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A blog reviewing recent archaeological publications having to do with Paleolithic archaeology, paleoanthropology, lithic technology, hunter-gatherers and archaeological theory.
Julien Riel-Salvatore
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- May 4, 2010
- 04:17 PM
- 6,087 views
Aterian artifacts at 175,000 BP at Ifri n’Ammar, Morocco
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
The Moroccan Ministry of Culture has a press release (in French) about the cave site of Ifri n’Ammar, about 50km south (i.e., away from the coast) of Nador, indicating that the Moroccan-German team that has been working there for the past seven years has identified Aterian levels dating to about 175,000 BP. If these dates are correct, they push back the age for the earliest Aterian assemblages by some 65,000 year, since to date, the oldest Aterian levels had been identified at the Moroccan sit........ Read more »
Barton, R., Bouzouggar, A., Collcutt, S., Schwenninger, J., & Clark-Balzan, L. (2009) OSL dating of the Aterian levels at Dar es-Soltan I (Rabat, Morocco) and implications for the dispersal of modern Homo sapiens. Quaternary Science Reviews, 28(19-20), 1914-1931. DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.03.010
Shea, J. (2006) The origins of lithic projectile point technology: evidence from Africa, the Levant, and Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science, 33(6), 823-846. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2005.10.015
- May 1, 2011
- 02:30 AM
- 2,874 views
Neanderthal use of coal
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
A little while ago, someone contacted me asking if there was any evidence that Neanderthals had ever used coal. This is an interesting question, and one about which there is only little available information. In fact, there is almost no evidence of Neanderthals using coal, but the proof that does exist is very intriguing. The single instance comes from the Mousterian site of Les Canalettes, ... Read more »
Goldberg, P., & Sherwood, S. (2006) Deciphering human prehistory through the geoarcheological study of cave sediments. Evolutionary Anthropology, 15(1), 20-36. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20094
Roebroeks W, & Villa P. (2011) On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(13), 5209-14. PMID: 21402905
Théry, I., J. Gril, J.L. Vernet, L. Meignen, and J. Maury. (1996) Coal used for Fuel at Two Prehistoric Sites in Southern France: Les Canalettes (Mousterian) and Les Usclades (Mesolithic). Journal of Archaeological Science, 23(4), 509-512. DOI: 10.1006/jasc.1996.0048
- February 24, 2011
- 04:49 AM
- 1,257 views
Neanderthals and ornaments, birds of a feather?
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
© Mauro Cutrona.
M. Peresani and colleagues (2011) report on the discovery of cut-marked bird bones from the latest Mousterian levels at Grotta di Fumane, located in the Veneto region of NE Italy. They interpret the fact that these cutmarks are almost exclusively found on wing bones of only a subset of the 22 species of birds found at Fumane as evidence that Neanderthals there specifically ... Read more »
Henry, A., Brooks, A., & Piperno, D. (2010) Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(2), 486-491. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1016868108
Kuhn, S., & Stiner, M. (2006) What’s a Mother to Do? The Division of Labor among Neandertals and Modern Humans in Eurasia. Current Anthropology, 47(6), 953-981. DOI: 10.1086/507197
Peresani, M., Fiore, I., Gala, M., Romandini, M., & Tagliacozzo, A. (2011) Late Neandertals and the intentional removal of feathers as evidenced from bird bone taphonomy at Fumane Cave 44 ky B.P., Italy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1016212108
VANHAEREN, M., & DERRICO, F. (2006) Aurignacian ethno-linguistic geography of Europe revealed by personal ornaments. Journal of Archaeological Science, 33(8), 1105-1128. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2005.11.017
Zilhao, J., Angelucci, D., Badal-Garcia, E., d'Errico, F., Daniel, F., Dayet, L., Douka, K., Higham, T., Martinez-Sanchez, M., Montes-Bernardez, R.... (2010) Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(3), 1023-1028. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0914088107
- April 7, 2010
- 05:19 PM
- 1,202 views
Another brick in the wall: A Paleolithic stone structure from Theopetra, Greece
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
There's a brief report at Discovery News that provides some detail about an artificial stone structure that appears to have been built at the entrance of Theopetra Cave (Greece) to protect its inhabitants from the elements. That, in and of itself is not news; what is news is the age of the thing: 23,000 years BP, obtained by optically stimulate luminescence (OSL)The structure is a stone wall that blocked two-thirds of the entrance to the Theopetra cave near Kalambaka on the north edge of the The........ Read more »
Rosenberg, Michael. (1990) Stone "Walls" and Paleolithic Tools: The MAC064 Site . Iran, 83-88. info:/
- August 24, 2010
- 01:21 AM
- 1,174 views
Portrait of the artist as a Neanderthal
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
