Taking Apart (Disarticulating) A Myth About Skeletal Preservation In Caves and Rockshelters

Today's blurt may veer in the direction of stridency. So, you'll want to turn down the volume on your digital device so as not to experience οὖς τραῦμα [ear pain]. Oh. And. By the way, I'm not bitter!

Some time back I presented the untold story of Kebara 2, the partial Neanderthal skeleton. I reproduced an image of the remains, in situ, including the stratigraphic column on which it lay. The image clearly shows evidence of special depositional circumstances beneath Kebara 2, which go a long way toward explaining the presence of the burial pit inferred by the excavation team, and the good preservation of the skeletal elements that remained.

Today I want to return again to my thrilling days of yesteryear (I was graciously given a place on the excavation team during the 1989 field season). This time I want to talk about an oft-cited facet of burial taphonomy, one that those who have made claims of purposeful Middle Palaeolithic burial rely on very heavily—the occurrence of articulated skeletal elements, fossil remains with some or all skeletal elements found in the same spatial relation to one another that they would have had in life. [You know. With the knee bone connected to the thigh bone, etc.]

Archaeologist F. Turvil-Petre in Zuttiyeh Cave, 1925--1926.
[I'm a big fan of the excavation technique reproduced here.]
[Legalized pot hunting is more to the point.]

I've recently come under fire, again, for attempting to counter the claim that articulation has a one-to-one correspondence with burial. I was responding to Hovers, E. and Belfer-Cohen, A. "Insights into early mortuary practices of Homo." In: S. Tarlow and L. Nilsson-Stutz (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial (Oxford University Press, Oxford), 631--642, 2013. My thoughts precipitated a brief conversation with Erella Hovers in which, for the umpteenth time, she expounded the theory that a fossil found with elements articulated is prima facie evidence for purposeful burial. As Hovers and Belfer-Cohen put it

A basic criterion, without which the discussion of intentionality of burial would be moot, is a considerable degree of skeletal articulation. 

Well, evidently the claim of purposeful burial doesn't hold for the numerous vertebrates excavated with complete, articulated skeletons. They, of course, were buried naturally by the special depositional circumstances in caves and rock shelters, debris flows and mass drownings. I find that double standard to be ... a double standard!

In my 1989a, 1989b and 1999 and 2000 efforts to deconstruct Middle Palaeolithic burial, I noted that articulated skeletal elements are those that were plus/minus rapidly buried, or in some fashion protected from disturbance while they were buried by the gradual build-up of sediments. Special depositional circumstances are commonplace in caves and rock shelters. Special, yes; but not unexpected. Purposeful burial is a special depositional circumstance.

In those earlier publications I mentioned palaeontological occurrences of articulated skeletons. Contrary to Hovers and Belfer-Cohen's assertion that articulation equals purposeful burial, these complete animal skeletons were, more than likely, not purposefully buried by conspecifics. Those observations clearly fell on deaf ears, and right across the archaeological universe. Erella still feels justified in claiming that articulated fossil bipedal apes could not have been preserved with portions of the skeleton articulated without having been buried purposefully.

After all, Erella is an authority on purposeful burial. She dug one up. The Amud 7 infant, a partially articulated, wee bairn of the Neanderthal persuasion [the second sense]. This great good fortune has given Erella a bully pulpit from which to propound her version of archaeological reality, which culminated in the invitation to contribute to the Oxford Handbook.

Be all that as it may. Today I want to present a brief case study that altogether dismantles the assertion [not an argument, remember] that finding articulated skeletal remains means that they must have been purposefully buried.

While I was in Israel in 1989 I was treated [and I mean it] to site visits that would interest all of you palaeoanthropologists of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. One of those stops was Zuttiyeh Cave, on the Wadi Amud, near the Sea of Galilee [Yeppers, such biblical places exist. It doesn't prove the existence of god, or the Jesus story, mind you, it's just cool that there is so much historicity in a document that moves many hundreds of millions of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim devout.]

Approximate location of Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh ("Cave of the 
Robbers"), in Wadi Amud, which drains to the Sea of Galilee 
(also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias).

In the satellite map at left I've indicated Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh's location, roughly [in the third sense of the word]. It contains/ed a Lower-Middle and Middle Palaeolithic assemblage and a frontal bone that has flummoxed human paleontologists ever since its discovery in the 1925-1926 expedition of F. Turville-Petre (who's shown above, during his pillaging excavation of Zuttiyeh Cave).


There's no special reason why Zuttiyeh should be my case study today. What I'm about to show you could have happened [and most likely did happen] to all of the Middle Palaeolithic individuals that we now know as the 'fossil record' of that region, and others.

Today Zuttiyeh cave exists in a xeric environment. It also occurs within the biogeographic range of the striped hyaena, Hyaena hyaena (Linnaeus, 1758). This factoid is très important because hyaenas are adapted to eating bone, in addition to flesh, the target of all other carnivores. The manner in which hyaenas are able to reduce a prey animal's remains to a scattering of bone scraps is part of the lore of taphonomy. All of us acknowledge the hyaena's ability to mess with carcasses [and bipedal ape corpses]. In fact, Erella Hovers and a bajillion other Palaeolithic archaeologists cite hyaena behaviour as one of the reasons they conclude that we would never find articulated skeletons of fossil bipedal apes were it not for purposeful burial. Even today, hyaenas exhume recently buried human remains and have their special—bone crushing and consuming—way with the corpse.

