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The University of Southampton
Archaeology Part of Humanities

Assessing the calorific significance of episodes of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic Seminar

Time:
17:00
Date:
5 May 2017
Venue:
John Wymer Lab Building 65a Faculty of Humanities Avenue Campus

For more information regarding this seminar, please email Peny Tsakanikou at pt1g14@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

This seminar is part of the CAHO Seminar Series

Episodes of Palaeolithic cannibalism have frequently been defined as ‘nutritional’ in nature, but with little empirical evidence to assess their dietary significance. This paper presents a nutritional template that offers a proxy calorie value for the human body. When applied to the Palaeolithic record, the template provides a framework for assessing the dietary value of prehistoric cannibalistic episodes compared to the faunal record. Results show that humans have a comparable nutritional value to those faunal species that match our typical body weight, but significantly lower than a range of fauna often found in association with anthropogenically modified hominin remains. This could suggest that the motivations behind hominin anthropophagy may not have been purely nutritionally motivated. It is proposed here that the comparatively low nutritional value of hominin cannibalism episodes support more socially or culturally driven narratives in the interpretation of Palaeolithic cannibalism.

As always, wine will be served!

We hope to see many of you there.

Speaker information

Dr James Cole , University of Brighton. Senior Lecturer in Archaeology

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