In a recent paper, O. Moro Abadia and M.R. Gonzales Morales (2010) argue that an important component of the 'multiple species model' (MSM) that sees Neanderthals as having essentially 'modern' behavioral capacities and that originated in the late 90's is based not so much on new discoveries as it is on new ways of looking at the archaeological record. Specifically, they make the case that part of... Read more »
MORO ABADÍA, O., & GONZÁLEZ MORALES, M. (2010) REDEFINING NEANDERTHALS AND ART: AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE MULTIPLE SPECIES MODEL FOR THE ORIGIN OF BEHAVIOURAL MODERNITY. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 29(3), 229-243. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0092.2010.00346.x
White, R. (1992) Beyond Art: Toward an Understanding of the Origins of Material Representation in Europe. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21(1), 537-564. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002541
White, R. (2006) The Women of Brassempouy: A Century of Research and Interpretation. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 13(4), 250-303. DOI: 10.1007/s10816-006-9023-z
- March 2, 2011
- 05:05 AM
- 1,161 views
Obsidian blades as surgical tools
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
In my recent post on #hipsterscience, the quote that struck closest to home was the one about the obsidian blade. See, most of my analytical work has been focused on stone tools (aka lithics) and how they were manufactured, used and managed by people in the past. Whenever it was available, obsidian seems to have been one of the preferred materials to make sharp flakes of, mainly because it is ... Read more »
Buck BA. (1982) Ancient technology in contemporary surgery. The Western journal of medicine, 136(3), 265-9. PMID: 7046256
- February 1, 2010
- 05:56 PM
- 1,137 views
Neanderthal toothpicking - 100,000 year-old evidence from Poland
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
There's an interesting newsreport that summarizes a recent paper on the discovery, context and characteristics of three Neanderthal teeth recovered from Stajnia Cave, in southern Poland. Urbanowski et al. (2010) suggest that, on the basis of the associated fauna, which comprises mostly reindeer as well as some red deer, horses and ibex, as well as some cut-marked cave bear bones, the most likely age for these remains falls towards the end of Oxygen Isotope Stage 5, somewhere between 80-100,000BP........ Read more »
Urbanowski, M., Socha, P., Dąbrowski, P., Nowaczewska, W., Sadakierska-Chudy, A., Dobosz, T., Stefaniak, K., & Nadachowski, A. (2010) The first Neanderthal tooth found North of the Carpathian Mountains. Naturwissenschaften. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-010-0646-2
- March 17, 2010
- 05:13 PM
- 1,116 views
Quartz, Cretan handaxes and Paleolithic seafaring
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
A couple of months ago, I posted on the recent discovery of quartz hand axes on Crete by Strasser and Runnels. That post spurred quite a bit of discussion, and I also provided some additional thoughts shortly thereafter, based on the colonization of Cyprus. Since then, we've learned that these implements will be described in detail in the June issues of the journal Hesperia, and some decent photographs of some of the implements in question were published, which provides some more convincing data........ Read more »
Broodbank, C. (2006) The Origins and Early Development of Mediterranean Maritime Activity. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 19(2). DOI: 10.1558//jmea.2006.v19i2.199
- June 18, 2010
- 07:00 PM
- 1,115 views
Heat treating stone for tools: Ethnoarchaeological insights
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
I'm rereading a terrific paper by Kathryn W. Arthur (2010), in which she describes the acquisition and development of stone tool manufacture and maintenance among a group of Konso women in SW Ethiopia (the stone tools they produce they subsequently use in hideworking) . While I'll have much more to say about it in its own right, since I've been doing a bit of thinking about prehistoric heat treating of lithic raw material these past few days, I was struck by this passage:The majority of hidework........ Read more »
Arthur, Kathryn Weedman. (2010) Feminine Knowledge and Skill Reconsidered: Women and Flaked Stone Tools. American Anthropologist, 112(2), 228-243. info:/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01222.x
Brown, K., Marean, C., Herries, A., Jacobs, Z., Tribolo, C., Braun, D., Roberts, D., Meyer, M., & Bernatchez, J. (2009) Fire As an Engineering Tool of Early Modern Humans. Science, 325(5942), 859-862. DOI: 10.1126/science.1175028
- April 26, 2011
- 02:59 PM
- 1,077 views
New 'lion man' fragments from Hohlenstein-Stadel
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
Neat Aurignacian art objects keep popping up in Germany! A few years ago, the Hohle Fels 'Venus' was recovered in deposits dating to more than 30kya (Conard 2009), and now we learn that renewed excavations in the Aurignacian levels of the nearby site of Hohlenstein-Stadel have yielded new fragments of what is perhaps the most iconic piece of Aurignacian portable art, the so-called Löwenmensch, ... Read more »
Conard, N. (2009) A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian of Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany. Nature, 459(7244), 248-252. DOI: 10.1038/nature07995
- August 16, 2010
- 05:32 PM
- 1,054 views
Ape-man the hunter?