Entrance to Zuttiyeh Cave, Wadi Amud, Israel (Robert H. Gargett photo).

Hyaena hyaena distribution.

Nevertheless, in the theoretical mind of most palaeoanthropologists, hyaena presence in a palaeofauna would guarantee disturbance of any unprotected carcasses/corpses on the landscape, or in caves and rock shelters. I mention hyaenas here because their presence in the wilds of present-day Israel underscores the implications of the cow 'mummy' that I observed inside Zuttiyeh cave in 1989 [and which is shown below].

Desiccated bovine inside Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh, near the Sea of Galilee, Israel, May--June, 1989.

(Robert H. Gargett photo)

You'll notice that there is no flesh on these bones, and that in the case of some skeletal elements, even the longer-lasting connective tissue has been reduced or removed by microbial activity [evident in the collapse of the rib cage]. What you don't see is any indication that this individual suffered from rigor mortis that would have distorted the animal's repose. What you also don't see is disturbance by carnivores—especially those ravening, bone-consuming hyaenas—or any other agents of disturbance. What you do see is the raw material for a buried, articulated skeleton of a bovid [were it to have occurred in different depositional circumstances]. For example, if this animal had died on a down slope near the cave wall it would have been buried much more rapidly than it would if it had died out in the open, as this one did.

There are myriad ways that vertebrate remains might persist with skeletal elements in articulation, even in the presence of disturbance agents. I tried to elucidate many in my 1999 paper. Yet, Erella Hovers has always propounded 'articulation' as evidence for burial, even without other observations to back it up. Listen to what she and her co-authors have said over the years.

In the highly dynamic environments of the Levantine caves during Mousterian times, hominid occupation commonly alternated with the activities of other animals, and the residues of both were often subjected to severe disturbance prior to further sediment deposition. Under such circumstances, the articulation of Middle Paleolithic hominid skeletons is the major criterion for their designation as intentional burials Rak et al., "A Neandertal infant from Amud Cave, Israel." Journal of Human Evolution 26:313--324, 1994.

You simply can't generalize in this way without offering evidence. Although they pay homage to the 'dynamic' animal community in evidence, they pay no attention to the equal certainty of variability in those communities.

The ungulates found in the MP faunal assemblage at Amud are not cave dwellers, and would have been brought into cave mainly as part of the dietary systems of either hominids or carnivores. Hovers, et al., "The Amud 7 skeleton—still a burial. Response to Gargett." Journal of Human Evolution 39:253--260, 2000.

Despite the confidence expressed in this statement, you've seen living proof in the image above [or, rather, dead proof] that their assertion is a generalization that cannot be sustained.

Lastly, I want to present the earliest example of the failed mind set of Erella and her collaborators. This is from Belfer-Cohen and Hovers (1992).

The original excavators of the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic sites routinely used the skeleton's state of articulation as the criterion for identifying burials . . . . They never elaborated on the point, ap­parently because it seemed self-evident. Later research­ers have carried this attitude even farther, often neglect­ing the state of articulation. [Sally] Binford . . .  for one, proposes the very broad criterion of "the presence of an excavated grave and/ or an arrangement of the body or body parts which seem to preclude natural agency." Presumably, the last part of this sentence also relates to articulation. Harrold . . . ,  in  contrast,  regards as intentional burials only  those  cases  furnishing "some strong positive indication to the effect, such as strongly-flexed body position or unequivocal association with a burial trench or grave goods." It should be stressed that isolated skeletal fragments may represent remains both of disturbed intentional burials and of ran­dom, natural deposition. Archaeologically, distinction between the two may be difficult if not impossible. Thus skeletal articulation remains the single unchallenged criterion for intentional burial. Belfer-Cohen, A., and E. Hovers. "In the Eye of the Beholder: Mousterian and Natufian Burials in the Levant." Current Anthropology 33:463-471, 1992.

It's hard for me to fathom how the authors of this last credo have any authority in the matter. They cite decades old pronouncements [and interpret them in only one of several possible ways]. Once again, they ignore competing arguments [mine, e.g.]. Moreover, that they can characterize any kind of deposition as 'random' is their self-inflicted stake through the heart. There is nothing 'random' about natural deposition. The only randomness truly in evidence here is the choices that these authors make in support of their pet theories.

I'm tempted to say "it's all a crock." Except, animal bone people reading this will know that Crocuta crocuta is a species of hyaena. And, I wouldn't want anyone accusing me of making bad puns.

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Failure To Launch*

I'm having a truth attack. That's my way of saying that I've been lying to myself. I've been telling myself that there's too much other shit to be done to be spending time looking stuff up and thinking of smart things to say on the Subversive Archaeologist.

Fact. After I put up a tortured piece on the recently published treatment of middle palaeolithic 'burial' I received a note from one of the authors, Erella Hovers. It's copied below. But, instead of fanning the fire in my belly, Erella's comment knocked the wind right out of me. Much like Danny Glover's character in the movie Lethal Weapon, I found myself feeling too old and too tired to get back in the fight. It wasn't just Erella's words that caused me to say, "Uncle!" Hers is just another in an arm-long list of similar put-downs that bear no relationship to a real argument, from evidence, about the very dead horse that I'm forced to keep beating—the question of whether or not purposeful burial occurred prior to about 40 ka or 50 ka. 

