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A Very Remote Period Indeed
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May 4, 2010
04:17 PM
5,225 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 site of Dar es-Soltan, where they date to as old as 110,000 BP (Barton et al. 2009) . This is significant in and of itself by showing that the Aterian industry may be much longer than had previously been believed. And based on the press release, the Ifri n’Ammar does look very credibly Aterian, whose stone tool technology is generally defined by the presence of distinctive 'tanged' artifacts, especially points:© Moroccan Ministry of Culture. This is also significant because of what the Aterian is usually taken to mean in terms of prehistoric human adaptations. For some, it is associated with some of the earliest evidence for projectile technology, which confers the advantage of allowing prey to be brought down at a distance, hence minimizing the risks of hunting to whoever uses it (e.g., Shea 2006). Other researchers have also argued that some of the bifacial points associated with the Aterian "may be adaptive systems focused on hunting in grassland ecosystems" (Banks et al. 2006: 76, 78). Specifically, these authors have argued that such grassland ecosystems are established in North Africa (where the Aterian is found) beginning with Oxygen Isotope 5e, some 130,000 years ago, while before that bifacial lanceolate points are mostly found clustered much further to the SW. if the ages from Ifri n’Ammar are correct, then, this provides some evidence against a simple link between ecology and the emergence of the Aterian industry.Also of interest is that the Aterian sequence at Ifri n’Ammar is reported to be some 6.3m thick, with much more recent Aterian levels as well. Here, it bears emphasizing that Aterian deposits about 82,000 years old elsewhere in Morocco, have been associated with pierced shells most likely used as personal ornaments, the earliest evidence for that behavior anywhere in the world (as I discussed previously on this blog). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the site has yielded in more recent levels"two Nassarius gibbosulus et Nassarius sp. shells used as ornaments by the Aterians. They are older than 80,000 years BP. Both are similar in size and display identical intentional perforations. Microscopic and mineralogical analyses have revealed wear traces clearly resulting from their having being worn as ornaments, and traces of red ochre with which they had been intentionally covered" (my translation). Pierced Nassarius shells from Ifri n’Ammar. © Moroccan Ministry of Culture. Overall,if the preliminary findings reported in this press release are borne out by future publications, Ifri n’Ammar definitely looks like it offers the potential to greatly refine our understanding of the Aterian and its origins as a whole.References:Banks, William E., Francesco d'Errico, Harold L. Dibble, Leonard Krishtalka, Dixie West, Deborah I. Olszewski, A. Townsend Peterson, David G. Anderson, J. Christopher Gilliam, Anta Montet-White, Michel Crucifix, Curtis W. Marean, María-Fernanda Sánchez-Goñi, Barbara Wohlfarth, and Marian Vanhaeren. 2006. Eco-Cultural Niche Modeling: New Tools for Reconstructing the Geography and Ecology of Past Human Populations. PaleoAnthropology 2006:68-83Barton, 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.2009.03.010Shea, 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... 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
2,067 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

April 7, 2010
05:19 PM
1,000 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 Thessalian plain. It was constructed 23,000 years ago, probably as a barrier to cold winds.“An optical dating test, known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence, was applied on quartz grains nested within the stones. We dated four different samples from the sediment and soil materials, and all provided identical dates,” Nikolaos Zacharias, director of the laboratory of archaeometry at the University of Peloponnese, told Discovery News. This is definitely cool, as there are not very many such structures known from the Paleolithic. One possible, though somewhat shaky, comparable example is that of "two low, roughly linear wall-like piles of cobbles, each about 50m long [that] border a portion of the scatter" of the scatter of mostly Upper Paleolithic stone tools recovered at site MAC064, Iran (Rosenberg 1984:83). I was surprised, though, that the report refers to the Theopetra structure as the oldest 'man-made' (sic) structure. This is because I can think of at least one other stone structure, at Ucagizli Cave in Turkey (Kuhn et al 2003: 114-116 - available as a free pdf here), that dates to slightly older than ca. 30,000 BP. Here's what it looks like:And though it appears at first glance to be perhaps less impressive than the Theopetra wall (though the picture in the DN report is a bit unclear as to what the exact boundaries of the wall are), Kuhn et al. (2003: 114) describe the Ucagizli wall as a feature consisting "of a single arched course of limestone blocks, each 20-40cm in length. The blocks form a 'wall' running roughly parallel to the back wall of the cave at a distance of 1.5 to 2m from it. The alignment is clearly artifical: it corresponds with neither the cave's dripline nor any obvious fault or crack in the roof , and there were no blocks of comparable size in the surrounding sediments. Moreover, several of the blocks were set on edge rather than resting on their broad face." By analogy to ethnographic observations, they interpret it as most likely demarcating the edges of "a bedding area in the back of the cave."So yes, the Theopetra wall is old, but not necessarily the oldest evidence of an artificial stone structure that we have for the Upper Paleolithic. In any case, it'll be very interesting to see what other material is associated with this wall at Theopetra, to see whether or not its interpretation as a windbreak is borne out. As I've discussed before with the case of La Folie, the correlation between features and other aspects of the archaeological record is critical in inferring their ultimate function.ReferencesKuhn, S. L., Stiner, M. C., Kerry, K. W., and Güleç, E. 2003. The early Upper Paleolithic at Üçağızlı Cave (Hatay, Turkey): preliminary results. In Goring-Morris, N., and Belfer-Cohen, A. (eds.) More Than Meets the Eye: Studies on Upper Palaeolithic Diversity in the Near East, Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 106-117. Rosenberg, Michael (1990). Stone "Walls" and Paleolithic Tools: The MAC064 Site Iran, 28, 83-88... Read more »

