Mammoths

This article unveils imagery that seems intended to be recognized in phases from such sites as Font-de-Gaume (pg. 24), Laugerie-Basse (pg. 35-37), Isturitz (pg. 37-38), Saint-Cirq-du-Bugue (pg. 38-39), and Guy-Martin (pg. 26-35), after describing the first Paleolithic sculpture of an animal reported in the Ile-de-France. These include: 1) The extended panel of Ségognole 3. The grotto is known for a vulva between 2 faint horses, but its largest graphic element is a groove that has been explained away as a “border”. The groove is actually the caudal line of a 1.9 meter-long bas-relief of a bison that has been overlooked because of the failure to apply the same conventions of the vulva – figurative realism, monumentality, and the use of natural forms – to the engraved line, although it is identical in manufacture. The wisent composed by natural relief accentuated by incising, flaking, and polishing confirms that the ensemble is Paleolithic. 2) A survey of Paleolithic parietal images wh...

This Table lists ~150 late Quaternary proboscidean sites that have certain or possible traces of hominin utilization, specifically evidence for killing, scavenging, and butchering, along with a sample of references. The sites are arranged by world landmasses. This list is far from complete. I welcome suggested additions and corrections.

The 2013 to 2016 archaeological recovery of the Bowser Road mastodon (Mammut americanum), Orange County, New York, (R.M. Gramly, 2017*) advances PaleoAmerican and Clovis studies (+/- 11,000 to 13,000 years before present).______

A case is made in this paper that the heel bone area chop-marks were made with an Achilles tendon severing (hamstringing) axe. Winner of Best Student Paper and Presentation: Eastern States Archaeological Federation 2017 conference, New London, Connecticut, USA._______

The following is paraphrased from (R.M. Gramly, 2017)*:
Butcher evidence on 82 separate bone components. Included in the assemblage were atlatl handles (spear throwers) made from curated human-split proboscidean ribs from a separate animal/s (Strontium test confirmation).These atlatls (twenty-one) were ritually broken and placed at the head of the mastodon skeleton.________

C13 and C12 dated collagen (three tests) were performed on samples from the mastodon. One C13 and and one C12 bioapatite test were performed, as well. The immediate above tests were from three labs*, respectively:  Beta Analytic Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory (Beta-391565) 10,950 +/-40 RCYBP (= Radio Carbon Years Before Present) | 12,730-12,855 CYBP (= Calendar Years Before Present)  by Dr. Ron Hatfield; Arizona AMS Laboratory at the University of Arizona 11,187 +/-88 RCYBP  | 12, 840-13,220 CYBP via Drs. Greg Hodgins and C. Vance Haynes, Jr (AA105131);  Dr. Douglas K. Dvoracek at the University of Georgia’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies UGAMS labs: 10,946 +/-35 RCYBP | 12,730-12,835 CYBP; and 10,530+/-35 RCYBP | 12,410-12,575 CYBP [bioapatite] (respectively: UGAMS-20742c; UGAMS-20742a).______

*Archaeological Recovery of the Bowser Road Mastodon, Orange County, New York.
A book by R.M. Gramly. Published by:  ASAA/Persimmon Press Monographs in Archaeology, 2017.  North Andover, Massachusetts: 364 pages, color.

Until recently, the general view of archaeologists was that southern Scandinavia was uninhabited during the last ice age, the Weichselian glaciation. It was thought that humans arriving from south would have met a wall of ice if they tried to penetrate into the area. Recent climate reconstructions and glaciological data, combined with recent faunal finds from the adjacent North Sea sector, promote the idea of a much more moderate and prosperous landscape with large, now submerged, plains accessible. Then this paper argues that large parts of the South Scandinavian North Sea sector were actually inhabitable during most of this glacial period, with extensive ice-free coastal zones even during the Last Glacial Maximum. It is difficult to believe that humans, already well-documented in the adjacent land areas, should not have known to inhabit and exploit such a rich resource zone. In addition to the paleoenvironmental data, ethnoarchaeological evidence is used to document that it was no problem for humans to kill large animals such as mammoths as some researchers have maintained. Furthermore, findings from excavations of mammoth-hunter sites, are used to argue that the large quantities of megafaunal remains fished up from the North Sea in recent years should be seriously considered as representing settlement material associated with mammoth-hunter camps dating from the second half of the Weichsel Glacial Stage. The central question is whether these North Sea faunal remains represent sites similar to the mammoth-hunter camps known from other parts of Europe and from Siberia? If that is the case, the Cultural Heritage management is confronted with a hitherto unrecognised problem.

