Dr. Alex Pryor
University of Exeter, Department of Archaeology, Laver Building, North Park Road, Exeter, Devon,
EX4 4QE, United Kingdom
Alex.Pryorspam prevention@exeter.ac.uk

The project presented  aims to answer two fundamental questions: "How and why did foxes adapt to humans during the last Ice Age?" and "How did wolf domestication begin?" To address these questions, stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from archaeological fox, wolf, and dog remains will be used to reconstruct diet and dietary niches. In addition, the ratio of radiogenic strontium in tooth enamel will be measured to reconstruct the origin of the animal. This project will be limited to sampling mandibles with associated teeth, as these elements cover different life stages of the animals. For the first research question, fox remains from the Late Pleistocene (pre-LGM MIS 3 and 4, between 71 000 and 29 000 years before today) from archaeological sites in the Swabian Jura (Baden-Württemberg) will be studied. In three studies from 2020, the applicant was able to show that the feeding behavior of foxes was influenced by humans as early as 40,000 years ago. In spring 2023, he also published the theoretical framework of the paleo-synanthropic niche, which describes the requirements, benefits, and consequences of this new animal behavior in the immediate vicinity of early humans. 

The present study aims to test some of the hypotheses (e.g., the benefit of anthropogenic food waste and the consequently decrease of individual home range) put forward in this paper with new, more detailed methods and to gain more detailed insights into the behavior of Pleistocene foxes. For the second research question, wolf remains, and potential dog remains from the Magdalenian sites of the Hegau Jura (Baden-Württemberg and Canton Schaffhausen) will be examined. During the Magdalenian period, about 16,000 to 14,000 years before present, the glaciers of the Ice Age slowly retreated and the Hegau region was re-colonized by humans for the first time. The people who populated the area most likely domesticated wolves. However, how this process took place is still largely unexplored and is the subject of this project. The proposed project has the potential to demonstrate the power of early modern humans as niche constructors, which exerted both indirect (paleo-synanthropic foxes) and direct (domesticated wolves) influence on the Pleistocene fauna. This in turn leads to a better and more sustainable understanding of human-environment interactions.

Project funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Research Foundation)

Principal investigator (PI): Dr. Chris Baumann

Duration: May 2025 - April 2027 (24 months)
Grant-No. (Projektnummer): 539325077

https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/539325077