Flakes Crossing the Straits? <Emphasis Type="Italic">Entame</Emphasis> Flakes and Northern Africa–Iberia Contact During the Acheulean

The entame core method was defined after studying the Acheulean bifaces from the site of Ternifine, Algeria. This specialized core method for the production of larges flakes (>10 cm) used for biface blanks involves the detachment of primary large flakes from skillfully selected quartzite cobbles. While technologically simple, a competent selection of raw material and dexterous detachment of the flake resulted in a blank perfectly suitable for the production of bifaces, with minimal further shaping required. This core method resulted in high frequencies of entame blanks in the Ternifine lithic assemblages, as well as from the Iberian Peninsula Acheulean, but not in assemblages from other large flake Acheulean sites. It is suggested that the frequent use of the entame core method common to both North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula indicates similarity in lithic tradition during the Acheulean. This may support the view of North African origin for the Iberian Acheulean during the Middle Pleistocene.     

Variability in bifacial technology at Elandsfontein,Western cape,South Africa: a geometric morphometric approach

This study applies a new three-dimensional measurement technique to determine the major source of variation in the Acheulian bifacial tool collection from the Middle Pleistocene site of Elandsfontein, South Africa. This three-dimensional technique is compared with conventional two-dimensional methods to investigate which methods capture morphological variation in the assemblage most comprehensively. Additionally, a set of experimentally produced bifacial tools are incorporated into the analyses to isolate the behavioral pattern underpinning identified variation in the archaeological assemblage. The interpretative breadth of current models explaining morphological variation in bifacial tools is then tested against the pattern identified in the Elandsfontein assemblage. Variation appears to be related to the consistent application of a specific reduction strategy associated with the early stages of bifacial tool manufacture. The intensity with which this strategy was applied seems to have been mediated by the availability of raw material that was suitable for the production of large bifacial tools.     

Organized waste disposal in the Pottery Neolithic: A bifacial workshop refuse pit at Ein Zippori,Israel

A unique Pottery Neolithic context corresponding to the Wadi Rabah culture was found at the multi-layered site of Ein Zippori, Israel. Given the significant amount of flakes, cortical flakes, thinning flakes, and bifacial tool rejects, it was classified as a refuse pit in which bifacial knapping waste from a nearby workshop was disposed. In this paper we present the assemblage of Locus 8071, focusing on the by-products of bifacial tool manufacture and maintenance as well as bifacial tool rejects. We reconstruct the bifacial knapping and maintenance procedures and suggest that Locus 8071 was a disposal area for by-products from a knapping workshop of bifacial tools—an aspect of spatial organization related to possible specialized lithic production at Ein Zippori during the Neolithic period.     

An Index of Invasiveness for the Measurement of Unifacial and Bifacial Retouch: A Theoretical,Experimental and Archaeological Verification

Archaeologists are increasingly in need of quantitative measures of stone artefact retouch. Existing techniques fail to provide a generic measure of retouching for all chipped stone artefacts. A fast and reliable index is proposed which measures retouch in terms of the invasiveness of flake scars on the surfaces of complete stone artefacts. Unlike other measures, the index of invasiveness is well suited to the analysis of bifacially worked artefacts such as bifacial points and bifaces. Experimental tests demonstrate a strong correlation between the index and measures of reduction based on diminishing flake weight and numbers of retouch blows. Inter-observer reliability is also demonstrated through the use of a blind test. Limitations of the method are discussed, although potential techniques for surmounting problems are identified. An archaeological application of the index demonstrates the utility of the method in the context of regional assemblage variability in northern Australia.     

Kariandusi: Acheulean morphology and the question of allometry

Allometry, or size-related variation, is shown to be an important factor in the bifaces of two separate assemblages from the Acheulean site of Kariandusi in Kenya. Such variation has functional and possibly stylistic implications. The paper gives a review of the archaeology of Kariandusi, and then investigates the question of size and shape variation in bifaces. The Upper Sites at Kariandusi, first investigated by L. S. B. Leakey, have yielded many obsidian bifaces which can be dated to approximately 0.7–1.0 myr ago. Material from the Lower Site, including many lava bifaces, is judged to be stratigraphically younger but probably in the same time range. We show by making comparisons with the neighbouring Acheulean sites of Kilombe and the Kapthurin Formation that allometry is present in biface assemblages at least 0.5 myr different in date; that similar principles of allometry operate in all the assemblages; and that where there are differences of allometric pattern, within-site variation is sometimes greater than variation between distant sites. We conclude that the size of a biface at least partly determines the shape in which it was made, and that sites in the time range ofHomo erectus and earlyHomo sapiens show surprisingly similar allometric patterns.

