Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
101-125 (409 Records)
This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans are social beings and being able to track social interactions and relationships across space and through time is a major focus of both anthropological and archaeological research. Within archaeology, the scale and intensity of social interactions has been...
Examining Sedimentation Rates, Find Densities, Raw Material Economies and Technological Solutions in Paleolithic Contexts (2017)
This paper examines low density Paleolithic sites from several geological contexts within a diachronic framework. The case studies consider what unifying elements and differences exist in Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic contexts and addresses their causes with regard to the nature of sedimentation, raw material availability and technological needs. Where preservation permits links will be made between assemblages of lithic, faunal and botanical artifacts at the contexts studied to help...
Experimental Archaeology as a Method to Replicate the Ornaments of the Arma Veirana Burial: Overview of the Ongoing Experiments (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discovery of an Early Mesolithic (10,000–9000 cal BP) newborn buried in Arma Veirana Cave (Erli, Italy) is very important both for the rarity of prehistoric newborn burials and for the richness and diversity of its grave goods. Those are composed of 84 perforated *Columbella rustica and four perforated *Glycymeris sp. with different levels of use-wear. Our...
Experimental Identification of Heat-Treated Silcrete Using Colorimetry and Reflectance Spectrophotometry (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The heat treatment of stone for tool production represents one of the oldest technologies for transforming the material properties of a natural product to better suit human needs. The earliest evidence for such technology is the heat treatment of silcrete at the South African Middle Stone Age site Pinnacle Point...
Experimental Study of Ostrich Eggshell Beads Collected from Shuidonggou (SDG) Site, China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ostrich eggshell beads and fragments collected from the Shuidonggou (SDG) site reflect primordial art and a kind of symbolic behavior of modern humans. Based on stratigraphic data and OSL dating, these ostrich eggshell beads date to the Early Holocene (less than 10 ka BP). Two different prehistoric manufacturing pathways...
Experiments in Stone-Flaking Design Space and Implications for Social Learning Models (2018)
Social learning by modern humans led to the repetition and persistence of stone tool forms we see in the recent archaeological record. The emergence of similar patterning in early hominin assemblages is often assumed to track the beginnings of social learning. Less clear is what was being socially transmitted during this early period. One possibility is that hominins learned how to make objects according to a shared ‘mental template’. A second possibility is that specific sequences were learned,...
Explaining Diachronic Trends in Paleolithic Subsistence in Central Europe (2015)
This paper examines changing patterns of subsistence during the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic of Central Europe. We present data on faunal assemblages from our excavations in Germany and look at the extent to which the selection and exploitation of prey reflects expectations from behavioral ecological models. We also consider how these faunal assemblages inform us about the evolution of social and economic behavior during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. SAA 2015 abstracts made available...
Exploring Manufacturing Variability in Calcareous Sand Tempered Pottery on Yap, Western Caroline Islands (2018)
The oldest identified sites on Yap are identified by presence calcareous sand tempered (CST) pottery from deeply stratified deposits. With few exceptions, CST pottery, made from locally produced clay, has been recovered from Rungluw and Pemrang, two sites in southern Yap, western Micronesia (northwest tropical Pacific). Although poor preservation conditions and small sample sizes make it difficult to reconstruct vessel size, detailed analysis of sherds demonstrates at least two sub-types. Recent...
Extending Paleoanthropology with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Human Origins: Archaeological Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discerning the patterns and processes of human origins has been mostly centered on a gene-eye’s view of fitness landscapes. This interpretive structure is partiality undermined by modern biological thought that emphasizes a more holistic approach to evolution. We suggest that the broader framework of the...
Falconing the Paleolithic: High-Resolution Aerial Mapping of Northern Mongolian Upper Paleolithic Sites and Landscapes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss the use of high-resolution aerial drone mapping to better understand the cultural landscape, complex geomorphology, and site formation processes in the northern Mongolia’s mountainous forest-steppe environment. In recent years, pedestrian surveys of the Tolbor River (Ikh Tulberiin Gol) and neighboring tributaries (Naryn Tulberiin,...
Fast Fashion? Pelt Procurement in the Late Pleistocene at le Grand Abri aux Puces, France (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins of hominins using animal pelts as body covering, i.e. clothing, is an important adaptation to reconstruct. Throughout history, our hominin ancestors have adapted to living in temperate and glacial climates, as well as expanding into novel environments, like the Neanderthals in Europe over the past 300,000 years. However, there is currently no...
The Fauna of KEH-1 (South Africa) A Middle and Later Stone Age site: A Pilot Study (2018)
Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (KEH-1) demonstrates an intense occupation sequence at a site overlooking the now sub-merged Agulhas Bank during multiple ocean progressions and regressions in the late Middle Stone Age and early Later Stone Age (46,000 to 18,000 Cal BP). The site contains numerous hearth features, densely stacked within the stratigraphic section, and has yielded large amounts of fauna. Here we report for the first time on the preliminary taphonomic analysis of the fauna, based on a...
Fire in the Early Pleistocene: Evidence for the Use of Fire by Hominins at the 1.5 mya Site of FxJj20 AB, Koobi Fora, Kenya (2018)
The Cooking Hypothesis contends that fire use became common in the Early Pleistocene and was part of a suite of characters that were associated with the appearance of Homo erectus. The morphological changes associated with H. erectus support this hypothesis. Archaeological evidence for the control of fire in this time period is generally sparse, and arguments for controlled fire at early sites have been controversial. Here we present evidence for fire use by early hominins at the open-air site...
