The Aterian from the Jebel Gharbi (Libya): New Technological Perspectives from North Africa

The purpose of this work is to examine the Aterian complex in the context of modern human origins through the analysis of the lithic industries from a geographically strategic area, the Jebel Gharbi (Libya). From a chronological point of view, the Aterian fits the time period of the Out of Africa 2 dispersal. During geoarchaeological surveys of the Jebel Gharbi carried out by the Italian–Libyan Archaeological Mission, 25 Aterian sites were found. The technology of the Aterian lithic industries from the Jebel Gharbi shows affinities both with the Aterian industries from Morocco and coeval industries from Egypt such as Taramsa. The affinities between contemporary Libyan Aterian industries, Egyptian industries, and some series from the Levant open new perspectives on the possible models of contact and displacement of human groups in a key period for the history of humankind.     

Indo-Arabian stone anchors in the western Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea

This paper describes the current state of knowledge in the study of Indo-Arabian stone anchors in the western Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, and speculates on what they may be able to tell us about the provenance, size and handling of Arab and Indian ships and shipping during the period sixth-sixteenth centuries AD.     

Integrating Human-Animal Relationships into New Data on Aterian Complexity: a Paradigm Shift for the North African Middle Stone Age

In the last decade, research conducted in North Africa, particularly in northwestern Africa, has shed light on the key role that the region has played in improving our understanding of human evolution. Specifically, (1) the increased number of direct dates obtained with new methods has pushed back the age of the Aterian (~ 150,000 to 40,000 BP); (2) analyses of Aterian lithic assemblages have placed them within the range of variation of the Middle Stone Age; (3) analyses of associated human remains suggest that the makers of the Aterian are within the range of variation common among early modern human and present affinities with contemporary remains from the Levant (Qafzeh, Skhul); (4) zones of settlement, such as those in the present-day Sahara and coastal areas, and even the composition and demography of populations could have been influenced by specific climatic changes of the Late Pleistocene; and (5) the presence of blocks of pigment showing use-wear facets on their surfaces, the presence of pigments on artifacts, as well as osseous industry and earliest ornaments suggest complex behaviors among these populations. In this renewed approach to the Aterian, data from faunal analyses provide information on human-carnivore competition and the subsistence practices of hunter-gatherer groups. Taphonomic and zooarchaeological analyses suggest that humans were not the only large predators occupying caves, and that the hunter-gatherers of the Middle Stone Age exploited a wide range of environments, consuming terrestrial and coastal resources alike. Interdisciplinary confrontations highlight the apparent complexity of socioeconomic organization and the strategies of high levels of mobility that characterized Aterian groups.     

A brief description of the ordnance survey,and some notes on the advantages of a topographical survey of South Africa

Early maps of Scotland at a national scale provide historical geographers with an important source of data. One of the most important of these maps but still relatively unexploited and poorly understood is the Military Survey of Scotland or Roy Map. Examination is made here of its two versions, the Protracted Copy and the Fair Copy, to check the veracity of the draughtsmen who produced the latter and most commonly consulted version. An examination is made by focussing on two areas of Fife.     

Comments on the chronology of the younger stone age in Varanger,North Norway

Age determination at death of skeletal remains can prove difficult. The teeth are often well preserved and could present the only means for an age evaluation. Based on the closure of skull sutures and dental attrition, the age of a Stone Age man was judged to be about 60 years when he succumbed. This has now been verified by means of measuring the extent of root dentin transparency. The importance of teamwork in difficult cases regarding assessment of age in skeletal remains is pointed out.     