Rosenberg, Michael. (1990) Stone "Walls" and Paleolithic Tools: The MAC064 Site . Iran, 83-88. info:/

February 1, 2010
05:56 PM
945 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, which doesn't contradict the results of an infinite AMS radiocarbon date of 49,000BP. The report mentions three teeth, all of which are described has displaying a majority of features usually found in Neanderthal teeth, but only one (S5000) is described in detail in the paper. The supplementary evidence provided with the paper on the Naturwissenschaften web page provides solid information on the provenience of the teeth and their association with Micoquian stone tool assemblages.This find is significant for a number of reasons, the first being that it represents the first set of hominin remains north of the Carpathians in Eastern Europe. Previously, while many Mousterian assemblages had been found in Poland, no human fossils had been associated with any of them.Second, S5000, a permanent upper second molar, shows a degree of abrasion that, when the potentially faster Neanderthal enamel formation rate is factored in, suggests an age at death estimate of ca. 20 years or maybe a tad older for this individual. What DNA they were able to collect from the sample also indicates that the individual was a male, although it was too fragmentary to definitely establish that it similar to other Neanderthal mtDNA patterns.Third, S5000 bears a "mesial interproximal groove" similar to that found on many other Neanderthal posterior teeth. The authors report that the morphology of the groove "was probably made by thin, stiff and hard objects used as toothpicks" (Urbanowski et al. 2010: 4). Long-time readers of AVRPI may remember a post I wrote on the discovery of two Neanderthal molars at Pinilla del Valle, Spain that also bore groove indicative of habitual toothpicking. Now, as I argued then, there is strong evidence that toothpicking may go back as far as 1.8 million years BP, based on the presence of a similar groove on the Omo L 894-1 RP3 specimen (Hlusko 2003). Further, and perhaps more interesting with regards to Neanderthals, Agger et al. (2004) pointed out that the reason people toothpick is that the teeth and gum are very sensitive to small irritants that get lodged between them mainly because the nerves critically important to the fine lingual control necessary for speech are located just below them. Thus, evidence of toothpicking in Neanderthals may represent circumstantial evidence of their capacity for speech.Beyond this, the study is also interesting in that it briefly mentions the presence of tools and Levallois products made on "high quality flint form the southern part of the Polish Jura" (Urbanowski et al. 2010:2), which is interesting since the cave also apparently yielded "dozens of flint nodules" collected up to 12km away from the cave. This strongly suggests that raw material stockpiling was going on at the site, and that the site was used for prolonged periods of time, as suggested also by the density of artifacts recovered. Likewise, the presence of exotic, high quality raw material reinforces what is known about Neanderthal long-distance lithic raw material procurement patterns at certain sites. Unfortunately, not enough information is presented in the paper to assess the proportional importance of this behavior. Finally, and very intriguingly, the supplementary information to the paper underscores that bone technology might have been important for the occupants of Stajnia Cave, which is rarely associated with Neanderthals."The bone artefacts are now under taphonomical study, which reinforces the preliminary impression about the great importance of bone working in the Stajnia LMP assemblage. Numerous cut-marks have been revealed along with rich traces of reindeer antler processing." Urbanowski et al. 2010: Supp. 6)Again, however, this is mentioned, with no additional provided, which forces one to take this with due caution until more thorough analyses are published. That said, both in terms of human paleontology and archaeology, this new site is yielding very important information that, it seems, will be very important in understanding Neanderthals and their behavior at the northern edge of their range.ReferencesAgger, W. A., T. L. McAndrews, and J. A. Hlaudy. 2004. On Toothpicking in Early Hominids. Current Anthropology 45:403-404.Hlusko, L. J. 2003. The Oldest Hominid Habit? Experimental Evidence for Toothpicking with Grass Stalks. Current Anthropology 44: 738-741.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... 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

