The earliest direct evidence of mammoth hunting in Central Europe – The Kraków Spadzista site (Poland)

• Published in: Quaternary science reviews 2019-06, Vol.213, p.162-166
• Main Authors: Wojtal, Piotr, Haynes, Gary, Klimowicz, Janis, Sobczyk, Krzysztof, Tarasiuk, Jacek, Wroński, Sebastian, Wilczyński, Jarosław
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropocene; Europe; Glaciation; Gravettian; Hunters-gatherers; Upper palaeolithic; Zooarchaeology
• ISSN: 0277-3791; 1873-457X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.04.004

The oldest unequivocal evidence of mammoth hunting in prehistoric Central Europe has been found in the Gravettian archaeological site Kraków Spadzista (Poland). The site contains thousands of lithic artifacts and the remains of >100 woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), with radiocarbon dates clustering ∼25–24 ka uncal BP. A fragment of a flint shouldered point is embedded in a mammoth rib, and more than 50% of the site's flint shouldered points and backed blades bear diagnostic traces of hafting and impact damage from use as spear tips. Additional support for mammoth killing is the mortality profile of 112 mammoths from the site: some age groups may have been depleted due to recurring heavy hunting by humans during periods of environmental stress. The evidence for intensive human hunting could portend a development thousands of years later, at the end of the Pleistocene, when climate-caused habitat changes were more extreme, and, in combination with opportunistic human hunting, may have led to woolly mammoth extinction. •Kraków Spadzista contains the oldest direct evidence for mammoth-hunting in Central Europe.•Evidence includes used flint points and a point fragment embedded in a mammoth rib.•Certain age classes of the site's 112 mammoths had been depleted several times.