From stone to metal: New perspectives on the later prehistory of West Africa

Earlier views saw West Africa as culturally stagnant through much of the Holocene until stimulus or intervention from north of the Sahara transformed Iron Age societies. Evidence accumulating over the past 15 years suggests that stone-using societies from 10,000 to 3000 B.P. were far more diverse than previously thought. Against an increasingly detailed record of Holocene climate change, the complexity of local adaptation and change is becoming better understood. Although a strong case currently exists for the introduction of copper and iron to West Africa from the north in the mid-first millennium B.C., the subsequent development of metallurgy was strongly innovative in different parts of the subcontinent. Soon after the advent of metals, a dramatic increase in archaeological evidence for social stratification and hierarchical political structures indicates the emergence of societies markedly more complex than anything currently documented in the Late Stone Age. The best-documented examples come from the Middle Niger region and the Nigerian forest. In these areas, earlier diffusionist models in which complexity originated outside West Africa have yielded to evidence that indigenous processes were instrumental in this transformation. Trade, ideology, climate shifts, and indirect influences from North Africa, including the introduction of the domesticated horse to the Sahelian grasslands, are identified as factors essential to an understanding of these processes.     

Some Insights on the Aterian in the Libyan Sahara: Chronology, Environment, and Archaeology

The Aterian has a huge geographic extension covering all North Africa, although it was not supposed to exist in the mountain ranges of the central Sahara. Its chronological context is not yet definitively determined and it is still difficult to say whether the Aterian tools are technological, typological, functional, or chronological markers. Recent surveys and excavations at Uan Tabu and Uan Afuda, two rock-shelters located in the central Tadrart Acacus, provide the first chronological, environmental and archaeological indications on this Late Pleistocene human occupation in the area. The lack of organic matter led us to perform OSL and TL analyses on sand. L'Atérien a une énorme extension géographique qui couvre tout le Nord de l'Afrique, tandis qu'on ne pensait pas qu'il existait dans les montagnes du Sahara central. Son contexte culturel n'est pas définitivement déterminé et il est encore difficile de dire si les instruments atériens sont des indicateurs téchnologiques, typologiques, fonctionels ou culturels. Reconnaissances et fouilles récentes à Uan Tabu et Uan Afuda, deux abris situés dans l'Acacous central, fournissent les premières indications sur la chronologie, l'environnement et l'archéologie de l'Atérien dans la région. L'absence de la substance organique, nous a porté à faire des déterminations OSL et TL sur les sables.     

Blind tests shed light on possibilities and limitations for identifying stone tool prehension and hafting

Prehensile wear has never formed the focus of a blind test in microwear studies and doubts remain about the formation, identification and interpretation of diagnostic prehension and hafting wear. The results of the presented blind tests demonstrate that prehension and hafting traces do form and that their formation is sufficiently systematic and patterned to allow valid and reliable interpretations. A combined approach, involving macroscopic, low power and high power analyses, is suggested as the most meaningful approach for consistent inferences.     

Chert sources and distribution patterns in the stone age of West Finnmark,North Norway: A preliminary view

A preliminary analysis of chert sources and distribution patterns in west Finnmark is described. Three small quarries and a fourth possible source area are situated on the coast west of Alta. Petrographic and geochemical analyses lend tentative support to the proposition that chert from these coastal sources was distributed inland during the Late Stone Age and Early Metal Periods.     

敦煌写本《归义军僧官书仪》拼接缀合及相关问题研究

敦煌文献P．5015可与P．3715、P．2729拼接缀合,拼合后的文书内容更加完整。文书所提及的唐政府所给与归义军的各种赏赐,当是为了赏其收复凉州之功,归义军收复凉州并非一蹴而就,而是一个渐进的过程。归义军收复凉州后,唐政府曾以派遣防秋兵马为名,遣郓州兵驻守凉州,敦煌文献中保存了不少与郓州兵有关的记载。     

Restructuring of the European chocolate industry and its impact on cocoa production in West Africa

During the 1990s, both the European chocolate industry and thecocoa butter industry have become increasingly centralised.Today only a handful of companies in each segment control theproduction of intermediate goods and massmarketed brands. Thecocoa sectors of the major producing countries in West Africahave at the same time been liberalised and privatised due tothe dismantling of state marketing boards. This paper examinesthe relationship between the new raw material requirements (bothin qualitative and quantitative terms) of the processing industryin Europe and restructuring processes in the cocoa sectors ofmajor African producer countries.     

