Fishing for answers: Zooarchaeology and human remains from the Wallacean Islands

Abstract

During the Late Pleistocene, Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) was affected by dramatic changes in sea level and climate. The glacial phases were characterised by lower sea levels and changes in humidity and rainfall, with the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; c.26-15 ka) being the peak of the extreme environmental shifts in the region. Human occupation during and post-LGM would likely have been affected by variations in island size, nearshore coastal profile, changing marine habitats and resource availability. While these questions have been previously addressed in nearby regions, the Lesser Sunda Islands of the Wallacean Archipelago constitute a not fully explored scenario to tackle these and other complementary issues. Human arrival and survival in these islands would have required skilled capacities to exploit the rich marine fauna that would provide the resources needed to subsist. This thesis examines past human adaptations and subsistence practices in Alor island during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Excavations in the Tron Bon Lei rock shelters in 2014 yielded an extensive vertebrate assemblage, as well as stone artefacts, abundant shellfish and human remains. Human occupations are dated from the Late Pleistocene (~21 ka cal BP) to the Late Holocene (~3 ka cal BP). This research focuses on the analysis of the vertebrate zooarchaeological accumulations and human remains from Tron Bon Lei. In addition to the application of traditional methodological practices for the analysis of faunal assemblages, new methodologies are developed. The analysis of the human remains focuses on craniometric comparisons with human remains from other areas in order to gain insights into human migrations and adaptations. This thesis provides new data to interpret human lifeways and adaptations in the Wallacean Islands, using Alor Island as a case study to interpret human subsistence practices during and after the LGM. The results presented here suggest that human populations subsisting in Alor were heavily dependent on fish and other marine resources, whose composition varied due to environmental changes. The modern human remains from Alor indicate the likely presence of a distinctive phenotype in the Wallacean Islands, smaller than other contemporary humans. This thesis contributes to the analysis of human subsistence and biological adaptations in the Wallacean Islands from the Late Pleistocene to the Late Holocene. The data from Tron Bon Lei is correlated to sea level changes during the phases of occupation of the site, to evaluate the effect that these had in the occupation dynamics and subsistence strategies of the inhabitants of Alor. The results are contextualised within the region, serving as a benchmark for future research and further analyses in other Wallacean assemblages. Show more