The Weijiadong site is a cave site situated at the edge of a mountainous basin, northeast of Bijie City, Guizhou Province in southwestern China. Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum and a subsequent cold period, two modern human teeth with certain primitive traits have been unearthed and identified at this site. Here, we conduct a zooarchaeological analysis of the mammal faunal remains excavated from the Weijiadong site to elucidate the diet and resource procurement strategy of these hominins. Given the numerous isolated teeth within the assemblage, we opted to estimate the death age of the cervids predominantly based on tooth crown height, supplemented by eruption and wear patterns to distinguish prime and old individuals more accurately. To construct the mortality profile for this group of animals, we employed the improved ternary diagrams, taking full account of the life history and ethology of the relevant species.
Our results reveal that large cervids preponderantly dominate the faunal assemblage, trailed by buffalo, small bovid, wild boar, horse, and carnivores. A comparison with data amassed from diverse contexts, such as anthropogenic sites, carnivore dens, and natural live populations in the adjacent region, indicates that the faunal remains from the Weijiadong site bear more resemblance to well-validated human-mediated assemblages; moreover, the conspicuous unevenness in the animal species composition of the assemblage also illuminates a specialized hunting strategy of these hominins. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the majority of cervid individuals from the site were in their prime age, signifying that, in addition to their predilection for exploiting specific animal species, the inhabitants of the site also targeted prime adult individuals within the herd.
From a broader perspective, notwithstanding the similarity in faunal composition between the Weijiadong site and some reindeer-dominated sites in Late Pleistocene Europe, we contend that the subsistence strategy of hominins at Weijiadong was fundamentally different from that of their European counterparts. A comprehensive survey of the literature regarding the behaviors of the large cervids from the site discloses that the extant populations of these species typically exist in small herds and refrain from regular migrations between different areas, which markedly differ from reindeer in Pleistocene Europe. The ecological viewpoint adopted in this paper implies that people here were more likely to actively and repeatedly select prime deer individuals for the sake of higher energy intake, rather than conducting a mass slaughter within a confined time frame; the latter strategy would have frequently led to a catastrophic mortality pattern for Pleistocene reindeer in Europe. Thus, we can regard the specialized hunting strategy manifested in the Weijiadong faunal assemblage as an efficacious adaptation by hominins to the harsh climate during the LGM in China.