This is an updated list of >170 late Quaternary proboscidean sites with probable/possible evidence for human involvement. The sites were compiled from refereed and unrefereed publications and communications from colleagues. It is a work in progress and not claimed to be exhaustive. Also presented are summaries of important sites and discussions of patterns in contexts, inventories, dating, and other variables. Additions and corrections are invited. It consists of 41 text pages, three tables, 14 numbered figures and three unnumbered illustrations, and 519 references.

The Gravettian site of Předmostí I in the central Moravian Plain has yielded a rich and diverse large mammal fauna dated around 25-27,000 14C years BP (ca. 29,500–31,500 cal BP). This fauna includes numerous carnivores (cave lion, wolf, brown bear, polar fox, wolverine) and herbivores (reindeer, large bovine, red deer, muskox, horse, woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth) whose trophic position could be reconstructed using stable isotopic tracking (δ13C, δ15N, δ34S) of bone collagen (n=63). Among large canids, two morphotypes, “Pleistocene wolves” and “Palaeolithic dogs”, were considered, and two human bones attributed to the Gravettian assemblage of Předmostí I were also sampled. The trophic system around the Gravettian settlement of Předmostí I showed the typical niche partitioning among herbivores and carnivores seen in other mammoth-steppe contexts. The contribution of the analyzed prey species to the diet of the predators, including humans, was evaluated using a Bayesian mixing model (SIAR). Lions included great amounts of reindeer/muskox and possibly bison in their diet, while Pleistocene wolves were more focused on horse and possibly mammoth. Strong reliance on mammoth meat was found for the human of the site, similarly to previously analyzed individuals from other Gravettian sites in Moravia. Interestingly, the large canids interpreted as “Palaeolithic dogs” had a high proportion of reindeer/muskox in their diet, while consumption of mammoth would be expected from the availability of this prey especially in case of close interaction with humans. The peculiar isotopic composition of the Palaeolithic dogs of Předmostí I may indicate some control of their dietary intake by Gravettian people, who could have use them more for transportation than hunting purpose.