论北非文明交往与利比亚城市的历史变迁

本从明交往的角度对利比亚城市的发展进行了历史考察：分析了古典明的扩张对利比亚城市早期发展的影响,伊斯兰明的传播对利比亚伊斯兰城市的兴起以及西方工业明的入侵对利比亚城市现代化所产生的历史作用。利比亚作为世界上多种明的交叉之地,它的城市对于人类明的演进和交往做出了重要贡献。     

Poverty and Neo‐Liberal Bias in the Middle East and North Africa

This article examines the definition of poverty and the evidential base for the claims that the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has historically low levels of poverty and relatively good levels of income distribution. It argues that the dominant trend in the literature on poverty in the global south in general, and in MENA in particular, has a neo‐classical bias. Amongst other things, that bias fails to understand that poverty does not emerge because of exclusion but because of poor people's ‘differential incorporation’ into economic and political processes. It also raises the question: if the MENA has indeed had relatively low levels of poverty and good income distribution, does this complicate the issue of autocracy and the western drive to remove political ‘backwardness’ in the region? In particular, the characterization of autocracy and the west's attempt to promote political liberalization is likely to impact adversely on the social contract that autocratic rulers have enforced regarding the delivery of basic services.     

老铁山·将军山积石墓浅析

在以往的考古报道和研究中,学者们多使用老铁山积石墓、将军山积石墓等遗址名称.经查,这两地点相距不远,而且积石墓相连成片①,同时有学者指出:"过去所谓老铁山积石冢,实际上是包括将军山积石冢在内" ②.因此笔者以为这两个遗址名称名义上指代的是两个遗址,实为同一墓地的两个不同称谓.为避免引起混淆,笔者建议将该遗址合称为老铁山·将军山积石墓.     

The technology of Stone Age colonization: an empirical,regional-scale examination of Clovis unifacial stone tool reduction,allometry, and edge angle from the North American Lower Great Lakes region

There is now broad consensus that the appearance of Clovis in Northeastern North America (Great Lakes, New England) represents a colonization pulse into recently deglaciated landscapes. Due to the increased resource uncertainty that comes with colonizing unfamiliar landscapes, it was hypothesized that the majority tool component of Clovis assemblages, unifacial stone tools, should have been knapped on tool blanks possessing the design properties of longevity and functional flexibility to facilitate exploration mobility and guard against the absence of toolstone sources in the new landscape. These properties are optimized by large, flat flakes, possessing large surface area relative to flake thickness. Since discarded and, at times, exhausted unifacial stone tools do not preserve the original dimensions of the blank upon which they were created – necessary items for a true test of blank morphology selection – this study presents a set of predictions for inferring whether Clovis unifacial stone tool blanks were selected for the properties of longevity and functional flexibility based on evidence that Clovis people actually capitalized on those properties. Due to the nature of Clovis unifacial stone tools, tool size was of necessity used as a proxy for tool reduction, on the grounds that smaller tools are more likely to have been resharpened than larger tools, at least in the case of unifacial flake tools. The results showed that less resharpened tools possessed flatter, less spherical shapes than the more resharpened tools, which possessed more globular, spherical shapes, suggesting Clovis foragers exploited the retouch potential afforded by the larger, flatter blanks. Edge angles showed no relationship with tool reduction, suggesting that Clovis foragers exploited the functional flexibility afforded by flatter blanks by adjusting the edge angle to be either higher or lower as needed. These results are consistent with the notion that human colonizers, who did not know the abundance or location of stone outcrops prior to settling an unfamiliar territory, not only “geared up” before leaving a stone source, but geared up as efficiently as possible by carefully selecting the blanks they chose to carry. Broader implications for such careful unifacial stone tool blank selection are discussed.