June 18, 2010
07:00 PM
927 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 hideworkers using chalcedony and milkyquartz begin production by heat treating the raw material tomake it more brittle for reduction. The hideworker placesthe raw material on top of a broken piece of pottery withan insulator such as leaves, domesticated animal hair, wool,cotton, or additional pottery sherds in a pit under her hearth.There she leaves the stone for as little as 12 hours and up to three months. Once she “cooks” the stone, she then letsit cool for at least one day. Konso women knappers usedifferent heat-treating methods based on the size, type, andquality of the raw material to increase the flakeability of thestone. (Arthur 2010: 234, emphasis added)If this account is at all a reflection of what went on in prehistory, this is a huge span of time during which material is exposed to heat. And this observation got me to thinking about the recent study by Brown et al. (2009), where they determined that Middle Stone Age hominins in southenr Africa by 72,000 years BP at the site of Pinnacle Point 5-6 (and maybe as far back as 164ky BP in the area as a whole), used 'pyrotechnology' to alter the properties of locally obtained silcrete to make it easier to work, notably to produce fine bifacial points. Brown et al.'s study is especially noteworthy in that they propose what are, to my knowledge, the first set of objective criteria that can be used to both identify heat treatment as well as to quantitatively assess how much more 'flakable' stone becomes after heat treatment. These include thermoluminescence, archaeomagnetism, and gloss/reflectance. This in itself is a big step forward for future studies of heat treatment as they set a new level of analytical rigor that now has to be matched by future studies interested in demonstrating that heat treating took place in the past. It also establishes the need for experimental protocols in such efforts.Going back to the Arthur (2010) paper, though, I was struck by this section of the supplementary material provided for their study by Brown et al. (2009), in which they discuss their experimental protocol to replicate the effect of heat treating on silcrete:Two methods were employed to heat treat experimental silcrete samples. In the first, we placed raw material and a thermocouple probe (type K) within a sand bath approximately 2-3 cm below the surface. A fire was then built over the sand containing the silcrete. The temperature of the silcrete was slowly built up to ~350º C over a period of approximately 5 hours and then gradually cooled to ~40º C (usually overnight) before the blanks were removed from the sand. Temperature was monitored and recorded using a J-Kem HHM-40 handheld temperature meter and data logger. Fires required approximately 20 kg of dried hardwood per 3 kg of stone. In the second method, we heated samples in a Gallenkamp muffle furnace fitted with an external J-Kem programmable temperature controller (Model 360/Timer-K). The controller was programmed to slowly ramp the temperature of the furnace to 350º C over 5 hours. This temperature was held constant for 12 hours and then dropped slowly to 40º C before removal of the blanks. (Brown et al. 2010: S2-3)Now, this is clearly a different setting under which to heat material. Further, Arthur's ethnoarchaeological observations don't indicate how hot is the fire that lithic nodules are exposed to, not whether or not the 12 hours is more frequent than the three months she mentions as one extreme of the spectrum of heating duration. She also doesn't describe how much better the stone was after heating, or after different lengths of exposure to heat, and the raw materials being heated in both studies are also very different. These factors mean that it's not possible to directly assess the comparability of the Konso observations to those from the MSA at Pinnacle Point. However, if they are at all comparable, it does suggest that the lengths of time employed in Brown et al.'s replicative work woulf fall at the lower end of the durations for which lithic raw material must be heated to acquire better properties.Why does this matter? It matters because it has important implications for how long fires must have kept going in the past for heat treating to be effective. This, in turn, has implications for how much fuel must have been available for heat treatment to be a feasible undertaking. Perhaps most importantly, it also has implications about the labor that must have gone into tending these fires to make sure they didn't go out. If stone was heated continuously for, say, 24 or 48 hours, it implies that someone must have remained relatively close to that hearth for that duration, which imposes some limitations about how mobile that person (or those persons) might have been. If, as Arthur (2010) argues, women may have been in charge of some aspects of lithic production such as heat treating, it implies that males and females may have had different economic roles going back quite a ways in the Late Pleistocene, a topic we've discussed at AVRPI before.References:Arthur, Kathryn Weedman (2010). Feminine Knowledge and Skill Reconsidered: Women and Flaked Stone Tools American Anthropologist, 112 (2), 228-243 : 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01222.xBrown, 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... 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

August 24, 2010
01:21 AM
916 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