This article unveils imagery that seems intended to be recognized in phases from such sites as Font-de-Gaume, Laugerie-Basse, Isturitz, Saint-Cirq-du-Bugue, and Guy-Martin, after describing the first Paleolithic sculpture of an animal reported in the Ile-de-France. These include:
1) The extended panel of Ségognole 3. The grotto is known for a vulva between 2 faint horses, but its largest graphic element is a groove that has been explained away as a “border”. The groove is actually the caudal line of a 1.9 meter-long bas-relief of a bison that has been overlooked because of the failure to apply the same conventions of the vulva – figurative realism, monumentality, and the use of natural forms – to the engraved line, although it is identical in manufacture. The wisent composed by natural relief accentuated by incising, flaking, and polishing confirms that the ensemble is Paleolithic.
2) A survey of Paleolithic parietal images whose contours are defined like the Ségognole bison by natural relief uncovered over 120 examples. This revealed that mammoths and bison were illustrated far more commonly this way than other species. Such statistical analyses of how imagery relates to rock morphology provides a new way of grouping Paleolithic art and opens another window into makers’ intentions.  It also raises the related phenomenon of imagery that played upon similarities between the contours of bison and mammoths.
3) The “mammoth” on the Grotte de Canecaude spear-thrower, which has one eye above a crescent that makes it read as a tusk and another eye below the same crescent that makes it read as a bison’s horn. The sculpture is one of several images that combine mammoths and bison in some of the oldest known figure-ground illusions.
4) The art of Font-de-Gaume. Numerous paintings blend aspects of mammoths and bison, extending the theme of Paleolithic figure-ground illusions and making the relationship between the "armor-headed" herbivores one of the cave’s leitmotifs.
5) The Roc-aux-Sorciers. The juxtaposition of the generative portion of a woman’s body with one of the two herbivores identified as having some equivalency in Magdalenian art turns out to be a re-current theme in northern France, where it is also seen at Guy-Martin and Ségognole 3. Links are established between these northern friezes and the Grotte des Fieux, Grotte du Sorcier, and Abri Reverdit.
6) Guy-Martin’s “obstetric” frieze. The panel uses a compositional technique similar to Cubism – building a “de-composed” horse, for example, out of figurative, natural and schematic elements. Another example of the panel’s “interactive” technique involves a single crescent that is positioned to be read 4 ways: as one horse’s tail, another horse’s mane, an ibex’s backward horn, and an auroch’s forward horn. 
7) The “Femme au Renne”. Several Magdalenian engravings of “women” are re-examined in light of such findings of polysemic density, leading to the discovery of more secondary imagery. This re-examination shows that “la femme au renne” contains at least 4 degrees of engraving, ranging from the pregnant female under the herbivore to such lightly incised details as hocks that transform the figure into a therianthropomorph, 2 outer “pregnancies”, an umbilical snake within the over-arching external pregnancies, and even a “spectral” baby whose head is formed by a circle of light crosses.
8) Similarly, the “women” and bison on a wand from Isturitz share such traits as hooves and hackles.
9) The Grotte du Sorcier “anthropomorph”. The “sorcerer” turns out to have both short hoofed and longer human legs and rounded buttocks enclosed within a herbivore’s rectilinear rump. The figure can also be read as being juvenile or female, rather than just as an ithyphallic male.
These analyses coalesce into a new interpretation of the relationship between some Paleolithic feminine imagery and symbolically important prey species: a “prey-mother” hypothesis. Although the theory is based on internal evidence that “women” were repeatedly associated with herbivores through shared traits and connections, it is also in keeping with female roles in glacial subsistence systems where there is little for women to gather for much of the year and fitted clothing is essential.
Frequently, one female role in such “hunter-sewer” economies is to increase the chance of a hunter’s success by providing him with animal qualities. Several polar cultures believe women do this while sewing clothing and camouflage by synthesizing the powers of the species whose hides compose the garments, thereby imbuing hunters with qualities needed for success. Another common role is for wives to enter trances in which they “become” prey and lull it into coming within range. A third is to reconcile hunters with animals they have killed by “feeding” dead animals like guests and inviting them upon their “departure” to return home as living creatures. “Whale-wife-mothers” among the Koryaks and Nootka, for example, do this by initiating the regeneration of whales. All three roles involve beliefs in a woman’s maternal capacity not only to give birth to humans but also to morph into, control and generate socially important prey.
At the heart of the polysemic Paleolithic imagery examined here there probably lay equally layered beliefs concerning the relationship between women and animals. The repeated association of the generative portion of women’s bodies with large herbivores suggests that some Paleolithic societies believed that women had the capacity to generate and intercede among humans and their prey - making them the sex that spiritually controlled the food supply.

PDFs of all my articles, including ones which I'm unable to share through Academia.edu for copyright reasons, can be downloaded for free from my personal site, www.duncancaldwell.com.

ABSTRACT
    Several elements presented in this paper suggest that Epigravettian Hunter Gatherers of Mezhirich (Межиріч, Ukraine) used the Cannabinacea species, hemp (Cannabis) and hop (Humulus lupulus), to exploite a Mammoth herd by feeding, taming and sedating until a radical change in the herd age profile. Furthermore, this paper also demonstrates that there are similarities between the engraved mammoth tusk found in Mezhirich and the painted stones found in Riparo Villabruna and Riparo Dalmeri (Epigravettian rockshelters, Italy) suggesting a following migration.

RESUME
    Plusieurs éléments présentés dans cet article suggèrent que les chasseurs cueilleurs épigravettiens de Mezhirich (Межиріч, Ukraine) ont utilisé les espèces de Cannabinacea, le chanvre (Cannabis) et le houblon (Humulus lupulus), pour nourrir, apprivoiser et calmer les mammouths, entraînant un changement radical du profil d'âge du troupeau. En outre, cet article démontre aussi qu'il existe des similitudes entre la défense de mammouth gravée trouvée à Mezhirich et les pierres peintes trouvées à Riparo Villabruna et Riparo Dalmeri (abris sous roche épigravettiens, Italie) suggérant une migration ultérieure.

The earliest known foragers to populate most of North America south of the glaciers [∼ 11,500 to ≥ ∼ 10,800 (14)C yBP; ∼ 13,300 to ∼ 12,800 calibrated (Cal) years] made distinctive "Clovis" artifacts. They are stereotypically characterized as hunters of Pleistocene megamammals (mostly mammoth) who entered the continent via Beringia and an ice-free corridor in Canada. The origins of Clovis technology are unclear, however, with no obvious evidence of a predecessor to the north. Here we present evidence for Clovis hunting and habitation ∼ 11,550 yBP (∼ 13,390 Cal years) at "El Fin del Mundo," an archaeological site in Sonora, northwestern Mexico. The site also includes the first evidence to our knowledge for gomphothere (Cuvieronius sp.) as Clovis prey, otherwise unknown in the North American archaeological record and terminal Pleistocene paleontological record. These data (i) broaden the age and geographic range for Clovis, establishing El Fin del Mundo as one of t...

