Ungulate tooth wear analysis as a proxy for neanderthal habitats changes during mis 4 and 3
Several methods are used in Pleistocene paleoenvironmental reconstitution, such as, biochemical, eco-morphologicals, dental wear or pollen analyses. The rigorous comparison and inclusion of several paleoenvironmental proxies in a single study is still in its early stages. Yet, these methods are complementary and their inclusion could bring greater precisions to the knowledge of local and regional paleoenvironmental. Toothclues is a multi-disciplinary and innovative project which aims, for the first time, to compare and combine herbivore paleodiet, eco-morphometry and paleobotanical data, obtaining a clear picture of the environment where Neanderthal groups lived and precise interactions between them and their biotope in three temporal scales. This study will focus on the North-western part of the Mediterranean basin (France and Spain) during the MIS 4 and 3 in order to evaluate Neanderthal adaptations to the climatic instability. We selected three archaeological sites in which both faunal and botanical elements were available in situ and well preserved. This study requests several areas of expertise and tools to be conducted. First, the diet of the ungulates will be determined using dental wear analysis. Then, post-cranial bones of ungulates will be studied through morphological and metric analyses using Geometric Morphometrics. Next, pollen data from the same localities will be compiled with the help of specialists and combined with the faunal proxies through statistical analysis. The development of a new method to combine three proxies which refer to various geographical (local/regional) and time (decades/years/season) scales will bring new information about paleoenvironmental features for the North-western part of the Mediterranean basin during MIS 4 and 3 with a great precision. Ultimately, ToothClues aim to understand the interaction between environment, preys and humans in order to evaluate the adaptability and resilience of Neanderthal societies.