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Résumé Il est démontré que l'allométrie ou variation dimensionnelle, est un facteur important des bifaces de deux collections séparées du site acheuléen de Kariandusi au Kénya. Une telle variation a des implications fonctionnelles et peut-être aussi stylistiques. Cet article examine l'archéologie de Kariandusi, puis étudie la question des variations de dimensions et de formes dans les bifaces. Les sites plus élevés de Kariandusi, que L.S.B. Leakey a été le premier à fouiller, ont donné de nombreux bifaces d'obsidienne que l'on peut dater d'environ 0,7–1,0 million d'années. Le matériel obtenu dans le site inférieur, y compris de nombreux bifaces en lave, est jugé plus récent stratigraphiquement, mais probablement de la même période. En faisant des comparaisons avec les sites acheuléens voisins de Kilombe et de la Formation Kapthurine, nous démontrons que l'allométrie est présente dans des collections de bifaces dont les dates diffèrent d'au moins 0,5 million d'années; que des principes d'allométrie similaires s'appliquent à toutes les collections; et que lorsqu'il y a des différences de schéma allométrique, la variation au sein d'un même site est souvent plus importante que la variation entre des sites distants. Nous concluons que la dimension d'un biface détermine au moins partiellement sa forme, et que les sites de la période de l'Homo erectus et du début de la période de l'Homo sapiens présentent des schémas allométriques étonamment semblables.

     

Interpreting pachyderm single carcass sites in the African Lower and Early Middle Pleistocene record: A multidisciplinary approach to the site of Nadung’a 4 (Kenya)

Nadung’a 4 is one of the single carcass pachyderm sites recorded in East Africa during the Lower and Early Middle Pleistocene. The site has yielded an abundant lithic assemblage in close association with the partial carcass of an elephant. Conjoined pedological, geoarchaeological, spatial, technological, and taphonomical analyses have been carried out to address the relationship between hominids and elephant. The resulting data are consistent with a non-fortuitous association between both categories of remains. The lithic artefacts do not match a classical Acheulean tool-kit, as would be expected for the time period ascribed to the site, and the functional patterns inferred from their analysis make this site radically different from other purported butchery sites. The implications of these original features are discussed.     

Rocks are heavy: transport costs and Paleoarchaic quarry behavior in the Great Basin

Central place foraging models are used to investigate assemblage variability at two Paleoarchaic (terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene) dacite quarries in the central and eastern Great Basin. Our analyses focus specifically on biface reduction and how varying degrees of reduction relate to the costs of transporting the resulting products upon departing the quarry. Our results suggest that when the distance to be traveled to a residential base is great, reduction will proceed further at the quarry than if the residential base is fairly close. Further, a residential site assemblage will consist of bifaces at later stages of reduction than its associated quarry.     

The Clactonian Question: On the Interpretation of Core-and-Flake Assemblages in the British Lower Paleolithic

In recent years, the nature, significance, and validity of the British core-and-flake assemblage known as the Clactonian have come under close scrutiny. More traditional ideas, which see the Clactonian as the product of a distinct, non-handax-making technical tradition, are being challenged by notions of a single European knapping repertoire in which the proportion of handaxes varies according to factors such as activity facies, local raw material potential, and landscape use. Furthermore, recent technological studies which show a basic technological parity between the Acheulean and the Clactonian, including claims for rare atypical bifaces within the Clactonian, have been argued as eroding the very rationale for seeing the Clactonian as a separate entity. These challenges have gained widespread acceptance, despite a lack of empirical support in some cases, questionable conclusions, and hints of a widely ignored, yet intriguing chronological recurrence. A review of the empirical basis and interpretation of the Clactonian, in both recent years and the recent past, suggests that the Clactonian is in danger of being explained away, rather than explained.     

The Palaeolithic of the Bosphorus Region NW Turkey

Abstract

A survey of open-air sites in NW Turkey identified 16 Palaeolithic sites. Analysis of nearly 2000 lithics identified Lower, Middle, and Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) components. The Lower Palaeolithic is represented by a core-chopper/flake assemblage at one site and an assemblage with small bifaces at another. Middle Palaeolithic assemblages similar to the typical Balkan Mousterian were found at most sites, and an EUP assemblage similar to the Balkan Aurignacian was found on the Black Sea coast. Later Upper Palaeolithic cultures, e.g., Gravettian or Epigravettian, were not found. Palaeolithic sites were also not found in Turkish Thrace west of Büyük Çekmece, and a palaeoenvironmental barrier, perhaps a channel connecting the Marmara and Black Seas, may have existed before the Bosphorus was opened in the Holocene. A difference in the distribution of Lower-Middle Palaeolithic sites and EUP sites was also noted. EUP sites are clustered on the Black Sea coast while earlier sites are found in the interior and on the shores of the Sea of Marmara. This change in settlement pattern may support a hypothesis of cultural change between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic and perhaps the replacement hypothesis for the peopling of Europe by early modern humans.     