Ely, Cambridgeshire, is known to tourists as an incredible city steeped in myth and legend and dominated by the Norman Cathedral, a masterpiece of medieval architecture. There have been many popular books written about the Isle, but in 'Ely: A Hidden History' the approach is to look at the longue duree of life on the isle focusing on continuity and change in cultural practices.  The work combines the latest archaeological discoveries to tell the story of the settlement of the Isle from its earliest beginnings through to the seventeenth century. With vivid illustrations, the authors trace the origins of life in Ely, and bring the most recent archaeological excavations alive.

Topics covered include: the geological origins of the Isle of Ely, the first prehistoric settlement, including important archaeological sites at Haddenham, Wilburton and Barway. The foundation of the monastic centre by St Etheldreda, and the archaeological evidence for the Anglo Saxon foundations of the city, together with current thoughts on the site of St Etheldreda's first settlement. The story of Hereward the Wake, and his resistance against the Norman invaders. The Norman foundation of the cathedral and castle.

Key features of the book are discussion and synthesis of the latest research on the nationally important later Bronze Age hoard from Wilburton, and the Iron Age bog body from Soham, which highlight the importance of the Isle of Ely to British archaeology. The findings from Channel 4’s Time Team excavation of the medieval Broad Street are included, with illustrations, as are the stories of Hereward the Wake. Richly illustrated and extensively researched, this is a fascinating look at the early history of an amazing city.

This revised version of the original paper is a first description of excavations and a brief presentation of early analytical results from a mammoth bone site that was salvaged by staff and volunteers from the Smithsonian Institution in 1982. The partial skeleton of an LGM Mammuthus columbi was recovered from alluvial sediments over a Cretaceous deposit exposed within a drainage ditch near the Capital Beltway in Maryland. Direct radiometric dating of bone and ivory place the age (calibrated) at about 24 k yrs BP. The mandibular dentition indicates the mammoth was in Laws AEY age group XI/XIa (~12-15 years old) at death. The bones are well preserved; partly semi-articulated, unweathered, and unaffected by carnivores, although some elements had been fragmented under the weight of heavy construction equipment while still in the anaerobic sedimentary matrix, as evidenced by stratigraphic deformation. Recently it has been claimed that bone fragmentation was done by humans in antiquity, but there is no solid evidence for that possibility. It has also been claimed that carnivores affected the bones, but the evidence for that is likewise very weak. This first report of the site provides basic information, a bone map, stratigraphic profiles, and photographs of the salvage activity at the site and some recovered materials. The site will be discussed by G. Haynes at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, in April. The publication of further details and analysis is planned.

Studies of the patterned effects of human and non-human utilization of recent elephant carcasses provide context for understanding how similar processes in the past affected mammoth bones. This information might explain similarities and differences among mammoth sites and assemblages in different times and places in prehistory, such as the Pavlovian phase of early Gravettian in central Europe and the Clovis era in North America.  Both Pavlovian and Clovis people often left behind sites dominated by proboscidean bones, but appear to have made very different uses of mammoth carcasses.

Among elephants, the phylogeographic patterns of mitochondrial (mt) and nuclear markers are often incongruent. One hypothesis attributes this to sex differences in dispersal and in the variance of reproductive success. We tested this hypothesis by examining the coalescent dates of genetic markers within elephantid lineages, predicting that lower dispersal and lower variance in reproductive success among females would have increased mtDNA relative to nuclear coalescent dates. We sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of two forest elephants, aligning them to mitogenomes of African savanna and Asian elephants, and of woolly mammoths, including the most divergent mitogenomes within each lineage. Using fossil calibrations, the divergence between African elephant F and S clade mitochondrial genomes (originating in forest and savanna elephant lineages, respectively) was estimated as 5.5 Ma. We estimated that the (African) ancestor of the mammoth and Asian elephant lineages diverged 6.0 Ma, i...