Fire or Stone? Applications of Infrared Spectroscopy and the Grinding Curve Procedure to Differentiate between Pyrogenic and Geogenic Calcites at Crvena Stijena Paleolithic Rock Shelter, Montenegro (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is becoming ever more clear that cooperative efforts amongst researchers trained in a wide variety of archaeological and geoarchaeological specialties during the planning, excavation, and interpretation of an archaeological site are crucial to a successful study. Middle Paleolithic deposits in Level XXIV of the rock shelter at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro are...
The First East-West Dichotomy? (2018)
Hallam Movius proposed that the Lower Palaeolithic cultures of East Asia and SE Asia were derived from a different cultural trajectory than that of Europe and Africa. The chopper-chopping tool complex of East and SE Asia was argued to be more primitive in many aspects. The type-site assemblages of the Pacitanian and Tampanian cultures are two out of only five assemblages that Movius initially used to define the chopper-chopping tool complex. The Pacitanian was first discovered by Michael Tweedie...
First Insights on Proto-Aurignacian Subsistence Behaviors at Riparo Bombrini (Liguria, Italy) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in the Balzi Rossi Paleolithic site complex, Riparo Bombrini documents the oldest Proto-Aurignacian occupations in Liguria, Italy along with the neighboring site of Riparo Mochi. Bombrini itself is the sole site to have been entirely excavated and documented with modern archaeological methods. This makes it a...
Fluorescence Applied to Modern Carnivore Excrements. A Reference Collection for Archaeological Deposits (2018)
Traditionally, coprolite identification in archaeology has been limited to hyenids, the most well-preserved and recognizable fossilized faeces, although non-hyena carnivore coprolites are also present in some Pleistocene deposits displaying a wide range of morphological variation (e.g., elongate, spherical, globular, sub-cylindrical, oval, tubular). Common micromorphological characteristics of these different excrements are the appearance of an amorphous phosphatic, optically isotropic and, a...
Forensic Methods for the 3D Reconstruction of an Infant Burial in Arma Veirana Cave, Liguria, Italy (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatio-temporal models can function as detailed digital surrogates of archaeological sites, providing the context and content needed to enable analytical reasoning by means of interactive visualization. The starting point is often surveying techniques based on light detection and ranging as well as photogrammetry,...
Foreseeable Tools: Lithic Use-Wear and Technological Organizations in Evolutionary Perspectives (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The paper explores some problems concerning the relationship between aspects of lithic technology and the cultural evolutionary theory. There are three fundamental realms in stone tool analysis, namely, typology, technology, and functional studies. These research phases are integrated into the study of "technological organizations" in the sense of Binford...
The Foundational Element of Mobile Land-Use Systems in the Initial Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Adoption of Ceramic Vessels in the Transbaikal Region, Siberia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some of the earliest ceramic vessels worldwide were used by foraging communities in NE Asia (i.e., Japan, Russian Far East) by roughly 16,000 years ago (i.e., Iizuka 2018). Subsequently, in the Transbaikal region of eastern Siberia the earliest adoption of ceramics by 15,000 or 7000 cal BP (see Hommel 2017; Iizuka 2019; Terry 2022) is thought to have...
Fracture Mechanics, Virtual Knapper, and Controlled Experiments: Toward a Better Model of Flake Formation (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Insights into flake formation have come from fracture mechanics, controlled experiments, replication studies, and attribute analysis of lithic assemblages. Fracture mechanics would seem to offer great potential for offering insights into how the variables that knappers manipulate actually change flaking outcomes, and its strength is that it is based on...
From Kebara to KwaZulu-Natal: Integrating Micromorphology and Mineralogical Analyses in the Study of Diagenesis in Combustion Features (2015)
Since the 1990’s, Paul Goldberg’s micromorphological analyses at Kebara and Hayonim Caves (Israel) as well as his collaborative efforts to understand chemical diagenesis in caves have served as benchmarks for the high-resolution study of Paleolithic combustion features. This paper highlights the results of micromorphology, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy and microscopic x-ray diffraction measurements, which were employed together order to understand different diagenetic...
From the Canyon to the Staircase: Expanding the Paleolithic Presence in the Arizona Strip (2017)
Evidence of Paleoindian and Paleo-Archaic occupation of the Arizona Strip, in northwest Arizona and southwest Utah, largely remains limited to isolated projectile points found lying on the modern ground surface, dispersed across large swaths of land. Building upon the few isolated finds, this presentation discusses the recent identification of multiple fluted and unfluted lanceolate and Great Basin Stemmed projectile points. In contrast to the few previously known finds, the various projectile...
From the Lab to the Cave and Back: 3D Modeling Finger Flutings (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Finger flutings are lines and markings drawn with the human hand in soft sediments in caves and rock shelters throughout southern Australia, New Guinea, and southwestern Europe that date back to the Late Pleistocene. Over the last two decades, Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder developed a method to determine characteristics of the creators, such as age, sex...
From the Mousterian to the Bronze Age: The El Miron Cave Project (Cantabria, Spain), 1996-2018 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Miron Cave has a long, rich cultural sequence dated by 92 radiocarbon assays >46,000-c.500 BP. This large, strategically located site contains traces of Mousterian, Gravettian, Azilian, Mesolithic and historic uses and evidence of more significant occupations of diverse duration, intensity and function throughout the Solutrean, Magdalenian, Neolithic,...