>18,000 years of sheared kangaroo and wallaby calcanea from Waribruk (New Guinea II Cave, GunaiKurnai Country, SE Australia): Systematic breakage from marrow extraction, tendon removal, ritual engagement or post-depositional taphonomy?

Résumé fourni par la source

We describe the systematic breakage of Macropodidae calcanea excavated in 1980–1985 from the entrance of Waribruk, an archaeological cave in GunaiKurnai Country, southeastern Australia. The Waribruk calcanea sequence spans the past c. 18,000 years. All but one of the 33 large and medium-sized macropodid calcanea were broken in the same way. Due to their leap-adapted mode of locomotion, extant kangaroos and wallabies have very robust calcanea that are not usually found broken in palaeontological assemblages. Here we use machine learning, taphonomic and ethnographic methods to explore if the Waribruk calcanea were broken by people to extract marrow, to make tools, as a byproduct of tendon extraction, for ritual, or through post-depositional taphonomic processes. We show that the calcanea (1) contain tiny amounts of marrow and were not broken in a way that would facilitate bone marrow extraction; (2) do not show any evidence of use-wear or impact marks, suggesting they were not broken through tool-making or tool use; and (3) do not show weathering that would indicate post-depositional breakage. This suggests they were broken either through extraction of the leg tendon that attaches to the calcaneus, or for ritual practice. We address these two options through local GunaiKurnai ethnography.

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