Anthropology

March 3, 2008
02:15 PM
912 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 result in TSEs in certain cases. 3) In at least one Homo sapiens hunter-gatherer group (in this case the Fore of New Guinea), the relationship between cannibalism and some kind of fatal degenerative neurological disease has been credibly established (the 'Kuru' epidemic'; Farquhar and Gadjusek 1981). 4) Therefore, it is possible that TSEs transmitted through cannibalism and handling dead Neanderthal tissue contributed to the ‘extinction’ Neanderthals, to wit: “… a silent killer in the form of TSEs could have massively weakened the Neanderthal’s ability to compete both within a highly changeable environment and latterly against a highly adaptable new arrival in the form of Homo sapiens” (Underdown in press: p.3). The paper itself does a much better job of contextualizing this conclusion than headlines related to the diffusion of this study such as “Cannibalism wiped out Neanderthals” which is overly sensationalistic on top of fostering the curious image of Neanderthals eating one another into oblivion (which would certainly put a new spin on the old ‘competition with moderns over animal resources’!). And, while it is nearly impossible to conclusively disprove many paleoanthropological hypotheses, it is certainly possible to evaluate their plausibility, and the case for TSEs as a, errr, vector in Neanderthal extinction is improbable. First, the use of the Fore as the single analog is problematic on several levels: they are horticulturalists, a poor analog for highly mobile hunter-gatherers; the kuru epidemic on which Underdown’s scenario depends unfolded over a span of only decades whereas he postulates that TSEs would’ve plagued Neanderthals for millennia; and, importantly, the Fore live at population densities (about 21/km2), orders of magnitude greater than those likely to have characterized, and certainly those proposed for them by Underdown (ca. 0.06-0.1/km2). Second, the ‘Kuru Model’ is based on one case of a TSE decimating a single population. That is to say, not all cannibalism needs to result (or have resulted) in the development and rapid transmission of TSEs among its practitioners. This is a problem of extrapolating from one documented case among modern humans (ironically enough) to the entirety of Neanderthal groups. This is a common logical flaw whereby Neanderthals are not considered as comprising a multitude of groups of hunter-gatherers spread over a vast range and likely relatively well adapted to their local conditions. Neanderthals (or any fossil human species, for that matter) are not just a species of extinct hominins; that label refers to biologically similar hominins spread far and wide across Eurasia and whose primary adaptations to their environment were behavioral in nature. Think of it this way: do all Homo sapiens behave exactly the same across the world today? No, and neither did they in the past. This is why there is so much debate over how to satisfactorily define “behavioral modernity” and why we can’t just talk about modern humans acting in one way. The same was very likely true for Neanderthals. Third, the two best-publicized cases of Neanderthal cannibalism (i.e., Krapina, and Moula-Guercy) go back to 100-80 kya at the most recent. There is, as far as I know, little in the way of strong evidence for widespread Neanderthal cannibalism after that; although clear anthropic modifications of Neanderthal remains have been documented at later sites, such as El Sidrón (Rosas et al. 2006), the case for cannibalism there has not been demonstrated since these have not been shown to be similar to those found on other animal remains at the site. Thus, there is little evidence that cannibalism was a widespread Neanderthal behavior around for the 50 ky that led up to their disappearance from the Eurasian fossil record. Interestingly, there is also some very suggestive evidence that Mousterian sites increased in density over the course of that time period (e.g., van Andel et al. 2003), as opposed to steadily decreasing in numbers as implied by the Underdown’s TSE model. Fourth, there is clear evidence of perimortem processing of Homo sapiens remains with stone tools is also reported from the Aurignacian deposits of Brassempouy, Isturitz, Tarté and La Combe, where human teeth were forcefully removed from their gums and pierced to be transformed into ornaments (White et al. 2003), and in the Middle Stone Age deposits of Herto, where human skulls bear unambiguous traces of defleshing (Clark et al. 2003). Given that Underdown (in press: p. 3) states that TSEs can well have been transmitted “through cuts caused by stone tools used by infected and non-infected individuals,” shouldn’t we therefore also assume that TSEs would have been a major concern for modern humans as well? Overall, then, while TSEs might well have been a problem for some groups of Neanderthals and some groups of Homo sapiens, there is no reason to assume that it was an especially important factor leading to the disappearance of Neanderthals as a distinct fossil hominin in the paleoanthropological record. I will say this, however: theoretically at least, Underdown’s scenario has the merit of having the potential to be tested empirically and independently through genetic studies. In that sense, it is a move forward in paleoanthropology.References: Clark, J.D., Y. Beyene, G. WoldeGabriel, W.K. Hart, P.R. Renne, H. Gilbert, A. Defleur, G. Suwa, S. Katoh, K.R. Ludwig, J.-R. Boisserie, B. Asfaw and T.D. White, 2003. Stratigraphic, chronological and behavioural contexts of Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature 423:747–752.Farquhar, J., and D. Carleton Gajdusek. 1981. Kuru. Early Letters and Field-Notes from the Collection of D. Carleton Gajdusek. New York, Raven Press.Rosas A, Martínez-Maza C, Bastir M, García-Tabernero A, Lalueza-Fox C, Huguet R, Ortiz JE, Julià R, Soler V, de Torres T, Martínez E, Cañaveras JC, Sánchez-Moral S, Cuezva S, Lario J, Santamaría D, de la Rasilla M, and Fortea J.2006. Paleobiology and comparative morphology of a late Neandertal sample from El Sidron, Asturias, Spain. PNAS 103:19266-19271.UNDERDOWN, S. (2008). A potential role for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies in Neanderthal extinction. Medical Hypotheses DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2007.12.014van Andel, T. H., W. Davies, and B. Wenninger. 2003. The human presence in Europe during the last Glacial Period I: Human migrations and the changing climate. In Neanderthals and Modern Humans in the European Landscape during the Last Glaciation, pp. 31-56. McDonald Institute of Archaeology, Cambridge, UK.White, R. W., D. Henry-Gambier and C. Normand. 2003. Human-tooth ornaments from the French early Aurignacian: implications for early Upper Paleolithic treatment of the dead. Paper presented at the 2003 Annual Meetings of the Paleoanthropology Society, Tempe, Arizona.... 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

Anthropology

February 24, 2011
04:49 AM
909 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