As you read through Erella's response, I'll be jumping in and out trying to show you which are the most discouraging words. It's enough to make me long for my own "Home, home on the range."

Here we go. The italicized bits are Erella's words; the words in brackets are my *whispered* rejoinders.

Hi Rob

[So far, so good!]

Just read your comments on mine and Anna’s paper.  . . .  A few points: the main one is, that paper is NOT about you or your work specifically, 

[Um. I don't recall saying that their Oxford Handbook essay was 'about' me. I merely pointed out that their entry was premised on shaky information because they and others have failed to engage with my work in any rigorous fashion.] 

so there was no need to go into that all over again. 

[All over again! I wish there'd been a once-over!]

Yes, I have read the papers, the comments, and the reply. I remain unconvinced that your argument is the best explanation, hence felt no need to repeat it in details. 

[I think we just hit my sore point. E. Hovers wasn't convinced by my 'argument'. As if I made but one. Notwithstanding, because she wasn't 'convinced', she gets to play grown-up and launches into a heap of speculative non-sense about what meaning a certain kind of behaviour might have carried with it IF there had been purposeful burial in the MP.]

Like you (or rather, unlike you), i got tired of the back and forth. 

[Moment of reality: where Erella's concerned there was one claim, one counterclaim, one back, and one forth. No more. She made a claim for the depositional circumstances of the Amud 7 infant. I pointed out where she might be wrong. She then failed to understand my arguments, once again, and I had to put her straight. Which, as she puts it, didn't convince her.] 

I did not see you publishing any new arguments or new data. 

['Scuse me? If the flat-earthers had raised a similar issue after Chris Colombus proved the earth was a sphere and thus illuminated the benighted Europeans of the time as to the reality. I can hear it now. "Hey! Columbus! What have you done for us lately? Got any more fancy evidence that the world is spherical? 'Cause, if ya don't, we're callin' it a draw! And, oh, by the way, the earth is flat! Nyah, nyah, nyah!]

You did not present also in your rather emotional response. 

[Gosh! My eminent frustration shone through the scientistic qualifications that I had to make to save my having to use profanity in the pages of the Journal of Human Evolution!]

So why should we have cited the same old list of claims all over again? 

[When did you ever? Wanna know what Erella thinks qualifies as citing the same list the first time? Let's see. Oh, yeah. Here it is. From what I think was the first published mention of "Grave Shortcomings" after its publication, this is what Erella thinks counts as citing a list of my 'claims' in the first place.   

1. "Most of the excavators of Levantine Middle Palaeolithic sites have identified intentional burials on the basis of field observations (see Gargett 1989 for refer­ences ...)."
2. "Thus, Gargett (1989) suggests that the pits in which remains of Middle Palaeolithic European Neanderthals have been found should be interpreted as resulting from natural phenom­ena.
While this view has been widely rejected on several grounds, it serves to illustrate the problematic nature of the criteria: they appear both too nebulous and too spe­cific and are by no means unequivocal."
3. "The fact that Middle Palaeo­lithic "burials" appear in small numbers is insufficient to disqualify them as intentional burials (contra Gargett 1989)."

(From: Belfer-Cohen, Anna, and Erella Hovers, "In the Eye of the Beholder: Mousterian and Natufian Burials in the Levant," Current Anthropology 33:463-471, 1992.)

That's it! I cited a bunch of old publications and Anna and Erella cited my citation. Then they say that my arguments were 'widely rejected on several grounds' and can't even be bothered to cite one such 'rejection'. Their final mention is either a complete and deliberate fabrication or a dismally poor reading of my paper. At no time did I say that the ratio between numbers of claimed 'burials' and the minimum number of individuals represented by the fossil corpus could be used as evidence of anything other than the rarity of specimens recovered in circumstances that provoked the claim of purposeful burial.

That's how the grownups and the Very Important Archaeologists do it! Don't like what Columbus says? It's as easy as pie to get around that. Just say that a bunch of other people don't believe him and carry on as if he'd never taken a breath on this planet! See above re: Columbus (just follow the yellow arrow at right).]  

On the other hand, had you read ours or others papers, you might have found some of the answers you are searching for. Not bothering to read a paper to its end is a good policy for saving time and being righteous, not so much for making a good NEW argument that will move the discussion along. 

[I finally understand the difference between being righteous and being self-righteous.]

Another point: we have not “imbibed” any of Pettitt’s claims. I agree with some, disagree with others ( you have NOT seen us use his terminology, and are deceiving people in making this suggestion even implicitly).

[Begging your pardon, Ma'am. What isn't similar about you and Pettitttttttt naming the concept—and claiming to have done so independently—"cacheing the dead"?]

The ones that seem similar were independently developed by him and us. 

[I'd really like to see a timeline of that time-transgressive coincidence!]

In short, the take home message is—even for throwing mud, one has to train if they want to be accurate. Even you. 

[I should feel chastened. My mud-slinging, if that's what it is, has missed the mark. It's a good thing. 'Cause if I'd really wanted to sling mud, I'd be ridden out of Dodge on a rail (or off the web, more correctly). Besides, for some odd reason, I continue to feel just tired.]

