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This text was drafted by award-winning MMW TAs Tara Carter and Beth Peterson, (Anthropology) in the summer of 2008, supported by the MMW-based research funds left in his account on the death of Prof. Donald F. Tuzin, long an instructor and supporter of MMW. The text was substantially modified by Professor David K. Jordan in summer, 2011 to fit it to the needs of MMW-11.
This text may be freely reproduced for non-commercial educational purposes.
Taphonomy (from Greek taphos [τάφος], “grave”) is the study of fossilization and all the processes and conditions that lead to the preservation of plant or animal remains. The word came into currency in the 1960s, which saw a rise in the “debunking” of older claims about archaeological finds associated with fossils.
Typically, a reexamination of the materials collected at a site and a reconsideration in light of new theories, methods, or evidence could show that the original excavators were mistaken in their interpretations. In some cases the original claims about the site withstood the reexamination. In others the debunking was itself debunked, and the original claims regained their standing. But in many cases long established consensus understandings were modified in light of the new work.
In this essay we illustrate the process using one example of a site that has been the target of intensive reexamination: Zōukǒudiàn (周口店), not far from the Chinese capital of Beijing.
In the 1920’s and 1930’s fossil remains of at least 40 Homo erectus individuals (called by the cover term “Peking Man”) were found in a series of caves at Zōukǒudiàn in excavations conducted by W. C. Pei (Péi Wénzhōng 裴文中), considered today to be the father of Chinese prehistoric research. Joining Pei’s team in 1935 was a distinguished physical anthropologist named Franz Weidenreich, a German Jew whose time in China was intended at least partly to keep him as far as possible from the Nazi régime in his homeland. In 1937 Japan invaded China, beginning the Asian “theatre” of what was soon to be known as World War II.
In order to protect the fossils from damage in the fighting or from being confiscated by the Japanese, Weidenreich kept only casts of the fossils, sending the originals to the Chinese coast under the guard of United States Marines for shipment to safety in the United States. Those Marines were eventually captured by the Japanese and the fossils have never been seen again. We still have the casts made by Weidenreich and further research has also been conducted, unearthing more remains.
The fossils were found in a layer (layer 10) dated to about 500,000 years ago and in association with stone tools, ungulate bones, bones from an extinct species of giant hyena, hackberry seeds, and deposits of ash on the ground that suggested fire use in the cave.
Based on this evidence, researchers concluded that the cave had served as a home base or hearth for a group of Homo erectus who brought back ungulate carcasses for processing, cooked them on the fire, and also relied on gathered foods (as evidenced by the hackberry seeds). The use of fire was considered particularly significant, since we have no evidence of deliberate use of fire by earlier hominid forms.
Some of the Homo erectus skulls also had large puncture wounds and showed evidence of cutting, particularly around the foramen magnum on the bottom of the skull. Various interpretations were made of this, but no firm conclusions were drawn.
There were a good many hyena bones in the cave, which had been assumed to be prey animals, or perhaps animals killed in self-defense. But perhaps the hyenas scavenged in the cave or occupied it at a time when the humans were not present. And what about the skulls with holes in them?
Some decades later it was later suggested by some researchers, such as K. C. Chang in a 1977 work, that this was evidence of cannibalism. The proposal made sense. Cannibalism had been long been proposed to explain similar damage to Neanderthal skulls from Italy and was generally accepted in the Neanderthal case.
Since the war, research on the finds from Zhoukoudian has continued, and extensive new fossil material has been recovered.
In the late 20th century, Paul Goldberg and colleagues argued that the evidence for fire was likely misinterpreted. Because of advances in experimental archaeology and related fields (chemistry and geology, particularly), Goldberg et al. were able to determine that some of the remains that appeared charred were in fact affected by deposits made by water and were not remnants of fire use by Homo erectus living in the cave.
Furthermore, the “ash” (very little of which had been preserved from the original excavation) was in most cases almost certainly deposits of very fine-grained loess soils, which can easily be misinterpreted as evidence of ash, Goldberg argued.
Further analysis of the ungulate bones, Goldberg and his team argued, suggests that the majority were more likely moved and damaged by carnivores (probably the giant hyenas) or by natural processes of erosion rather than originally being associated with a human settlement.
Another significant find Goldberg and colleagues reported was a very high concentration of hyena coprolites (fossilized feces) suggesting that layer 10 of the cave was more often used as a hyena den rather than the hyenas being prey animals, and that it was probably occupied by humans only sporadically.
(Other, later layers of the cave system do show clear evidence of fire and human habitation, but were occupied by modern Homo sapiens not Homo erectus.)
Goldberg and his team provide us with an example of the use of new techniques and perspectives that can change the interpretation of old discoveries.
Subsequent research at Zhoukoudian has done much to restore our confidence that Homo erectus did in fact use fire at the site and did in fact engage in hunting. However, new evidence is examined with greater caution after Goldberg’s attack on the original excavation reports and their interpretations, and the techniques and models Goldberg and others used to attack the earlier interpretations are now part of the intellectual toolkit used by those working at Zhoukoudian (and other sites) today.
Homo erectus likely lived or spent time in this cave from time to time, although not at the same time as the giant hyenas, so some of the Homo erectus fossils are from those sporadic, temporary habitations. However Lewis Binford and Chuan Kung Ho re-examined the evidence and reported in a 1985 paper that there was no convincing evidence for cannibalism at Zhoukoudian, and that “[a]ll such interpretations appear to be dependent on a poor understanding of taphonomy and the postdepositional modification of bone” (415).
Applying methods developed for the study of taphonomy, that have identified what kinds of marks carnivore teeth leave on bones and what kinds of marks stone tools leave on bones, it is much more likely that these Homo erectus individuals were meals for hungry giant hyenas rather than for each other!
Most specialists at this point are inclined to agree.
- Binford, L.R. and Ho, C. K.
- (1985). Taphonomy at a distance: Zhoukoudian, “The cave home of Beijing Man?”. Current Anthropology, 26(4):413-442.
- Chang, K.C.
- (1977). The Archaeology of China. Yale University Press: New Haven.
- Goldberg, P., Weiner, S., Bar-Yosef, O., Xu, Q., and Liu, J.
- (2001). Site formation processes at Zhoukoudian, China. Journal of Human Evolution, 41:483-530.