Anthropology

March 17, 2010
05:13 PM
906 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 to sink your teeth into. Spurred by a paper I recently read (Broodbank 2006 - free pdf here), I figured I'd post my last impressions on this discovery until the paper actually comes out.First, here's what one of those handaxes looks like (views from the front, two sides and back of the piece):http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16archeo.htmlMore photographs are also available in a nice slideshow provided by Boston University press release, and they give you an idea of the size of the handaxes and of how they might have been handled. The thing with quartz, however, is that it's very hard to see flaking landmarks on photographs. For what it's worth, I still think that at least that handaxe looks very rough in craftsmanship (e.g., uneven thinning, apparently no basal thinning, very sinuous edges). Although that's not too unusual for pieces on quartz, I really hope that this one's not their best looking one!To summarize the debate a bit, Strasser, Runnels and company have found these quartz implements whose morphology is reminiscent of that of handaxes in deposits dating to ca. 130,000 years BP on Crete. This is significant because Crete appears to have remained an island detached from the European mainland for most of the Pleistocene, which implies any tool maker on the island must have originally arrived there through some form of seafaring.The record of Lower Paleolithic finds on Mediterranean islands is largely unconvincing. As Broodbank (2006:204) states:"Claims of Lower and MiddlePalaeolithic finds on the islands divide, asMussi (2001: 86) notes, into those that arereliably documented but derive from locationsthat were not insular at the time (suchas Capri [Mussi 2001: 86]), and those foundon definite palaeo-islands but that are contentiousin terms of their identification asartefacts rather than geofacts, or whose datingis uncertain, due to either the low diagnosticityof the material itself, or the lack of ascientifically dated context. A few cases, suchas a possible Lower Palaeolithic find fromCorfu (Kourtessi-Philippaki 1999: 283-84; cf.Runnels 1995: 235 n. 48), fit both categories.Where such claims have been subjected to rigorousanalysis, including re-examination of thematerial and findspot, the conclusions havetended to be negative."Perhaps not insignificantly, one of the authors Broodbank cites as urging caution about accepting some of these early find uncritically is C. Runnels, who's one of the discoverers of the Cretan handaxes. Given their age, however, these implements are not really relevant to the question of a Lower Paleolithic settlement of Crete. However, they are very relevant to the question of Middle Paleolithic settlement of those landmasses. On this topic, Broodbank (2006:204-205) proposes that:"Slightly more convincing, and thereforeintriguing, are a handful of findspots of probableMiddle Palaeolithic stone tools fromseveral of the smaller Greek islands, notablyin the Sporades (Efstratiou 1985: 5-6, 56-59)and Ionian islands (Dousougli 1999; Kavvadias1984; Kourtessi-Philliapaki 1999), butpotentially also on Melos in the Cyclades(Chelidonio 2001). In the first and secondcases, the findspots lie close to foci of MiddlePalaeolithic activity in, respectively, Thessaly,and Epirus/Albania/Dalmatia (Runnels1995: 238-39; Runnels et al. 2004). In mostinstances—probably all of the Sporades, savethe perhaps erroneous case of Skyros, forwhich the only report is a newspaper articlewritten almost half a century ago (Cherry1981: 44), plus Corfu and Lefkas in the Ioniangroup—the islands concerned were almostcertainly joined to the mainland at the lowersea levels that existed after the last interglacial(Oxygen Isotope Stage 5e, dated to 128-118,000 years ago). More interesting is thecase of Kephallonia (and probably conjoinedZakynthos [Kourtessi-Phillipaki 1999: 284-86]), where the tools, albeit not associatedwith dated contexts, do seem bona fide, andthe island, although in a fault zone subjectto massive vertical movement, is likely onbathymetric grounds to have been separatedfrom the mainland by one or more gaps of afew kilometres (less than the 20 km reportedin Cherry 1990: 171). Still more surprising, butunsupported by detailed study of material andcontext, or independent dating, are the findsfrom Melos, which would have been attainableonly via a chain of inter-island links, includingsea-crossings in the order of 10 km at averageMiddle Palaeolithic sea level stands."There therefore seems to be some prior evidence of potential evidence of a Middle Paleolithic on some of the Greek islands, albeit somewhat debatable and mostly found on islands relatively close to the mainland. That being the case, it may be that, if the Cretan material is shown to be unambiguous, it represents one more instance of fleeting island hopping. No matter, how fleeting, however, this behavior has profound implications for the behavior of the hominins (most likely Neanderthals) who engaged in it."Could it be thatthe markedly indented coastline and mass ofoffshore islands in the Ionian and Aegean seastriggered a slight ‘stretching’ of behaviour?Visits to the nearby Ionian islands from thelarge base camps identified on the oppositemainland are certainly compatible with whatwe know of Neanderthal short-range mobility(Gamble 1999: 239-43, 266), and also withsome simple propelled floating technique, butvisits as far afield as Melos are less so inboth respects. The potential implications forthe earliest Mediterranean maritime activityand, equally, for Neanderthal cognitive andlearning abilities (Stringer and Gamble 1993;Mithen 2005), are therefore quite substantial.A thorough investigation of the Kephallonianand Melian finds, combined with scientificdating of their contexts, is clearly essential.(Broodbank 2006:205)"This echoes (and explains!) a lot of the press coverage that's been focused on these finds, and clearly underscores the potential significance of these stone tools. With that in mind, then, the Hesperia paper will need to clearly do the following in order for the finds to be considered credible:Provide some radiometric ages of the deposits in which the tools were found;Explain how the tools ended up in these deposits (i.e., are they in primary or secondary context? If secondary, where was the primary context?);Discuss why quartz seems to have been the raw material of choice when there are other sources of better quality workable stone on the island, which were exploited by later occupants;Present some information on the production sequences of these implements showing patterned human action;Distinguish this material from later (i.e., post-agricultural) occurrences of 'rough' stone tools made on coarse-grained raw materials; and Explain why a Middle Paleolithic industry should be comprised predominantly of Lower Paleolithic type implements (unless, of course, the handaxes got all the glory in the press reports and there actually is more to this assemblage).Personally, I'd be very excited if these turned out to be credible, as it would provide further evidence of the flexibility of Middle Paleolithic hominins and force us to rethink how they engaged with their larger ecological realities. Also, it'd probably spur some new research on Paleolithic-age deposits in Mediterranean islands. This last point would be especially important, in my view, becau... 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