The causes of megafaunal extinctions in North America have been widely debated but remain poorly understood. Mammoths (Mammuthus spp.) in the American Southwest were hunted by Clovis people during a period of rapid climate change, just before the regional onset of Younger Dryas cooling and mammoth extirpation. Thus, these mammoths may provide key insights into late Pleistocene extinction processes. Here we reconstruct the seasonal diet and climatic conditions experienced by mammoths in the San Pedro Valley of Arizona, using the carbon (13C/12C) and oxygen (18O/16O) isotope compositions of tooth enamel. These records suggest that Clovis mammoths experienced a warm, dry climate with sufficient summer rainfall to support seasonal C4 plant growth. Monsoon intensity may have been reduced relative to the preceding time period, but there is no isotopic evidence for severe drought. However, it is possible that the “Clovis drought”, inferred from stratigraphic evidence, occurred suddenly at the end of the animals’ lives and thus was not recorded in the enamel isotopic compositions. Unlike mammoths that lived before the Last Glacial Maximum, Clovis mammoths regularly increased C4 grass consumption during summer, probably seeking seasonally green grasslands farther from the river valley. This predictable seasonal behavior may have made mammoths easier to locate by Clovis hunters. Furthermore, Clovis mammoths probably had no previous experience of such sudden climatic change as is believed to have occurred at the time of their extinction.

Elephantids are the world's most iconic megafaunal family, yet there is no comprehensive genomic assessment of their relationships. We report a total of 14 genomes, including 2 from the American mastodon, which is an extinct elephantid relative, and 12 spanning all three extant and three extinct elephantid species including an ∼120,000-y-old straight-tusked elephant, a Columbian mammoth, and woolly mammoths. Earlier genetic studies modeled elephantid evolution via simple bifurcating trees, but here we show that interspecies hybridization has been a recurrent feature of elephantid evolution. We found that the genetic makeup of the straight-tusked elephant, previously placed as a sister group to African forest elephants based on lower coverage data, in fact comprises three major components. Most of the straight-tusked elephant's ancestry derives from a lineage related to the ancestor of African elephants while its remaining ancestry consists of a large contribution from a line...

This is an excerpt from chapter 5 of the out-of-print book by G. Haynes, The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era, (c) 2002 by Cambridge University Press. The chapter discusses megamammal-hunting by fluted-point-makers in North America.

Fossils were uncovered at prehistoric Předmostí site in Czech Republic
Scientists studied nitrogen stable isotopes in human and animal fossils
They found the culture left behind huge amounts of mammoth carcasses
Dogs ate reindeer meat, probably discarded by their Gravettian owners
The study shows how dogs were already being looked after by humans
It also confirms importance of mammoth in the prehistoric human diet

This paper illustrates death positions of lightly scavenged or unscavenged large mammal carcasses, providing context for interpreting the body positions of mammoths, such as the frozen carcasses found in Arctic Siberia. Preburial carcass postures of large mammals such as B. bison and Loxodonta africana are similar to the carcass postures of some frozen mammoths. Also briefly discussed are examples of organic remains identified as preserved dung or gastrointestinal contents, which reflect recent diet and may hint at original conditions of the death site.

Large mammalian terrestrial herbivores, such as elephants, have dramatic effects on the ecosystems they inhabit and at high population densities their environmental impacts can be devastating. Pleistocene terrestrial ecosystems included a much greater diversity of megaherbivores (e.g., mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths) and thus a greater potential for widespread habitat degradation if population sizes were not limited. Nevertheless, based on modern observations, it is generally believed that populations of megaherbivores (>800 kg) are largely immune to the effects of predation and this perception has been extended into the Pleistocene. However, as shown here, the species richness of big carnivores was greater in the Pleistocene and many of them were significantly larger than their modern counterparts. Fossil evidence suggests that interspecific competition among carnivores was relatively intense and reveals that some individuals specialized in consuming megaherbivores. To...

Tracks and trackways of a range of Pleistocene megafauna can be found in White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, U.S.A. These tracks occur is several forms, not all of which are visible and some of which are only intermittently visible depending on lighting and moisture conditions. Here we present the result of a successful test of cesium vapor magnetometry to detect a known Columbian mammoth trackway. This initial test found that not only the known mammoth tracks were easily detected by the method, but that the tracks of additional species, though not visible to the eye, were detected in the vicinity of the mammoth tracks, including likely giant sloth tracks. Our initial results indicate that resolution may be suitable to distinguish between the tracks of various species, including possibly humans which are known archaeologically to have overlapped temporally with these species in the southwestern U.S. This preliminary result has immediate implications for the detection and documentation of Pleistocene track sites, and further refinement of the procedure is planned in the coming months.