Please feel free to publish this response on your blog. 

[As you wish.]

Erella

[And that, dear Reader, it that.]

Okay. I can stop whispering now. [Or, should I say 'whimpering'?] Thanks very much to Erella for giving me the opportunity to vent. That's what it amounts to. It goes nowhere. And it goes nowhere, over and over again. Like Groundhog Day. [I only put that in so I could stick in a picture of Bill Murray, who is the funniest man I've ever had the pleasure to watch on the big screen.]

See? Who wouldn't be tired, after, let's see ... 24 years? Who wouldn't be frustrated to the point of exhaustion? I'm sure there are many better bipedal apes than I who'd find it easy to keep going. Sorry. I'm not so good at it.

But, I'm sure I'll shake it off eventually. In the meantime, I gots jobs to find! Buh-bye!

* http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=failure%20to%20launch

ANY TIME IS A GOOD TIME TO GET GOOD STUFF AT THE SUBVERSIVE ARCHAEOLOGIST'S OWN, EXCLUSIVE "A DRINK IS LIKE A HUG" ONLINE BOUTIQUE

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

It's Like Déjà Vu All Over Again! The Oxford Handbook Of The Archaeology Of Death And Burial

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
—Albert Einstein

I must be crazy. Why else would I keep addressing what amounts to the same claims over and over again, only to find that my efforts do little more than amuse the Very Serious Archaeologists. The obvious reason is that I enjoy entertaining you, Dear Reader. Nevertheless, the callous on my forehead just keeps getting thicker and thicker as the knowledge claims get weirder and weirder. Take, for instance, the feathered Middle Palaeolithic (MP) couture from Gibraltar, shown at right being modelled by archaeologist Clive Finlayson. It's an airy garment made of the wing feathers of one of the local carrion eaters.

You'll have to forgive me. As ludicrous as the archaeologist looks to you and me, the inferential route that he took to get there is even more preposterous. Yet, it's always me that gets the side-long glances and the whispered asides at meetings, merely for being sensible. But, hey. Clive published it, the media went with it, and there was a conference about it, and everything. So. I guess that's really the way it was in Neanderthal Land.

OK. What new flights of fancy have raised me out of my job-house-life-hunting hiatus to climb back into the saddle just now? You won't be surprised. It's MP burial, again!* 

But, what the Hell! Here I go again.

Academia.edu recently introduced a new kind of notification. When one whom one is "following" uploads a new work of scholarship, the one doing the "following" is emailed with the news. And so it was this morning when I plopped myself down in front of the middle-aged iMac here at World Headquarters. The email read:

Hi Robert H.,

[That is Academia.edu's attempt at informality!]


Erella Hovers (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Archaeology) just uploaded a paper on Academia.edu:


[Erella and I go back a long way, but we have always existed at opposite poles on the matter of Middle Palaeolithic (MP) burial.]


Hovers, E. and Belfer-Cohen, A. Insights into early mortuary practices of Homo. In: S. Tarlow and L. Nilsson-Stutz (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial (Oxford University Press, Oxford), 631--642, 2013.

[Anna and I also go back a long way.]

This isn't the first time we've heard about this volume, published just last month. Back in February I caught wind of it because of a paper that Julien Riel-Salvatore uploaded to Academia.edu, "Upper Palaeolithic Mortuary Practices in Eurasia: A Critical Look at the Burial Record," co-authored with Claudine Gravel-Miguel, pp. 303--346. At the time I was bemused by some of their explanations for the geographical distribution of interred human remains. [But that's history now. It's in the pasture. Onward to the now!] Today's revelation has to do with earlier times—right up my alley.
The editors of this new Handbook wanted to cover a lot of ground. Yet, their explicit statement about what they wanted to achieve has a fairly narrow scope.

... the strategy of this volume [sic]** to identify themes, traditions of study, theoretical approaches, and areas of current concern, and to invite contributors to address them where relevant through case studies which are grounded in the material they know best.

My favourite bit in the above quotation is "areas of current concern..." The phrase is clearly shorthand for some aspect or other of archaeological death and burial. But it's a bit nebulous to my pea brain. However, I must assume that "current concern" doesn't imply "debate," because something that calls itself a handbook is supposed to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject and not a place to hang out a discipline's dirty laundry. So, we should expect to hear an accounting of MP burial that merely rehearses received wisdom.

Middle Pleistocene carcass "cacheing."

But, Hovers and Belfer-Cohen don't give us a litany of claimed burials the evidence for which falls well short of unequivocal. Instead, they hustle through the "Yeah, they buried their dead" part and get to work interpreting what the [still putative from my perspective] claims imply about MP cultural and individual values, based on the ethnographic record. In so doing, they appear to have imbibed Paul Pettitt's Kool-Aid—at one point they talk about caves being places where the dead are "cached," one of Pettitt's hypotheses for the very early bipedal apes, and a hypothesized precursor behaviour to that of Neanderthals and modern humans.  ["Cached" is a poor word for what they claim occurs in caves. In my lexicon to "cache" something means to store your stuff somewhere that you can readily put it to work when you need it. Something useful. Something handy. So, food is cached. Tools are cached. What utility, one wonders, do they think might inhere in a carcass? They simply don't address the matter.]