March 2, 2011
05:05 AM
863 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

April 10, 2008
01:56 PM
846 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 main source of dietary protein for this relatively late Neanderthal, as suggested by previous studies. This was of particular interest here because this is the first isotopic study of a relatively late Neanderthal associated with Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA, dating to approximately 55,000 to 40,000 BP) technology. We found that the Jonzac Neanderthal had isotopic values consistent with a diet in which the main protein sources were large herbivores, particularly bovids and horses. We also found evidence of different dietary niches between the Neanderthal and a hyena at the site, with the hyena consuming mainly reindeer.This is a good, empirically strong study with many comparative data points drawn from associated faunal remains, and the conclusions are robust. It is also original in its use of collagen extracted from tooth dentine as opposed to bone, the latter being the material on which all previous isotopic studies of diet have been done. This is important because:"Unlike bone, tooth dentine likely does not alterover a lifetime, and therefore it reflects a specific period oftime of formation. Therefore, the isotopic data from this Neanderthalpremolar do not reflect the lifetime average, but insteadthe diet at the ages of later childhood/early adolescence.Our isotopic results for the Jonzac Neanderthal are comparedto the those reported for other European Neanderthalsin Table 3. The isotopic values are remarkably similar for allof the Neanderthals, and in all cases, the authors of the variousstudies concluded, as we have for Jonzac, that the main sourceof dietary protein was animal protein, likely from large herbivores.In no case do we see isotopic evidence for the significantconsumption of aquatic (marine or freshwater) protein,as has been observed from Gravettian humans in Europe (Richardset al., 2001; Pettitt et al., 2003). The results of our isotopicstudy of the Jonzac Neanderthal therefore support theemerging picture from isotopic studies that Neanderthalshave a similar dietary adaptation over a wide range of environmentsand over a relatively long period of time." (Richards et al. 2008: 6)This is interesting because it directly implies that, at Jonzac, a Neanderthal juvenile had a diet similar to that documented in adult Neanderthals elsewhere. This has concomitant implications for how animal food might have been shared within Neanderthal groups, suggesting that even relatively young individual had access to a relatively high quality diet.Another interesting conclusion of this study is that hyenas and hominins preferentially targeted different herbivore taxa, with humans mainly going after bovids and horses and hyenas targeting reindeer. This might represent evidence for niche partitioning, that is, the concentration on different segments of a given niche by organisms that are in competition for it. In this case, the competition would have been between carnivorous species, and the partition would be reflect by the selective exploitation of different animal species within the high-return large herbivore niche. This, however, is based on the isotopic signature of a single hyena bone from a different layer than that where the Neanderthal tooth was recovered and compared to averaged isotopic signature of herbivores from two layers, so we need to be cautious to draw firm conclusions on the basis of this evidence alone.Overall, though, it does seem that the Neanderthal at Jonzac had a childhood protein intake heavily dominated by the meat of large herbivores. A few comments, however: the Vindija remains are more recent by several millennia than the Jonzac tooth, so the observation that some comparatively late Neanderthals hunted lots of large herbivores is not completely unprecedented (Richards et al. 2000). Also, while this study provides one more isotopic data point on Neanderthal diets, the fact remains that we still have no such studies from Neanderthals from the southern part of their range, nor from coastal settings. I suspect that such results might alter the picture we have of Neanderthal animal procurement. Even if they don't, however, it is important to remember that"dietary contributions from fat cannot be evaluated by isotope analysisof collagen and so carbon and nitrogen isotopestudies can only reconstruct the likely proportions ofdifferent species that made up the protein componentof their diets, which is unlikely to have comprisedmore than about 40% of their diet by energy and possiblyonly 25% of the diet overall (Cordain et al 2002)."(Pearson 2007: 6).Thus, while the results of isotopic dietary analyses of Neanderthals are uniquely informative, it is important to remember that they only provide data pertaining to one part of their diet. Thus, to assume that Neanderthals ate only meat because they appear to have drawn most of their protein from large herbivore is 'jumping the evidential gun'. Given that Neanderthals were top-ranked hunters living at relatively low population densities, it would have made little sense for them not to target the highest-ranked animal resources in their ecosystem as their main source of meat. And this behavior is exactly what isotopic studies have been demonstrating so far. As for the rest of the the Neanderthal diet, various lines of evidence - including a wonderful paper by Henry and Piperno (2008) presented at the Paleoanthropology Society meetings two weeks ago - are beginning to clearly show that Neanderthals also appear to have made extensive use of plant resources whenever they had access to them. Unfortunately, this is effectively invisible from an isotopic standpoint.References:Henry, A., Piperno, D. 2008. Plants in Neandertal diet: Plant microfossil evidence from the dental calculus of Shanidar III. Paper presented on March 26, at the 2008 Annual Meetings of the Paleoanthropology Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada.Pearson, J. A. 2007. Hunters, fishers and scavengers: a review of the isotope evidence for Neanderthal diet. Before Farming 2007/2-2.Richards,M.P., Pettitt, P.B., Trinkaus, E., Smith, F.H., Karavanic´, I.,Paunovic´,M.,2000. Neanderthal diet at Vindija and Neanderthal predation: the evidencefrom stable isotopes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 97: 7663-7666.RICHARDS, M., TAYLOR, G., STEELE, T., MCPHERRON, S., SORESSI, M., JAUBERT, J., ORSCHIEDT, J., MALLYE, J., RENDU, W., HUBLIN, J. (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... 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

