ABSTRACT
Several aspects of the European Middle Paleolithic archaeological record suggest that Neandertal lifeways differed significantly from those of later, anatomically-modern humans. Niche theory addresses the processes by which animal communities are assembled and, with time, rearranged. The foraging niches of species are defined by the resources that animals depend upon and by how and when they use them. The repetition of "compressed" age structures in prey death populations in archaeological records may simply reflect a basic property of the human predatory niche that has been around at least as long as anatomically modern humans in Europe and probably longer. The mortality patterns of cervids and bovids in the archaeological cases are constructed from deciduous and permanent occlusal tooth eruption and wear sequences of the lower 4th premolar unless otherwise specified. A predator's feeding "choices" are conditioned by what living prey populations have to offer and, in some cases, by age-specific susceptibility of individual prey to that predator's procurement techniques.