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
Well, at least the butcher, if not the tool-maker... McPherron et al. (2010) report the discovery of four bone fragments bearing marks left by stone tools from the the Dikika-55 locality in Ethiopia (dating to between 3.24-3.42 million years BP), a stone's throw from where the juvenile Australopithecus afarensis dubbed Selam was found. This is a pretty monumental discovery, in that it pushes back the evidence for the use of stone tool technology by about 800,000 years, and associates it fairly c........ Read more »
McPherron, S., Alemseged, Z., Marean, C., Wynn, J., Reed, D., Geraads, D., Bobe, R., & Béarat, H. (2010) Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature, 466(7308), 857-860. DOI: 10.1038/nature09248
Semaw S, Renne P, Harris JW, Feibel CS, Bernor RL, Fesseha N, & Mowbray K. (1997) 2.5-million-year-old stone tools from Gona, Ethiopia. Nature, 385(6614), 333-6. PMID: 9002516
Stout D, Quade J, Semaw S, Rogers MJ, & Levin NE. (2005) Raw material selectivity of the earliest stone toolmakers at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. Journal of human evolution, 48(4), 365-80. PMID: 15788183
- May 2, 2011
- 07:32 PM
- 1,040 views
Things to kill when you're original, affluent and social...
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
I have to admit this made me laugh.
© http://www.quickdraw.me/1169
So, it's kind of a silly comic, definitely good for a few chuckles. Yet, when you take a second to think about it, there's a lot packed into it. In two little panels, the cartoonist manages to bring up two of the biggest misconceptions about prheistoric hunter-gatherers: 1) that hunter-gatherers spend only a small amount of ... Read more »
Bird-David, N. (1992) Beyond "The Original Affluent Society": A Culturalist Reformulation. Current Anthropology, 33(1), 25. DOI: 10.1086/204029
Mellars, P. (2005) The impossible coincidence. A single-species model for the origins of modern human behavior in Europe. Evolutionary Anthropology, 14(1), 12-27. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20037
- March 3, 2008
- 02:15 PM
- 1,020 views
Mad Neanderthal Disease?
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
The impact of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE) on Neanderthals is the topic of a short paper by Simon Underdown (2008), in press in Medical Hypotheses. You might be familiar with TSEs already: a few years back, the so-called “Mad Cow Disease” scare was caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. Getting back to the study at hand, the gist of the paper is this: 1) Neanderthals are known to have practiced cannibalism. 2) Cannibalism is known to resul........ Read more »
S UNDERDOWN. (2008) A potential role for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies in Neanderthal extinction. Medical Hypotheses. DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2007.12.014
- March 2, 2011
- 04:14 PM
- 1,006 views
The Combe Capelle burial is Holocene in age
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
So says this Past Horizons report. This is fairly important in that it joins a bunch of other modern Homo sapiens remain long thought to have been associated with the Aurignacian to recently have been directly dated and shown to be much more recent (Churchill and Smith 2000). One recent and well publicized case was that of the Vogelherd remains, which were redated to between 3.9-5kya as opposed ... Read more »
Churchill SE, & Smith FH. (2000) Makers of the early Aurignacian of Europe. American journal of physical anthropology, 61-115. PMID: 11123838
Conard, N., Grootes, P., & Smith, F. (2004) Unexpectedly recent dates for human remains from Vogelherd. Nature, 430(6996), 198-201. DOI: 10.1038/nature02690
- May 4, 2011
- 01:35 AM
- 977 views
Osama bin Laden, sasquatch and human biogeography
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
Science has a post on their website about a little study (Gillespie et al. 2009) that came out a couple of years ago that applied some key biogeographical principles to provide a prediction of where Osama bin Laden might have been hiding. The paper was discussed in Scientific American when if first came out, but now has received a ton of attention because the authors' predicted hiding place for ... Read more »
Banks, W., Zilhão, J., d'Errico, F., Kageyama, M., Sima, A., & Ronchitelli, A. (2009) Investigating links between ecology and bifacial tool types in Western Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36(12), 2853-2867. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2009.09.014
Banks, W., d'Errico, F., Peterson, A., Kageyama, M., Sima, A., & Sánchez-Goñi, M. (2008) Neanderthal Extinction by Competitive Exclusion. PLoS ONE, 3(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003972
Lozier, J., Aniello, P., & Hickerson, M. (2009) Predicting the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America: anything goes with ecological niche modelling. Journal of Biogeography, 36(9), 1623-1627. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02152.x
- May 5, 2011
- 12:59 AM
- 976 views
The raw and the cooked, caveman redux
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
A few months ago, Henry et al. (2011a) published a truly remarkable study that analyzed the phytoliths and starch grains that had gotten encrusted in the dental calculus (i.e., plaque) of three Neanderthal individuals, two from the site of Spy (Belgium), and another from the site of Shanidar (Iraq). Their study provided the first direct evidence that plant foods were an integral part of the ... Read more »
Collins, M., & Copeland, L. (2011) Ancient starch: Cooked or just old?. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1103241108
Henry, A., Brooks, A., & Piperno, D. (2010) Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(2), 486-491. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1016868108
Henry, A., Brooks, A., & Piperno, D. (2011) Reply to Collins and Copeland: Spontaneous gelatinization not supported by evidence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1104199108
- August 20, 2010
- 11:25 PM
- 972 views
Paleolithic whodunnit: Who made the Chatelperronian?