Clovis biface technology at the Topper site,South Carolina: evidence for variation and technological flexibility

The Topper site in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain of South Carolina provides a rare glimpse of the entire range of Clovis tool manufacture. Topper is a quarry-related site along the Savannah River with an outcrop of Coastal Plain chert and a buried Clovis component. This paper focuses on the 174 bifaces and diagnostic debitage from recent excavations to understand biface production at Topper. I present the process of manufacture then measure the variation in production characteristics at the site in terms of our current knowledge of Clovis biface technology. I conclude that Topper flintknappers used reduction strategies typical of Clovis-period tool production but created a biface assemblage with greater flexibility in design than documented at most other Clovis sites. This variation in biface production suggests greater variability in Clovis behavior across America—Clovis groups adapted to local resource conditions and adjusted the organization of their technology accordingly.     

Sentinel Butte: neutron activation analysis of White River Group chert from a primary source and artifacts from a Clovis cache in North Dakota,USA

Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) was used to characterize the chemical composition of chert from a primary source in western North Dakota. Known as Sentinel Butte, this source is part of the Eocene-age White River Group (WRG), a widespread geological formation on the central and northern Plains. INAA results demonstrate that it is chemically distinct from other known chert-bearing WRG. Further, analysis of three bifaces from the nearby Beach Clovis cache site demonstrates that they are made of chert from Sentinel Butte, and most likely the other 55 White River Group Silicate (WRGS) bifaces in the cache are as well. Although Clovis caches typically are dominated by materials transported hundreds of kilometers, it is argued that the advance manufacture and caching of bifaces even a short distance from a source may be a highly effective tactic to reduce gearing up time and hence search costs associated with the pursuit of mobile game at the close of the Pleistocene.     

High-Tech Foragers? Folsom and Later Paleoindian Technology on the Great Plains

Archaeologists generally argue that early (ca. 11,000–8000 B.P. populations on the North American Great Plains moved over very large areas, relying on sophisticated, biface-based flaked stone technology and on extensive resharpening and recycling of tools to cope with unpredictable access to raw material sources. This paper reviews the development of this reconstruction and considers the degree to which data from assemblages of Paleoindian flaked stone tools support it. Published information implies that patterns of raw material use vary greatly over the Plains, that bifaces were not the centerpiece of Paleoindian technology, that there are no published efforts to document an unusual degree of resharpening or recycling, and that the data that are available on these topics do not suggest that either was important. Detailed analysis of one assemblage, from the Allen site in southwestern Nebraska, carried out with these issues in mind, shows similar patterns. The great difference between what the literature says about Paleoindian technology and the documented character of that technology suggests that Paleoindian lifeways were far more variable than current discussions suggest.     

Refuting the technological cornerstone of the Ice-Age Atlantic crossing hypothesis

The “North Atlantic Ice-Edge Corridor” hypothesis proposes that sometime during the Last Glacial Maximum, roughly 26,500–19,000 years ago, human populations from southern France and the Iberian Peninsula made their way across the North Atlantic and colonized North America. A key element of that hypothesis is the apparent similarity between stone-tool-production techniques of Solutrean peoples of Western Europe and Clovis and purportedly pre-Clovis peoples of eastern North America, most especially the supposed intentional use of “controlled overshot flaking,” a technique for thinning a bifacial stone tool during manufacture. Overshot flakes, struck from prepared edges of the tool, travel across the face and remove part of the opposite margin. Experimental and archaeological data demonstrate, however, that the most parsimonious explanation for the production of overshot flakes is that they are accidental products created incidentally and inconsistently as knappers attempt to thin bifaces. Thus, instead of representing historical divergence, overshot flakes in Clovis and Solutrean assemblages mark convergence in the use of the same simple solution for thinning bifaces that produced analogous detritus.     

A Newly Discovered Acheulean Assemblage in the Mbulu Plateau,Northern Tanzania

African Archaeological Review - This article reports a newly discovered Acheulean assemblage in Tanzania’s Northern Mbulu Plateau. Recent investigations in the region have documented surface...     

Reassessment of the Lower Paleolithic (Acheulean) presence in the western Tien Shan

Kulbulak (Uzbekistan) is among the most important Paleolithic sites in Central Asia. Based on excavations from the 1960s to the 1980s, a stratigraphic sequence yielding 46 archeological horizons of the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic has been described. The lowermost 22 layers were at that time defined as Acheulean, both in cultural and chronological aspects. Based on these previous works, Kulbulak has thus often been cited as one of the rarest occurrences of Lower Paleolithic and Acheulean in the region. However, this attribution was debatable. New excavations at Kulbulak in 2007–2010 provided new material and the first reliable dates that permitted us to tackle this issue. Moreover, a reappraisal of the lithic collections and documents from previous excavations was also conducted. These new data clearly indicate the absence of Acheulean or even Lower Paleolithic at Kulbulak. On the contrary, the lithic assemblages from this site only correspond to Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods. The lowermost layers are particularly interesting due to the presence of an early industry with blade and bladelet technology.     