Anthropology

August 16, 2010
05:32 PM
804 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 convincingly with A. afarensis (or, at least, as convincingly as can be done for those time frames). John Hawks and Greg Laden have interesting posts on some of the more salient aspects of the paper, which you should read if you're interested in this.In a nutshell, McPherron and colleagues analyzed the bones using secondary electron imaging (SEI) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) to establish that the marks were, in fact, made in deep time before the bones fossilized. Having determined this, they then examined the morphology of the marks on the bone using ESEM (environmental scanning electron microscopy) and optical microscopes to establish that it was most similar to those of experimentally replicated marks made with stone tools used to cut flesh off a bone and crack bones open. I've looked at my share of cut marks over the years, and like Greg, I also agree with the authors that the DIK-55 cut marks look like marks made by stone tools. You'd have to never have looked at cut marks to argue with a straight face that the marks on the DIK-55 specimens look more like croc tooth marks than cut marks.Given that the marks really seem to be genuine stone tool cut and percussion marks, the question then becomes one of establishing the age of the mark-bearing bones. As Hawks underlines, we're dealing with only four bones here, out of an unspecified total sample. So, we don't really know how common they were at DIK-55, since they do not meet the criteria usually used for collection - basically, they were collected because field observations suggested they might bear cut marks. And as Laden mentions, it'd be better if the bones in question had been collected in primary context, as opposed to from the surface next to their associated depositional context. This is important because there's always the possibility that they might have washed in or been somehow transported from another, potentially younger locality. That said, based on the absence of adhering sediment and the location of the specimens, their most likely provenience is from a sandy formation with a minimum age of 3.24 million years and a maximum age of 3.42 million years. The sample size issue is an interesting one to consider, but really, in this case the noteworthy feature of these bones is that they bear unambiguous traces of modification with stone tools, so their proportional importance is somewhat secondary.OK, so, we have bones bearing marks made by stone tools that are older by some 800ky than the earliest known stone tool assemblages, which date to about 2.6-2.5mya (Semaw et al. 1997). What does it mean? Well, the most obvious conclusion is that the use of stone tools must be quite a bit older than has generally been assumed, and since A. afarensis is the only hominin associated with deposits that age in the region, they are the best candidates for having used them.Here's the rub, though: there are no stone tools at DIK-55. Furthermore, the closest source of rocks that could have been used as stone tools is about 6km away. What does that mean? It means that, if A. afarensis really did use stone implements to process these remains, they must have brought them from a little ways away. That, in and of itself, is not earth shattering an observation. Sea otters, for instance, are known to carry rocks in skin folds next to their forepaws to use them in area where clams, crabs and abalones are present but rocks aren't. In that sense, the DIK-55 provide evidence for some basic planing depth, though not much more than in some other tool-using animals.The big question relating to the stone tools here is whether A. afarensis made some or opportunistically used naturally occurring sharp pieces of stone. McPherron et al. (2010) remain agnostic on that one, as well they should given that they've already rocked the boat enough with this discovery and speculating would undermine their case. I also remain undecided on the issue, though I will say that there could be a case for the evidence presented in the paper to indicate that A. afarensis manufactured stone tools. This is based on two lines of observation: 1) there are no large rocks at DIK-55, the largest rocks found there being about 8mm in maximum size; and 2) the bones described in the paper bear both cut marks and percussion marks. Now, cut marks need to be made with a sharp stone edge, something like a flake, or a cobble with at least one flake knocked off. In contrast, percussion marks are made by blunt objects, usually a hammerstone similar to those used to knock flakes off of cobbles or cores. This distinction is usually not given much thought in discussion of human agency on bones because, by and large, if humans have flakes, they have a hammerstone to knap them off with. In fact, even at Gona, the earliest known stone tool assemblage, hammerstones, cores and flakes co-occur (Semaw et al. 1997; Stout et al. 2005).In this case, however, the distinction is noteworthy because it implies that at least two different implements were brought in to DIK-55 to process the tools. Remember that there are no stones larges than 8mm at this locality, and try as it might, not even a Floresian hobbit would be able to use such small pebbles as tools with much success. It also means that there could be no 'crime of opportunity' in which an australopith just picked up a large rock that was just lying there to smash open a bone. In short, it means that both a blunt stone object (i.e., a hammerstone) and a sharp one must have been transported to DIK-55. Granted, it might simply be that hominins were carrying both unmodified cobbles and naturally occurring sharp pieces of stone with them. But if you understand that whacking a bone with a hammerstone will break it open (and create sharp edges on the bone as a result) and that sharp objects can be helpful in slicing meat off a bone, a parsimonious explanation might be that your lithic technological behavior includes the use of hammerstone to produce stone flakes. This would also make sense from the perspective of lithic technology where percussors and flakes are part of even the simplest toolkits.Granted, this last bit is speculative, but what is certain is that people will be looking at 3.4-2.6mya deposits with renewed interest and attention in the coming years. What comes out of these investigation should allow us to flesh out the range of possible scenarios brought up by this new discovery from Dikika, which is proving to be an immensely rewarding area from a paleoanthropological standpoint.References: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: ... 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

