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Abstract
The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) is one of the most important birds of prey in the Northern Hemisphere. This raptor is used to building large nests in high cliffs to which they return for several breeding years accumulating important amounts of their prey skeletal remains. This makes the golden eagle one of the major predators able to accumulate faunal remains in archaeological sites. Despite this fact, the taphonomic signature of golden eagles has not been properly characterized. Here we present the analysis of ingested and non-ingested faunal remains predated and accumulated by this raptor in two different nesting areas from the Iberian Peninsula. Results show how the faunal taxonomic record may vary depending on the ecological zone. Leporids and terrestrial carnivores are the best represented. The observed anatomical representation, breakage and bone surface modification patterns are discussed for different taxa. The taphonomic pattern varies depending on the type of prey and the origin of skeletal materials (non-ingested vs. pellets). Finally, after comparing our results with marks left by other predators, several characteristic features are noted to recognise golden eagles as agents of animal bones accumulations in the fossil record.
Acknowledgements
Ll. Lloveras was funded by a postdoctoral grant (BP-B00140-2014) from the Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya and the COFUND programme (Marie Curie Actions). Financial support from research projects HAR2014-55131 from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MICINN) and SGR2014-00108 from the Generalitat de Catalunya are gratefully acknowledged. We are very grateful to J. Clarke for her valuable help with English edition. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers whose critical comments helped us to improve our paper. We finally thank the organizers of the 4th ICAZ Taphonomy Working Group Meeting for offering us the opportunity to participate in this volume.