This week of lectures has been focussed on life-course and life history and these can be determined through the archaeological record. To facilitate discussion on this topic we were assigned a reading that explore the life history of Neanderthals. This is where the trouble begins.
I am first and foremost a paleoanthropologist and though I prefer looking at fossilized faunal remains hominins are a bit of hobby of mine and Neanderthals happen to be my second favourite (if it were not for the intriguing feet of Ardipithecus ramidus they would be number 1).
The article (by P. B. Pettitt in 2000) is by and large an excellent summation and analysis of the stages of stress incurred by Neanderthals across their entire geographic range, from France to Israel and even as far as Iraq and Siberia. However I do have two primary problems with this article and both of them pertain to the other making unfounded leaps for the sake of making an original and intriguing argument.
1)They take fossil remains from several different sites and time periods and include them in the same sample as a means of reconstructing a generalized Neanderthal life-course. Even if we assume that Neanderthals had little or no culture (which is untrue) the climatic variability inherent in the different regions would be enough to make inclusion into a single general class completely unfeasible. Unfortunately the paucity of Neanderthal remains (even though they are the most prolific hominin in terms of amount of material recovered) means that a large enough sample from a single site or region is unlikely to ever be compiled.
2)The intuitive leaps made by the author are imaginative but ultimately unfounded. For example Pettitt postulates that physical trauma, usefulness in the group and mobility are key components of the Neanderthal life course (Pettitt 2000: 361). This in itself is not an unreasonable claim, Neanderthal skeletons do display a great deal of trauma and are often compared to modern rodeo riders in terms of breakage patterns. The author does not stop there however and goes on to suggest that before weaning infants have no measurable use in the group and are therefore avoided by all but the mothers (Pettitt 2000: 359) until they go through some sort of rite of passage and become productive members of the community. To support this claim Pettitt sites two instances of infant remains being found in midden heaps. Two instances of anything is not enough to make these sort of grand statements.
The temptation to make grand statements is strong in this ego-driven field and I feel as though Pettitt has given into this temptation.
I recognize that I am being somewhat knit-picky here and it is probably due to my partiality towards Neanderthals. Were this a modern human population I might be more willing to appreciate this claims. But never the less this article left me questioning the validity of the interpretations we (as archaeologists) are forced to come to in order to hold the attention of the public and other academics in this climate of publish or perish.
Source:
Pettitt P.B. (2000). "Neanderthal Lifecycles: Developmental and Social Phases in the Lives of the Last Archaics." World Archaeology 31(3):351-366.
Images:
http://www.livescience.com/9245-neanderthals-similar-life-spans-modern-humans.html
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