Anthropology

January 22, 2010
03:37 PM
783 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 (Vallverdú et al. 2010). But wait, there's more! The evidence reported by Vallverdú et al. (2010) also includes the impression of a ca. 5m-long worked wooden post (see image below) likely used as part of some kind of ephemeral wooden structure like a lean-to or a hut/tent pole. And as if that wasn't enough, an analysis of the hearths and occupied area suggests that level N (dated to ca. 55kya by U series) formed as the result of repeated occupations by small groups of 8-10 hominids who used the for brief periods of time, one of the first empirically derived for Neanderthal group size.From Vallverdú et al. (2010:141) - color image available from the online edition of Current Anthropology.There's a lot to digest in that preliminary report. First, the sleeping areas. This is important since it relates to the structured use of space, which is often argued to be something that differentiates modern humans from Neanderthals. Of course, the recent paper on Lower Paleolithic spatial organization at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel has done a lot to dispel that preconception lately, but it's still framing how many researchers conceptualize Neanderthals. The Romaní investigators identified 19 hearths in Level N (you can see them as the dark patches in the picture above), and identified that they were arranged in three distinct areas within the rockshelter: inner (closest to the backwall), frontal (around the largest travertine accumulations), and frontal (in the center of the shelter). An analysis of the hearths indicates that they were used repeatedly in a smouldering manner for brief periods of time. As well, the distance between the hearth and the distance between the hearths and the backwall in the inner zone all combine to "suggest that this space represents a sleeping-and-resting area in the Romaní record (Vallverdú et al. 2010:142). As the authors emphasize, there is a small but growing number of studies that have documented similar types of spatial organization at other Middle Paleolithic sites, including notably Tor Faraj, Jordan (Henry et al. 2004). These all suggest that Neanderthals were able to segregate their activities as well as to use the thermal characteristics of shallow hearths and rockshelter morphology to create comfortable sleeping areas, including at sites like Abric Romaní that faces N/NE and would not have mostly shaded and humid without such effective accommodations.The wooden pole that the authors describe was identified on the basis of its impression in travertine deposits (see part b of the picture above which also shows what appears to be the pattern created by bark on the impression). "The travertine wood imprint measures 510cm in length and 6cm in width at one end and 3cm at the other. It has a rectilinear form, an absence of branches, and it ir fragmented, indicating probably that this piece of wood was subject to human modifications" (Vallverdú et al. 2010:140). Its position at the edge of the inner zone which is where evidence for a sleeping area was identified suggest to the authors that it was part of some sort of larger structure, maybe "a simple triangular structure leaning against the wall' (Vallverdú et al. 2010:143). Here, I'll simply point out that there is evidence for wooden structures at other Middle Paleolithic (and by extension Neanderthal) sites in Europe, including notably at the site of La Folie, France (which I discussed at length in another post), and which dates to ca. 57.2kya, roughly the same age as Level N at Abric Romaní.The aspect of the paper which I thought was especially thought-provoking concerns the estimation of Neanderthal group size. Based on the size of the inner zone, the authors "assume that a density of individuals using 1.5-2m2 each or a group of 8-10 hominids could occupy this area. Hearth spacing in sleeping areas [based on ethnographic examples - JRS] suggests an occupation number of 4-6 individuals." (Vallverdú et al. 2010:143). While this estimate is extremely interesting in light of what it may tell us about Neanderthal social organization, before people go out and use this paper to show that Neanderthals lived in extremely small groups, it is important to emphasize that this group size is characteristic of fleeting occupations of the site. If anything, this may be telling us something about the size of task group (or some similar social unit) more than anything about overall group size in Neanderthals. If Level N at Romaní reflects a satellite site to a larger 'home base' type settlement, then we may start extrapolating from that 8-10 person figure some more grounded estimates of the extent of Neanderthal social units broadly speaking. Fascinating. ReferencesHenry, D. O., H. J. Hietala, A. M. Rosen, Y. E. Demidenko, V. I. Usik and T. L. Armagan. 2004. Human Behavioral Organization in the Middle Paleolithic: Were Neanderthals Different? American Anthropologist 106:17-31.Vallverdú, J., Vaquero, M., Cáceres, I., Allué, E., Rosell, J., Saladié, P., Chacón, G., Ollé, A., Canals, A., Sala, R., Courty, M., & Carbonell, E. (2010). Sleeping Activity Area within the Site Structure of Archaic Human Groups Current Anthropology, 51 (1), 137-145 DOI: 10.1086/649499... 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

April 26, 2011
02:59 PM
778 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

Anthropology

March 2, 2011
04:14 PM
769 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

Anthropology

May 2, 2011
07:32 PM
762 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

August 20, 2010
11:25 PM
756 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

Anthropology

February 22, 2008
03:08 PM
721 views

Spoken too soon? More Dmanisi news

by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed

I'm finally back from various unexpectedly lengthy pursuits south of the border, and now enjoying the light snow lightly caking everything in MTL, like so much powdered sugar on a delicious sfogliatella...Two weeks ago I posted about a new study on the potential impact of volcanism on the accumulation of hominin remains at the Lower Pleistocene site of Dmanisi, Georgia. One of the appealing aspects of the conclusions of that study by de Lumley et al. (in press) is that it accounted for the presence of fully five distinct individuals at the site, since large accumulation... Read more »

M CALVO-RATHERT, A GOGUITCHAICHVILI, D SOLOGASHVILI, J VILLALAIN, M BOGALO, A CARRANCHO, & G MAISSURADZE. (2008) New paleomagnetic data from the hominin bearing Dmanisi paleo-anthropologic site (southern Georgia, Caucasus). Quaternary Research, 69(1), 91-96. DOI: 10.1016/j.yqres.2007.09.001

M DELUMLEY. (2008) Impact probable du volcanisme sur le décès des Hominidés de Dmanissi. Comptes Rendus Palevol. DOI: 10.1016/j.crpv.2007.09.002

Anthropology

May 4, 2011
01:35 AM
718 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

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