All right. So. Unless this is your first trip to the Subversive Archaeologist (SA), you'll no doubt have heard about my work on the taphonomy of MP bipedal ape remains—those of the Neanderthals and their [mostly] anatomically modern contemporaries from Skhul and Qafzeh. Erella herself took part in the most recent excavations at Amud Cave, in Israel, during which an infant's skeleton was unearthed. Along with several other examples from the last half of the twentieth century, the Amud infant's  discovery was one I dealt with in "Middle Palaeolithic burial is not a dead issue: the view from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh" (MPBINADI). I'm happy to say that the authors cite this and the earlier long paper of mine on the subject, "Grave Shortcomings: The Evidence for Neanderthal Burial."

O' course they don't do much more than cite my work. As far as they're concerned there's no weight in my arguments. So, if there ever was a debate about the many inferences of MP burial, these authors nod their heads in its direction and steam right on through. I can forgive them for presuming that any more 'debate' would be moot. After all, they're almost single-handedly [in fact, double-handedly, 'cause there're two of 'em] published "In the Eye of the Beholder: Mousterian and Natufian Burials in the Levant," Current Anthropology, 33:463-471, 1992, in which they tore apart "Grave Shortcomings" in the most rigourous of fashions. It didn't take them long, either. In fact, all it took was two statements to thoroughly discredit my arguments. Voilà!

Gargett (1989) suggests that the pits in which remains of Middle Palaeolithic European Neanderthals have been found should be interpreted as resulting from natural phenom­ena. … this view has been widely rejected on several grounds… [p. 464]

and then their heartless coup de grâce,

The fact that Middle Palaeo­lithic "burials" appear in small numbers is insufficient to disqualify them as intentional burials (contra Gargett 1989). [p. 468]

That's it. I was done-for. My reputation was in shambles, so widely were my views rejected, and on so many—well, several, at any rate—grounds.

Hang on a minit!

I never said anything to the effect that small numbers WERE sufficient to disqualify MP burials. I don't know where they came up with that. And ... come to think of it, where are the references to those rejections so wide and so several? They're not here. Hmmmm.

Ya see, up to that point in 1992 the only published 'rejections' were those that accompanied "Grave Shortcomings" in Current Anthropology. I'll admit they weren't friendly rejoinders ['cept for Clive Gamble's and that of Clark and Lindly]. But I addressed each and every one's complaints in my two published replies—the first was right there after the 'rejections' that followed "Grave Shortcomings;" the second an issue or two later, Current Anthropology 30:326-329, 1989.

I find it strange and instructive that no one ever, EVER, refers to the content of those two replies. Perhaps they never read them [possible], or maybe they don't want to call attention to them because they answered all of the cheap shots, unsupported claims, and specious arguments laid out in the CA comments [more likely]. Either way, some of my pithiest arguments are to be found in them. Yet, they get nary a mention, and Anna and Erella thus feel emboldened to skirt every last issue I confronted in them, and thereby proclaim "Grave Shortcomings" *cough* D.O.A.

But, you ask, "Rob, beyond giving you a[nother!] opportunity to whine about their treatment of your work, what, if anything, does "In the Eye of the Beholder" have to do with their chapter in the just-now-published Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial? 

I'm getting to that. Patience, Grasshopper. Such matters cannot be covered by 'sound bites' or sweeping statements—even the argument against the comments on the original argument need to be as thorough as the original arguments. Otherwise, I set myself up for even worse criticism, or the worst possible fate—being ignored [still]. Neanderthal Land, you see, is a bonny place, where speculation is fact and inferences are written in stone, neither of which processes can be found in any textbook on epistemology, so far as I know. 

Kayso, we're talking about the reason(s) that Erella Hovers and Anna Belfer-Cohen think they have the credibility to reject my arguments—Erella, especially. Well, first of all, since 1992 and before, she and Anna thought they had the God-given right to consider my theses to be rubbish. Secondly, and more importantly, Erella thinks that she, personally, recovered the 'stone' in which was written 'the truth' about MP burial. That's because she was THERE, at Amud, for the excavation [not exhumation] of the infant, Amud 7. Moreover, she, Bill Kimbel, and Yoel Rak [two more with whom I go back] published a response to the treatment of Amud 7 in MPBINADI: Hovers, E., W.H. Kimbell, and Y. Rak. "The Amud 7 skeleton—still a burial. Response to Gargett." Journal of Human Evolution 39:253–260, 2000. Since she doesn't mention my reply to those criticisms, Erella clearly must have thought that she'd answered any questions my paper had raised. Thus, as far as Erella and Anna, and Erella, Bill and Yoel were concerned, my arguments had ceased to have any valence, whatsoever, by 2000. Again, their 'position' was advanced with NO reference to my [by now] three replies to criticism—two for "Grave Shortcomings" and one [quite sufficient to counter every jab] with reference to MPBINADI.

The proverbial shallow [non]grave. From "A Neandertal infant from Amud Cave, Israel," Rak, Y., W.H. Kimbel, and E. Hovers, Journal of Human Evolution 26:313-324, 1994.

I've now given you what I think are the reasons that a) Erella and Anna were asked to deal with MP burial in the Handbook, and b) for their confident, but as of August 28, 2013, unsubstantiated assertion that I'm full of shit. ...

