Biostratinomy of terrestrial macromammals in Doñana National Park (Spain)

Abstract

There is no scientific guarantee that vertebrate remains preserved in archaeological and palaeontological sites are a representative sample of the palaeocommunity they belonged to, or that they formed a part of the preferences of man consumption since they are mainly waste deposits. We do not know the qualitative and quantitative consequences of pre-depositional processes of trophic activity of human population and of any other carnivore and scavenger that could have affected them. As a consequence of this, we performed a biostratinomic study of the carcasses assemblage scattered throughout the Doñana Biological Reserve in order to know if there is a preservation general dynamics, with general patterns that can be applied to the taphonomic study of archaeological sites.