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EUROPEAN UPPER PALEOLITHIC ZOOARCHAEOLOGY
Sandra L. Olsen Sandra Olsen, in collaboration with Jill Cook at the British Museum, is currently investigating the rock shelter known as the Grotte des Eyzies, in southwestern France. The Grotte des Eyzies was excavated by Lartet and Christy in the 1860s. Shortly after, blocks of breccia containing Magdalenian V cultural remains (dating to 12,500 B.P.) were sent to museums around the world. In the 1980s, five blocks in the British Museum were prepared in order to remove all of the artifacts and faunal remains contained within. The Grotte des Eyzies is the habitation site of a group of reindeer hunters. It is important because the vast array of cutmarks on the extremely well-preserved reindeer bones show that intensive butchering and fileting were performed. Butchering patterns indicate that the meat was clearly removed from the bone by stripping the muscles off the bones at the points of origin and insertion. This has been interpreted as one of the earliest examples of smoking or drying meat for preservation and to facilitate transport. Ethnographic accounts of drying meat describe cutting long strips of muscle off the bone and hanging the strips over racks to be air-dried or smoked. Dried meat is considerably lighter in weight than fresh meat and will not spoil for several months. A preliminary article on the fauna of the Grotte des Eyzies, entitled "Reindeer Exploitation at Les Eyzies," was published in Archaeozoologia, 1987, I(1): 171-182. Previous research by Sandra Olsen at the French site of Solutré involved investigation of hunting strategies at this famous horse kill site. In "Horse Hunters of the Ice Age," in Horses Through Time, Olsen describes the use of horses by Paleolithic Europeans.
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