Here it comes! What you've been waiting for.

Finally, I turn to the reason I've brought you here today—what Erella and Anna in fact said of my work in the [destined to be a modern classic] Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial. What they have to say won't take long, I can assure you. See? You're almost home, Grasshopper. Here is how Erella and Anna dispense with my work in the latest word on MP burial.

... Gargett (1989, and especially 1999) diligently elaborated on the taphonomy of hominin burials, focusing on natural processes that might have played a role in incidental preservation of MP skeletal remains at the sites of Dederiyeh, Kebara, Qafzeh, Amud, and St Césaire ... . When the test implications of the hypothesized proc­esses were examined minutely with regard to the burial of the Amud 7 Neanderthal infant, it became clear that hominin burials did not come in standard taphonomic packages. Variables such as skeletal completeness, anatomical position of all bones, or clearly visible burial pits, were highly dependent on particular sedimentological and depositional circumstances, and could not be relied upon unconditionally as differential criteria. Arguments for intentional burial should be tested inductively, on a contextual basis, rather than through a deductive, theory-driven process. With these specifics taken into account in the case of Amud 7, hypoth­eses of natural agency were examined and refuted (Hovers et al. 2000; see also Pettitt 2002). We conclude that intentional burial can be recognized based on situationally nuanced archaeological criteria. 

Do you have a clue what they're saying here? Me neither. Even so, was there ever as much shilly-shallying in any critical statement you have ever seen? I find it very difficult to parse their meaning in this passage, other than that it says I'm full of shit.
The following is my informed guess as to the gist of their position. Feel free to disagree if you can find any reason to. [No, really. I mean it! Maybe it'll help me to 'move past this' as the New Agers would have said.]

"Gargett was right all along, but we prefer to make stuff up." ~ Hovers and Belfer-Cohen 2013.

If that sounds a bit harsh, tough.***

As for the rest of Hovers and Belfer-Cohen 2013, go ahead and read what they have to say about the many and various MP cultural constructions of death and burial. I'm not gonna bother, as you probly already guessed.

For the record, if you're very brave you can revisit the entire published conversation—every disputed fact and fancy—laid out below [no doubt in contravention of every convention of copyright, Geneva or other].

When you're done, see if you can figger out how Erella and Anna and all the rest think I'm full of it. Perhaps then you'll understand why it is that I'm so pissed off that these remarks of mine are never mentioned!

The original treatment of the Amud 7 discovery begins in the lower right of this first page.

* At least you can't brand me a quitter! But, if Mr. Einstein's statement is true, my persistence may not be such a good sign.
** The word 'is' is left out in the Google Book preview, which I presume is a typo that is reproduced in the print version. MORE evidence that publishers and writers everywhere need the Subversive Archaeologist's acclaimed editing ability to rid their publications of pesky typographical errors.
*** In my bank of draft SA blurts there's one that discusses an archaeological issue using the word 'shit' in every one of its denotative and connotative senses. I think it's funny, but hardly suitable for the web.

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Laying Some Groundwork by Revisiting Belfer-Cohen and Hovers 1992: 'In the Eye of the beholder: Mousterian and Natufian burials in the Levant.'

Know what? I really hate the way I vacillate. 
Back and forth. 
Should I? Shouldn't I? 
She loves me. She loves me not. 
It's downright upsetting!


I guess I could look on the bright side. 
They say that if you're gonna be wishy-washy, you might as well be consistent about it. Well, if that's the case, I'll make the All-star team with ease! 


Today's oeuvre proves [couldn't resist that lovely bit of assonance] that I'm an inveterate vacillator [nor that aliquot of alliteration]. 


From the reader's perspective I must look like the substance-abuser who can't get that next fix off his mind. 

'Sisyphus'
Franz Ritter von Stuck 1920 

Only. 


I wish I didn't have to. I wish they'd just listen!


Sisyphus, give me all your strength! 


[This rock gets heavier every time I push it up that hill. And, I ain't gettin' any younger.*] 


And now, downward to the past...like any good archaeologist.


'Grave shortcomings: the evidence for Neandertal burial,' [my BA Honors essay] was published in 1989. One of the first major publications that mentioned my then-recent work was 'In the Eye of the beholder: Mousterian and Natufian burials in the Levant' by Anna Belfer-Cohen and Erella Hovers (Current Anthropology 33, 463-471, 1992). Their paper tries to make the case that if one applied the same stringent criteria as that scallywag Gargett does for recognizing purposeful burial in the Middle Palaeolithic, even perfectly good modern human burials wouldn't pass muster. They're right. But that doesn't change a thing. A fact's a fact [as long as your premises are well-warranted, which theirs arent'].

My purpose in writing today is two-fold. I hope to demonstrate just how the authors and everyone else [including Paul Pettitt] were happy to accept the [largely] argumentum ad hominem criticisms published along with 'Grave shortcomings,' and to carry on as if [and in all likelihood] they had never seen my dispositive responses to all of my ur-detractors. After that, I want to tell you what I [still] think of their argument. And all because of that pesky Paul Pettitt. I need to do this to get you ready for what I want to say about his book [which is where the whole vacillation thing comes in].
     In early 1991 Adam Kuper sent me a draft of the Belfer-Cohen and Hovers paper 'for [my] assessment.' At the time he was the editor of Current Anthropology [and there was no doubt in my mind that he would have had a sly smile on his face as he penned his signature on that letter]. I mention this now because I think it would be valuable, finally, for someone other than Kuper, Belfer-Cohen and Hovers to see my remarks. For those of you who've never encountered 'In the eye of the beholder' you need only visit academia.edu and view or download the University of Chicago Press e-document by clicking here. I urge you to have a look. It shouldn't take long to read. And I think it's an exemplum of the programmatic ignorance of my work at that time.
     
