Herders or hunters? Discriminating butchery practices through phalanx breakage patterns at Cova Fosca (Castellón, Spain)

This paper aims to address the issue of whether or not the bones of wild and domestic ungulates in the Neolithic levels of Cova Fosca (Eastern Spain) reflect a uniform way of carcass processing. The elements taken into consideration were the first and second phalanges of the most frequent bovids in each category, the Spanish ibex (Capra pyrenaica, Schinz, 1838) and the sheep (Ovis aries, Linnaeus 1758). Even though the restrictive size of the sheep samples recommends caution, it seems evident that phalanges were regularly fractured in order to access their marrow in the case of the ibex whereas no single instance of such treatment was documented in sheep. These results reveal that in Eastern Spain phalanx fracturing in the case of the ibex constitutes the continuation of a tradition in the processing of carcasses that dates back to the Upper Paleolithic. Our results also suggest that the absence of intentional fracturing in the case of the sheep phalanges constitutes a novel way of dealing with these bones. The fracturing of phalanges is finally discussed under the theoretical frame of the ‘nutritional stress’ scenario and acknowledged to conform better to an alternative ‘food preference’ scenario on the part of the hunter-gatherers stationed at the shelter.