This is part 2 of a technical report providing more information about a 24,000 year old mammoth site in Maryland, USA, and challenging a recent re-interpretation of bone fragmentation at the site (Karr 2015, in the journal Quaternary International vol. 361). The re-interpretation contends that the mammoth bones had been defleshed, disarticulated, broken, and dispersed by carnivores and other taphonomic processes over a considerable period of time before burial. Some assertions advanced to support this claim are inappropriate, such as a reference to results of experiments on cattle bones placed in water, or they are faulty, such as reliance on an early sketch of few bones. Still other assertions are based on inadequate evidence, specifically a single hole in a bone (mis)identified as a carnivore tooth puncture. No supportable evidence exists that carnivores affected the bones. Also, no valid evidence exists for any other inferred taphonomic disturbances before burial, such as animal trampling or subaerial weathering, which would be discernible if there had been lengthy bone exposure before burial. The sediment enclosing the bones was anaerobic until digging began on a drainage channel in sediments over the bonebed, after which oxidation and mineral reactions in the no longer anoxic sediments caused patchy staining and crust formation on bone surfaces. Both before and during this subsurface process, some bones were probably deformed or crushed by heavy equipment. Impact marks and scratches on surfaces of some spirally fractured bones can be seen to penetrate through stain patches or expose unstained cortical tissue, or the marks partly removed stained surface layers, indicating they are post-burial. Curvilinear fracture fronts on some specimens are contiguous with more linear or irregular fracture fronts, suggesting that ancient bones which are not fresh can still spirally fracture in some cases. The cause of the animal’s death is unknown. One rib has a midshaft swelling that may be a healed fracture; there are no clear signs of acute or chronic disease. The animal may have died after being stuck in the dense Cretaceous sediment, or its carcass may have been deposited and buried during a flood event.

The mammoth steppe ecosystem was characterized by a high diversity in large mammals species distributed on a vast geographical range. The isotopic analyses of the collagen of the faunal remains from this context testified the niche partitioning among large herbivores with a specialization in the types of consumed plants. In the case of the mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), systematic higher abundances in 15N are found for this species compared to those of other grazers in Eurasia and Alaska during the Upper Palaeolithic. This distinct isotopic signature reflects a specific ecological niche. The analyses of mammoth remains at the Epigravettian site of Mezhyrich (15,000-14,300 conv BP) reveal low abundances in 15N that are equivalent to those of the associated horses. Thus, the mammoth of Mezhyrich experienced a significant change in their environment and diet that probably led to the loss of their ecological niche. A likely direct competition with other large herbivores and the possible predation by wolves and human populations should be considered for the mammoth of the Ukrainian plains, long before their extirpation from the region.

Ficha divulgativa del videojuego "The mammoth, a cave painting";
un micro-juego (se juega entero en unos 5 o 6 minutos) en el que nos ponemos en el punto de vista de una hembra de mamut en el Paleolıtico. Es un producto gratuito del estudio Inbetweengames y que solo requiere una mıńima instalación. Se puede obtener en plataformas como Steam, Google Play o App Store.

Pathological change on mammoth bones is a difficult and scarcely explored subject. Among the most characteristic pathologies of mammoths are the holes and hollows in the spinous processes of vertebrae. Although they are rarely mentioned in the literature, they appear often in bone materials. Possible causes for these changes previously proposed by other authors include: genetic trait, abnormal ossification, and Kashin-Beck disease. None of these propositions have been explored or explained more widely. The present study was conducted on mammoth bones from some of the biggest mammoth bone assemblages in Central Europe: Krak ow Spadzista, Milovice I, and P redmostí. They are located close to archaeological sites related to Gravettian culture. This vast amount of material enabled us to track the way this kind of mammoth bone pathology not only developed but also healed. For the first time, the changes in the spinous processes of mammoth vertebrae have been divided into classes indicating the stages of their development. The plausible etiology of the holes and hollows as well as other minor changes (before now not even mentioned in the literature) in mammoth vertebrae spinous processes is explained. The main cause seems to be the disorder of calcium and phosphate metabolism. It is suggested that the short-term climate changes had a significant impact on mammoth condition and on this kind of bone changes. The bone changes connected with metabolism disorder point to the decreased physical condition of the animals. Therefore another important question arises e how did the Gravettian hunters pick their prey? Did they choose sick individuals?