The challenges of identifying partially digested human teeth : first description of Neandertal remains from the Mousterian site of Marillac (Marillac-le-Franc, Charente, France) and implications for palaeoanthropolog

Abstract

Excavations at the collapsed cave site of Marillac (Marillac-le-Franc, Charente, France)1, uncovered in the lower half of the stratigraphy, a series of Late Pleistocene sedimentological facies containing a MIS 4/3 fauna. Also discovered were Middle Paleolithic artefacts (Quina Mousterian) and numerous fragmentary Neandertal fossils corresponding to a MNI of seven individuals. Analyses of the geomorphology of the eastern locus of the site, of the artefacts and especially of the animal bones of the lower part of the stratigraphy, suggest that over the course of time the site was intermittently used by Neandertals for processing animal carcasses. Cave carnivores appear to have sometimes been involved in scavenging activities of the remains abandoned by humans. Re-examination of two teeth - that were provisionally interpreted as bovid or cervid deciduous incisors by a palaeontologist unfamiliar with Pleistocene mammal fauna - have been identified as Neandertal maxillary permanent incisors. Originally considered as faunal deciduous incisors, what made their identification particularly difficult were the significant modifications to both the crown and roots of these teeth. This contribution explores the possible causes for this unusual morphology and, in particular, their ingestion by carnivores. This is the most parsimonious explanation as these teeth possess distinctive modifications clearly indicative of the effects of carnivore gastric secretion, damage which is described here for the first time for human teeth. Finally, a number of straight forward macroscopic features are described that permit the rapid identification of these specific taphonomic modifications on human teeth without the need for microscopy or micro-CT scanning. A literature review indicates that additional hominin teeth, with similar scavenger produced changes, may already have been identified at other sites, especially those dated to the Plio-Pleistocene.