Walking Together: Ways of Collaboration in Western-Indigenous Research on Footprints

A combination of western analytical methods with experience-based indigenous methods of tracking can be a chance to get closer to individuals of past times. In such collaborative research projects, different western and indigenous knowledge systems meet. These are characterized in more detail below. This chapter examines the question of how respectful and mutually beneficial cooperation is possible against the background of different epistemologies. Recommendations for practical action in collaborative projects are summarized in an ethics guide and an interview guide, and alternative forms of writing and publication are proposed.

On the Tracks of Neandertals: The Ichnological Assemblage from Le Rozel (Normandy, France)

Hominin tracks represent a unique window into moments in the life of extinct individuals. They can provide biological and locomotor data that are not accessible from skeletal remains. However, these tracks are relatively scarce in the fossil record, particularly those attributed to Neandertals. They are also most often devoid of associated archaeological material, which limits their interpretation. The Palaeolithic site of Le Rozel (Normandy, France) located in a dune complex formed during the Upper Pleistocene has yielded between 2012 and 2017 several hundred tracks (257 hominin footprints, 8 handprints as well as 6 animal tracks). This ichnological assemblage is distributed within five stratigraphic subunits dated to 80,000 years. These subunits are rich in archaeological material that attests to brief occupations by Neandertal groups and provides information about the activities that they carried out. The ichnological assemblage discovered at Le Rozel is the largest attributed to Neandertals to date and more generally the most important for hominin taxa other than Homo sapiens. The particularly large number of footprints can provide major information for our understanding of the Palaeolithic occupations at Le Rozel and for our knowledge of the composition of Neandertal groups.

An Echo from a Footprint: A Step Too Far

Rarely in archaeology do we see the flesh and blood of ancient people living their lives? In Australia, a unique archaeological site discovered in 2006 allowed us to do just that as people went about their daily lives during the last glacial maximum. The site is a palaeofilm of men, women and children, walking, running and meandering across a wet area that was obviously special to them. While hundreds of footprints displayed this unusual but moving life tapestry, details of their behaviour and other marks they left behind were difficult or impossible to interpret. Moreover, were some of the marks made by humans or just artefacts of nature? Perhaps we were not making the right interpretation and not picking up clues to the everyday life of these people as well as we might. We required interpretative skills we did not have. To help us we needed to partner with people who had such skills. Pintubi people from Central Australia were asked to help, and they were some of the last people contacted by White Australia in the early 1960s. They had the vital skills of tracking, skills that had kept them alive in the harsh Tanami and Gibson deserts of Central Australia. It was possible that they would be able to apply those skills in reaching out to their ancient Dreamtime ancestors. They also brought that Dreamtime to us.

Hominin Footprints in Caves from Romanian Carpathians

The Romanian karst hosts numerous caves and shelters that over time provided remarkable archaeological and anthropological vestiges. Altogether they show that humans must have entered caves in Romania at least as early as 170,000 years ago. However, ancient human footprints are very rare in the fossil record of East-Central Europe, with only two known locations in the Apuseni Mountains of western Romania. Vârtop Cave site originally preserved three fossil footprints made about 67,800 years ago by a Homo neanderthalensis, whereas Ciur Izbuc Cave was probably home of early H. sapiens that left almost 400 footprints (interspersed with spoors of cave bears), which were indirectly dated to be younger than ~36,500 years.

Reading Spoor

The spoor of animals and humans alike contain rich information about an individual and about a momentary activity this individual performed. If the – arguably hard-wired – human ability to read spoor and tracks is sufficiently trained, a footprint allows to glean from it various physical, kinetic, medical, social and psychologic data about an individual, as has been observed among various populations across the globe. The Ju|’hoansi San from northern Namibia still today practice traditional hunting so that tracking is a skill that is required and trained on a daily base. For a good tracker, the information she or he gets from spoor is equally rich on animal and human footprints, and it is not necessary that the tracker has been exposed before to the individual whose spoor she/he reads. In order to allow an assessment of how tenable are the interpretations by contemporary hunter-gatherers of prehistoric human footprints, this chapter elucidates methodological aspects of tracking and situates this ability in an epistemological framework.

The Mesolithic Footprints Retained in One Bed of the Former Saltmarshes at Formby Point, Sefton Coast, North West England

In the early Holocene period, extensive tracts of coastal land were submerged as the climate warmed and meltwaters flooded into the oceans. As the Irish Sea expanded, coastlines altered and large intertidal zones were created as tracts of low-lying land at the tidal margins were gradually submerged. In these areas, reed swamp and saltmarsh formed which, too, were inundated for varying periods of time. However, in the calmer warmer weather of the late spring and summer, birds and mammals were drawn on to the mudflats where they could feed on molluscs, or new reed and sedge shoots, wallow in the cooling mud, drink the brackish water or, for some predators, hunt. The behavioural tendencies of some species are revealed by their footprints which show their engagement within this environment – some breeds moved on to the marshes while others moved away. The humans who shared this landscape understood the opportunities offered by these predictable behaviours. Their trails run along and across those left by many species, leaving a visible network of human and animal activity preserved in the hardened mud. These will be described through an examination of the footprints recorded in three contexts which formed the stratigraphy of a Mesolithic bed at Formby Point in North West England. The persistent return to the mudflats by generations of people reflects an embodied knowledge of this coastal landscape, learnt in childhood and practiced in adulthood. The ability to modify movements in the landscape, to respond to the daily tides, the changing seasons and a fluctuating environment, all suggest a spatial-temporal relationship which not only encompassed a dynamic environment but also the other life that dwelt within it.