Local Ceramics from the Islamic Trade Center of Harlaa,Eastern Ethiopia: Markers of Chronology and Contacts

Locally made ceramics from Islamic sites in Ethiopia have been neglected in most archaeological studies, which tend to privilege imported Middle Eastern and Chinese/Southeast Asian ceramics. An assemblage of the local ceramics from the important trading site of Harlaa, in eastern Ethiopia (mid-sixth and fifteenth centuries AD), is the subject of this article. The study emphasizes the value of these ceramics as chronological markers, and for understanding regional and long-distance contacts, cultural innovations, processes of Islamization, and foodways.

     

Thermoluminescence dates for the Middle Palaeolithic site of Chez-Pinaud Jonzac (France)

Thermoluminescence dating of heated flint artefacts from the Middle Palaeolithic sequence of Chez-Pinaud Jonzac (France) places an assemblage of Quina type Mousterian into MIS 4, while the overlying assemblage of Denticulate Mousterian which is followed by two layers with Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition are all assigned to MIS 3. TL dating is used to verify the mixed nature of deposits from which diagnostic Middle as well as Upper Palaeolithic tools were recovered. The TL ages are significantly different for samples from this layer and broadly agree with the archaeological attributions. While the study is generally limited by the low number of heated samples available, a correlation with a generalized chronostratigraphic sequence is possible by including proxy data from the faunal remains associated with the lithic assemblages in question. The Quina Mousterian in southwestern France, therefore, can be placed by chronometric dating methods in MIS 4 to MIS 3.     

Acheulean variability and hominin dispersals: a model-bound approach

Understanding the pattern of hominin dispersal is a fundamental component of Palaeolithic archaeology and palaeoanthropology. A widely held assumption is that bifacial handaxe (i.e. Acheulean or ‘Mode 2’) technologies evolved in Africa and dispersed into northern and western Eurasia via subsequent hominin migrations. To date, however, few formal tests of this hypothesis have been presented. Here, we use a combination of morphometrics, cultural transmission theory, and a dispersal model drawn from population genetics in order to test this hypothesis. The iterative founder effect (repeated bottlenecking) model is assumed to be supported if a significant inverse relationship is found between geographic distance from source along an estimated dispersal route and within-assemblage variance. The results of our analyses support the hypothesis that Acheulean technologies evolved in Africa and dispersed with migrating hominin populations into northern and western Eurasia under the assumptions of this iterative founder effect model. Based on our results we suggest that the occurrence of certain Mode 1 technologies such as those east of the Movius Line, and some assemblages assigned to the Clactonian of Britain, plausibly represent instances where effective population sizes in colonising populations dropped below levels where Mode 2 technologies could be maintained.     

The oldest handaxes in Europe: fact or artefact?

Hominin presence is well documented in a number of Early Pleistocene and early Middle Pleistocene European localities. However, the evidence currently available indicates that Acheulean handaxes spread in the fluvial basins of Western Europe during MIS 11, ～400 kyr ago, associated with Homo heidelbergensis, although a number of early Middle Pleistocene Acheulean assemblages have been dated from MIS 16 onwards. For this reason, the magnetostratigraphic dating in Southeast Spain of two archaeological localities, the open-air site of Solana del Zamborino (SZ) and the rock-shelter site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Quípar (EQ), that put back the appearance of handaxes to the Early-Middle Pleistocene limit (Scott and Gibert, 2009) is of particular interest, as the new ages suggest that H. heidelbergensis was a contemporary of H. antecessor that had the ability to produce Levallois debitage and to control fire during the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition. However, we have detected a number of errors in the interpretation of the archaeological assemblage from the first site as well as striking discrepancies with the original faunal lists published for both localities, with several large mammal species that are omitted or arbitrarily changed to make the assemblages consistent with the new ages deduced from magnetostratigraphy. For this reason, we suggest that: (1) the finding of reverse polarity in the sediments sampled for paleomagnetism in SZ may simply record one of the polarity reversals that took place during the Brunhes Chron, although the use by Scott and Gibert (2009) of a composite stratigraphic column precludes correlating these levels with a specific reversal; and (2) the fauna and tools of EQ correspond to the late Middle Pleistocene sedimentary infillings of this karst site, while the samples taken for paleomagnetism belong to a previous sedimentary cycle during the Matuyama Chron. Such interpretations would be in better agreement with the age estimates provided by biostratigraphy and also with the currently accepted chronology for the appearance of Acheulean industries in Western Europe.