pleistocene in Europe, the geography and chronology of their occurrence is of great interest and may reflect shifting demographic conditions, although competing explanations must also be explored. Resource intensification often is provoked by increases in human population densities and the stresses that demographic growth places on traditional food supplies. The Paleolithic of the Algarve region of southern Portugal has come under investigation only recently (Bicho 1993, 1994, 2001; Bicho et al. 2000; Stiner 2003). The Algarve is ecologically distinctive for its juxtaposition of rich Atlantic and Mediterranean marine communities, geographic isolation, and a declining terrestrial large mammal fauna after roughly 12,000 years ago (compare Antunes et al. 1989; Cardoso 1989, 1995; Davis 2002; Valente 2000). Here we present new zooarchaeological evidence from the Upper Paleolithic open site of Vale Boi (Bicho 2001) (Figure 1). Research at this site is ongoing, and hence the faunal samples are still limited. Some results are sufficiently robust, however, to warrant presentation here. The Algarve region presents us with an important test case, due to its remoteness relative to the earliest geographic centers of Paleolithic cultural transition.