Studying the human exploitation of birds during the Paleolithic in Belgium from old and recent bone collections

In last decades, scholars have highlighted the usefulness of birds, as part of the small game, to help understanding complex human behaviour and choices during the Prehistory. While the exploitation of birds has been documented in several sites in eastern or southern Europe, what happened in north-western Europe is still largely unknown due to a lack in the preservation and in the study of bird material. In this context, archaeological assemblages from Belgium offer a great opportunity to better understand the exploitation of birds in this part of Europe, because of the good conditions of preservation offered by its partially karstic subsoil.
Here, we present results of an ongoing project aiming at analysing old and recent bone collections preserving bird remains in order to fill this gap. More in particular, the study of the bird remains from Trou de Chaleux, a major Magdalenian site, and from the Gravettian site of Maisières “Canal” will be discussed.
Archaeological excavations at the Trou de Chaleux at the end of the 19th century yielded a vast assemblage of lithic and bone material as well as figurative art, characteristic of the Late Magdalenian. AMS dates with calibrated ages range from 15,733 cal BP to 14,134 cal BP, situating the main archaeological deposit from the Trou de Chaleux at the transition of Greenland Stadial-2 to Greenland Interstadial-1 (Bølling-Allerød Interstadial). Among the archaeozoological material, more than 500 bird bones have been isolated, which had never been studied. Excavated in 1966, the Gravettian site of Maisières “Canal” has revealed traces of a human presence confined to the Dansgaard-Oeschger 5 event, at around 32 500 cal BP. Apart from a rich archaeological, it yielded a limited but exceptionally well-preserved bird bone assemblage.
We performed the taxonomic and skeletal identification of the material and we examined in detail the surface of the bones in search of human modifications such as tool marks, fire traces or pigment deposits. Surface alterations were investigated based on a macro- and microscopic analysis, including an analysis of wear traces and elementary composition. In both sites, bird bones displaying traces of human intervention were identified. The traces observed indicate an intense exploitation of birds for food, technical but also apparently symbolic purposes.