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
The Chatelperronian is a lithic industry that springs up for several thousand years during the transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic industries. Its precise age is debated, but it clearly is associated with this interval. One of the reasons the Chatelperronian is the subject of so much debate is because, since the discovery of a Neanderthal in a Chatelperronian level at the site of
St. ... Read more »
Bar-Yosef, O., & Bordes, J.G. (2010) Who were the makers of the Châtelperronian culture?. Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.06.009
d'Errico, F., Zilhao, J., Julien, M., Baffier, D., & Pelegrin, J. (1998) Neanderthal Acculturation in Western Europe? A Critical Review of the Evidence and Its Interpretation. Current Anthropology, 39(S1). DOI: 10.1086/204689
Mellars, P. (2005) The impossible coincidence. A single-species model for the origins of modern human behavior in Europe. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 14(1), 12-27. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20037
Morin, E., Tsanova, T., Sirakov, N., Rendu, W., Mallye, J., & Lévêque, F. (2005) Bone refits in stratified deposits: testing the chronological grain at Saint-Césaire. Journal of Archaeological Science, 32(7), 1083-1098. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2005.02.009
Riel-Salvatore, J. (2010) A Niche Construction Perspective on the Middle–Upper Paleolithic Transition in Italy. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. DOI: 10.1007/s10816-010-9093-9
- April 10, 2008
- 01:56 PM
- 934 views
A Meat-Eating Neanderthal from Jonzac
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
There is a new isotopic dietary analysis of Neanderthals at the site of Jonzac (Chez Pinaud), in SW France, available in the Journal of Human Evolution (Richards et al., 2008). Here's the abstract:We report here on the isotopic analysis (carbon and nitrogen) of collagen extracted from a Neanderthal tooth and animal bone from the late Mousterian site of Jonzac (Charente-Maritime, France). This study was undertaken to test whether the isotopic evidence indicates that animal protein was the ma........ Read more »
M RICHARDS, G TAYLOR, T STEELE, S MCPHERRON, M SORESSI, J JAUBERT, J ORSCHIEDT, J MALLYE, W RENDU, & J HUBLIN. (2008) Isotopic dietary analysis of a Neanderthal and associated fauna from the site of Jonzac (Charente-Maritime), France. Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.02.007
- April 28, 2011
- 02:25 AM
- 927 views
Stone Age ≠ Caveman!!! Archaeology, science, the media, and some tangential thoughts on the 'gay caveman' story
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
By now, you've surely heard all the media hoopla about the alleged 'gay caveman' found in the Czech Republic that's been all over the news and internet for the past few weeks. Ugh! Y'know, I just got done reading Ben Goldacre's fantastic book Bad Science in which he bemoans (and entertainingly skewers!) the way medical findings are consistently distorted in the media, where flashy headlines seem ... Read more »
Potter, J., & Chuipka, J. (2010) Perimortem mutilation of human remains in an early village in the American Southwest: A case for ethnic violence. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 29(4), 507-523. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaa.2010.08.001
- January 22, 2010
- 03:37 PM
- 923 views
Neanderthal wooden structures, sleeping areas and group size at Abric Romaní
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
Well, what do you know... it looks as though Neanderthals in Mediterranean Spain were up to all sorts of interesting stuff ca. 55-50kya! Hot on the heels of the news that ornaments and coloring materials were found in Mousterian deposits at Cueva Anton and Cueva de los Aviones, we get news that Neanderthals at Abric Romaní (Spain, near Barcelona) appear to have had well defined sleeping areas that bear striking resemblance to those found in rockshelters used by extant hunter-gatherers (Vallverd........ Read more »
Vallverdú, J., Vaquero, M., Cáceres, I., Allué, E., Rosell, J., Saladié, P., Chacón, G., Ollé, A., Canals, A., Sala, R.... (2010) Sleeping Activity Area within the Site Structure of Archaic Human Groups. Current Anthropology, 51(1), 137-145. DOI: 10.1086/649499
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