Here's what I thought. 

[You'll notice that in places I refer to items that were apparently axed before publication. Nothing major. But if you do your literary archaeology you'll see that my review at least had some effect!]

1991 May 4


Dear Professor Kuper:


I'm put in a difficult position reviewing this paper. Unless I recommend publication (which I don't), the authors will view my comments as prejudiced—both because of what they argue is my bias toward the extant species of the genus Homo, and because I've been vocal in my criticisms of previous attempts to argue for burial in the Middle Paleolithic (specifically among Neanderthals). But comment I must, and I hope that I don't come off sounding shrill.


At the outset, let me say that I think this kind of comparative study is required. Belfer-Cohen and Hovers have demonstrated, quite convincingly, that the criteria often employed by Middle Paleolithic specialists when assessing the question of burial are not germane. I should note that, although they don't restate the criteria I advanced, there are some fairly rigid guidelines in my 1989 CA paper that replace the questionable linkages between behaviour and archaeological remnants so prevalent in the literature (and, I might add, which the authors choose to perpetuate), such as flexion, articulation, so-called grave offerings, and so on. I'm speaking of the necessity of finding a clearly defined new stratum created at the time of burial. If, as Belfer-Cohen and Hovers argue, traditional criteria do nothing to support the archaeological inference of burial among modem populations, what possible use can they be in recognizing perhaps the first instances of burial among other hominid taxa? This is a point I've made before.

Recreation of the excavation of
Teshik-Tash I, a Neanderthal boy

I may as well be straightforward on another subject: I have trouble with much of the argument in this article, because there is no explicit treatment of my 1989 paper. The authors merely stale that "[Gargett's] view has been widely rejected on several grounds." This is not followed by a single reference to a published refutation of my work. I find this to be perhaps the greatest obstacle to their argument. In rejecting, out of hand, my thesis regarding the "burial" of Neandertals, they treat the 1989 paper as a monolith. Thus, my arguments dismantling the laughable inferences of ritual goat horns at Teshik-Tash, for example, are lumped together with my (according to them "unconvincing") arguments about purposeful burial there and elsewhere. As a result, their analysis perpetuates what are very likely myths about Neandertal behavior. Any archaeologist today should look at the Teshik-Tash material and recognize it for what it is, i.e. not a circle of horns placed points down in the sediments surrounding the alleged burial. Yet later, when Belfer-Cohen and Hovers discuss similarities between the Neandertal "burials" and those among the Natufians, they refer to "Certain spatial arrangements," including the case "known from outside the Levant, ... where the skeleton of a child was surrounded by a ring of 5-6 pairs of horn cores of Capra siberica." I could raise equally damaging questions regarding each and every one of the proposed similarities between the MP and UP situations, but that would take far too long. I hope that this example suffices to make my point. By using such questionable "spatial arrangements" in their analysis, the two classes of material (one from the Middle Paleolithic and one from the Upper Paleolithic) are said to appear similar. Yet, I've argued that they're not comparable, and, whether or not I'm right in this, the authors don't dealt with my arguments in any meaningful way.


Rather than labelling us intellectual bigots, perhaps Belfer-Cohen, Hovers and others should examine the implicit beliefs and motivations that lead them to accept very tenuous arguments for what are called symbolic or ritual behaviors on the part of Neanderthals and other Middle Paleolithic hominids. Moreover, when they treat a portion of reindeer backbone or pig manidible as grave offerings, isn't it just a little patronizing, if not paternalistic, to suggest that "the mundane 'grave goods' associated with Middle Paleolithic skeletal remains may reflect the simplicity of the material culture and of the social organization." Is not this tantamount to saying that there's a direct relationship between the presence/absence of 'grave goods,' their 'sophistication,' and the degree of cultural ability? Since this is something that Belfer-Cohen and Hovers would argue against, I find it interesting that they would introduce such a notion at this point in their argument. A pig mandible, if it were in fact shown to be an object placed with a purposely buried individual (and could be demonstrated to have had some symbolic meaning to that hominid, which would be difficult to argue from the archaeological evidence), should not be looked down upon as 'mundane' (or that it represented an incipient kind of symbolic behavior) simply because it does not conform to the investigator's (culturally bound) ideas of what constitutes 'sophisticated' funerary offerings. I would add that the enigmatic structures mentioned in their paper, such as "talking tubes" or "eternal flames" associated with Natufian burials, do not carry such inherent meanings—these are constructions of their excavators and are not self-evident. I'm struck by the ease with which Belfer-Cohen, Hovers and others accept such inferences and speculation as a reasonable construal of the archaeological remains. 


