The Associational Critique of Quaternary Overkill and why it is Largely Irrelevant to the Extinction Debate

Abstract

The overkill hypothesis has been criticized using a simple observation–with the exception of New Zealand, there is little evidence for human hunting of extinct Quaternary faunas. We explore the legitimacy of this argument, or what we call the “Associational Critique,” the idea that the paucity of evidence for the subsistence exploitation of extinct taxa weakens or falsifies overkill. Using quantitative and probabilistic models, based on the temporal depth of extinction events, human demography, and taphonomic bias, we ask how many associations with extinct fauna should have been found by this point in time in Australia, North America, and New Zealand. We conclude that such evidence should be rare in Australia, of intermediate abundance in North America, and common in New Zealand, a conclusion very much in accord with the current state of the archaeological record. We reach a similar conclusion using an analysis of the relative frequency of radiocarbon dates from each region dating to the time of coexistence of humans and extinct fauna. We argue that a scarcity of evidence for the exploitation of extinct fauna is not only consistent with overkill but also nearly every other extinction hypothesis that has been proposed, thus rendering the Associational Critique irrelevant.

Revisiting Paleoindian exploitation of extinct North American mammals

“…759 Table 6 provides the modifications we have made to our 2002 list; Table 7 It thus remains the case that there are strikingly few archaeological sites that document human 765 predation on, or scavenging of, these now extinct animals. We anticipate that proponents of overkill will 766 agree on this point, as they have in the past (Surovell and Waguespack 2008), and perhaps will dismiss 767 this scarcity of evidence of hunting as 'irrelevant' and a byproduct of poor preservation and other 768 taphonomic biases, as they have also done in the past (e.g., Surovell and Grund 2012). That is, it might be 769 claimed that there are so few kill/scavenging sites of these extinct taxa simply because there are fewer 770 sites preserved from this time period (e.g., Surovell and Grund 2012).…”

Taphonomy of fossils from the hominin-bearing deposits at Dikika, Ethiopia

“…This is because the behavior may initially have been so rare as to be effectively invisible in the archaeological record e much as is predicted to be the case for the earliest flaked stone tools (Panger et al, 2002). As a related point, rarity of archaeological encounters does not in and of itself provide evidence for lack of a behavior, particularly if that behavior is subject to taphonomic bias, spread over long time spans, and with a wide potential geographic distribution (Surovell and Grund, 2012). Domínguez-Rodrigo et al (2012) performed experiments with unmodified stones to assess if the DIK-55 marks resemble marks made with unflaked stone.…”

The overkill model and its impact on environmental research

“…The paucity of archeological evidence for interaction between people and megafauna has been called the "associational critique" (Grayson, 1984a;Meltzer, 1986). But it has been deftly handled by Martin (1973Martin ( , 1984 and others (Fiedel & Haynes, 2004;Surovell & Grund, 2012), who assume that there is a small sample of sites with evidence of association only because the extinction process was so rapid that the remains were not buried and thus did not preserve. The absence of evidence, specifically the absence of association, is used as evidence for overkill.…”