Environmental changes and Neandertal Big Game management in the plains of northern France: integrated research – BigGame

Hunted, eaten, used, large herbivores held a central place for the nomadic hunters-collectors of the European Paleolithic. For nearly 200,000 years, Neandertals lived in changing and varied environments, adapting to sometimes extreme conditions. This huge adaptability of human societies is directly related to the eco-ethological flexibility of their essential resources: animals, especially large and megabivorous - the "BigGame". The BigGame project aims to identify how these changes impacted the fauna consumed and used by ‘super-predator’ Neanderthal societies in the plains of Northern France. A vast archaeological and faunal corpus attests to marked ecological changes there, but the plasticity of the species and the detail of the human responses is largely unknown.
BigGame aims to investigate the detail of these processes, over short and long time scales, through different specialties at the interfaces of humanities and geosciences, intending to apply a corpus of methods at the forefront of the latest advances of paleoanthropology and prehistoric archeology, where animal will be examined in the different components of its relationship with Neandertal nomadic hunters. Focusing on the period from MIS 7 to MIS 3 that has seen several glacial / interglacial cycles, and the emergence, development and disappearance of Neandertal cultures, a total of 34 archaeological sites and more than 90 sedimentary levels will be considered in our dataset.
By initiating a transversality between the disciplines that deal with material aspects, societies and environmental relationship, the BigGame project intend to address a virgin area of ??any systemic approach. BigGame is a unique opportunity to bring together recent scientific works and advanced technologies to perform a thorough in-depth investigation of human relationship with its environment. Aiming to bring new lights to the details of the 'super-predator' Neandertal behaviors for most of its chronological expansion. In such, BigGame will be the first large-scale, integrative and systemic study, encompassing different animal taxa throughout the development and disappearance of a fossil human species.
The BigGame team is composed of 20 scientists from 11 French laboratories, a private entity and 4 international institutions. Based on long-standing collaborations, BigGame will allow colleagues from different institutional partners to strengthen scientific relationships while creating new research dynamics. The communication and dissemination component will set up new collaborations and student training. Communication and dissemination of the results concerns the scientific community and also the general public.