When the authors say that "mental templates as to what a burial should look like ... are projected  onto the past, regardless of contextual background," it's to all my predecessors,' and not to my arguments, that they must be referring. It was to just those contextual backgrounds that I was turning in my 1989 paper, while every other worker has relied on culturally bound assumptions about what burial should look like (including such things as degree of flexion, presence of grave goods, or the presence of a grave). In this regard, Belfer-Cohen and Hovers do not escape criticism. 


I haven't been convinced by their argument about a prejudice on the part of workers like me who seek a better understanding of the behavior of Middle Paleolithic hominids. I strongly suggest that it's their own belief about the humanity of Neandertals and other Middle Paleolithic hominids that leads them to accept questionable evidence about a whole range of behaviors that simply haven't been adequately demonstrated. I'd add that, while there's a necessity to document and compare mortuary treatment in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene with that alleged for the earlier period, I don't find the authors' approach thorough or rigorous. I reiterate that I think it's a mistake to discount my arguments out of hand. And it's equally misguided to repeat the inferences of those who quite obviously carry the same bias as Belfer-Cohen and Hovers. 


Calling three large stones and a rhinoceros tooth a "spatial arrangement" associated with the Kebara infant seems to me to underline what I said above about the paternalistic and inherently biased viewpoint of 'the other side.' Another example: employing Smirnov's arguments is suspect, because he not only accepts (again uncritically) all the earlier inferences of ritual and burial, but he also adds some new ones of his own ("hearths underlying" hominid skeletal material seen as some kind of ritual architecture). That Belfer-Cohen and Hovers refer to secondary and tertiary "evidence" (such as the work of Smirnov) in the construction of their argument, and prefer to ignore the original reports upon which my argument was based is a very big omission. They prefer to rest their out-of-hand rejection of my thesis on some comments of questionable value following my article in CA (none of which were refereed, and all of which were disposed of in my reply). The authors have also failed to cite my later comments (CA 30:326-329) which amplify and further clarify my argument. Indeed, in employing the inferences of Okladnikov regarding the Teshik-Tash goat horns, I have to wonder if they have even read my paper.


My "opinion" about Neanderthals notwithstanding, these authors have simply failed to provide any new "evidence" for the purposeful burial of any Middle Paleolithic hominids. And, though it was not their intention, their argument is all than much weaker for this lacuna. Classifying, as they do, material alleged to be associated with Middle Paleolithic hominids as "grave goods" or "grave structures," and to include them in a comparison with material similarly classified from the later period, is methodologically unsound, at best. Moreover, they have not provided any convincing "evidence" that those who choose to question inferences of modern behavior among Middle Paleolithic hominids are any more biased than are the authors in the opposite direction.


It's probably easy to see that this paper frustrates me. I hope I've managed to achieve a degree of objectivity in my comments. Anna and I have had this conversation before. I don't wish my review to be seen as a personal attack, which it most definitely is not. There are real problems with their presentation of "data" and with the sociopolitical context of their work. Their study represents another recitation of inferences that I've rightly called into question, and so far no one has adequately refuted my arguments. In sum, I'd recommend that Current Anthropology reject this paper in its present form. Perhaps if the authors could mount a credible refutation of my 1989 arguments, and manifest a little self-reflexivity of their own rather than simply accusing others of implicit bias, this paper might stand on its own—especially if it could be argued that both sides owe their inferences to their biases (which I'm not sure is possible). As it is, it wouldn't be suitable for the reports section of CA, either, unless the Middle Paleolithic "data" are left out along with the argument about bias. The perceived lack of regularity in Natufian burials is interesting in itself. But as a contrast to inferred behavior in the Middle Paleolithic, it loses power. At least until further notice, we may be comparing apples and oranges. If the editor chooses to publish this article in the form it now takes, it should indeed be accompanied by comments, and I'd like to have the opportunity to voice my criticisms (especially since I seem to be one of only a few misguided individuals who adopt a "non-human until proven human" stance in this debate).


Sincerely,
Rob Gargett




Now the 2012 Gargett'll fess up. I'm blurting this now because Paul Pettitt refers to this article by Belfer-Cohen and Hovers when he begins his wrestling match with my work. 

'My opinion that Gargett's attempt to deny any Neanderthal burials is largely unconvincing obviously requires justification. Many of his specific and literature-based readings of the data have been questioned by the original excavators (see responses to Gargett 1989) and other specialists (e.g. Belfer-Cohen and Hovers 1992)...'

I should let you know that not one, single, original excavator commented in Current Anthropology alongside my 1989 paper. [Bullshit Score: Pettitt 1, Gargett 0.] And whaddaya think he means by emphasizing that Belfer-Cohen and Hovers are 'specialists'? Wanna know what I think? It's because he thinks that I'm a poor excuse for a specialist. I'm not claiming that excavating for more than 6 weeks at Kebara Cave and 3 weeks at Roc Allan, a French rockshelter makes me one of his remarkable 'specialists.' However, he has no right, and no evidence, to relegate me to the category of 'literature-based know-nothings' who haven't got any right to complain about what the other grown ups are doing. [Bullshit Score: Pettitt 2, Gargett 0.]
     This isn't over.


* [Just so you know. No one is more surprised than I that I'm still bashing away at the edifice more than 20 years on. You'd have thought that by now someone would've mounted a serious challenge, as opposed to the reality--simply dismissing my arguments out of hand.]

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