Prehistoric Human Tracks in Ojo Guareña Cave System (Burgos, Spain): The Sala and Galerías de las Huellas

In 1969, members of Grupo Espeleológico Edelweiss discovered the Sala and Galerías de las Huellas in Ojo Guareña Cave system (Burgos, Spain). These contained hundreds of ancient human footprints, preserved in the soft sediment on the floor. These footprints represent the tracks of a small group of people who walked barefoot through these complex passages in the cave. Owing to the difficult compatibility of the documentation and preservation of these prints, it was not possible to study them before the development of new non-invasive remote sensing techniques. However, since 2012 optical laser scanning and digital photogrammetry have been used in Galerías de las Huellas, in combination with GIS techniques, to obtain a model of the cave floor, where the footprints and their internal morphology can be observed in detail. We have identified over 1000 prehistoric human footprints and at least 18 distinct trackways through the passages, which could have been left by around 8–10 individuals. Since 2016, an archaeological field study has been conducted in this sector, in order to determine and explore its surrounding area and find other archaeological evidence that may be directly associated with these tracks. Numerous remains of torches are preserved on the walls and floor in the immediate surroundings of the footprint sites. Some of them have been dated, which has revealed the intensive use of this underground landscape from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic-Neolithic. However, the remains in Sala and Galerías de las Huellas date solely to the Chalcolithic, around 4300 calBP.

Experimental Re-creation of the Depositional Context in Which Late Pleistocene Tracks Were Found on the Pacific Coast of Canada

To better understand the depositional context of Late Pleistocene human tracks found at archaeology site EjTa-4 on Calvert Island, on the Pacific Coast of Canada, we present here the results of an experiment designed to recreate the conditions by which these tracks were formed, preserved and then revealed through excavation. Based on radiocarbon ages on small twigs and the analysis of sediments and microfossils, the interpretation of the site formation processes relate that the tracks were impressed into a clayey soil substrate just above the high tide line between 13,317 and 12,633 calBP. The features were subsequently encapsulated by black sand, which washed over the tracks from the nearby intertidal zone during a storm event. To test this interpretation, we enlisted the aid of high school student volunteers to recreate the conditions by which the tracks were formed. A clayey substrate was prepared in a laboratory setting at the University of Victoria and a few plant macrofossils were placed on top it. This was followed by having the students create tracks in the clay, which were then covered with a layer of sand. Upon excavation of these experimental tracks, we found that they had a very similar character to those found in the field, including the pressing of macrofossils into the clay by the weight of the track maker. These results support the interpretation and chronological assessment of the depositional events that occurred during late Pleistocene times at archaeology site EjTa-4.

Tracking with Batek Hunter-Gatherers of Malaysia

Tropical hunting studies that focus on tracking – how signs are interpreted – are rarely done if at all. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of the tracking strategies and knowledge of Batek of Malaysia. Studies of hunter-gatherer tracking rely heavily on Liebenberg’s carefully observed documentation of San tracking, enriched by his own scientific expertise in faunal behavior. Of the three levels of tracking he mentions, simple tracking is unreliable for the Batek, simply because of the nature of tropical forests. The default mode is systematic tracking, carefully gathering information, and piecing together a multisensorial picture of where prey is to be found. Their visual, auditory, and olfactory acuity is exceptional and so is their vocabulary for expressing these states. Tracking for Batek is not limited to the interpretation of tracks, or, rather, the notion of tracks needs to be broadened, to include tracks that cannot be seen, but can be heard and smelt. Tracking is about multisensory engagement in the needs of the moment and deploying the skills to decide what is and is not relevant information. It is about performance.

Following the Father Steps in the Bowels of the Earth: The Ichnological Record from the Bàsura Cave (Upper Palaeolithic, Italy)

The chapter summarizes the new results of the Bàsura Revisited Interdisciplinary Research Project. The integrated interpretation of recent archaeological data and palaeosurface laser scans, along with geoarchaeological, sedimentological, geochemical and archaeobotanical analyses, geometric morphometrics and digital photogrammetry, enabled us to reconstruct some activities that an Upper Palaeolithic human group led inside a deep cave in northern Italy within a single exploration event about 14 ka calBP. A complex and diverse track records of humans and other animals shed light on individual- and group-level behaviour, social relationship and mode of exploration of the uneven terrain. Five individuals, composed of two adults, an adolescent and two children, entered the cave barefoot lightening the way with a bunch of wooden sticks (Pinus t. sylvestris/mugo bundles). While proceeding, humans were forced to move on all fours, and the traces they left represent the first report of crawling locomotion in the global human ichnological record. Anatomical details recognizable in the crawling traces show that no clothing was present between limbs and the trampled sediments. Our study demonstrates that very young children (the youngest about 3 years old) were active members of the human groups, even in apparently dangerous and social activities, shedding light on behavioural habits of Upper Palaeolithic populations.