Paleolithic (Other Keyword)

176-200 (409 Records)

Landscape Evolution, Digital Terrain Analysis, and the Integrity of Surface Assemblages: A Case Study from the Koobi Fora Formation (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Reeves. Matthew Douglass. Seminew Asrat. Melissa Miller. David R. Braun.

Lithic surface scatters comprise a large proportion of the archaeological record but their value for understanding human behavior is often doubted. Modern geomorphological processes often laterally displace and selectively bias surface assemblages of artifacts. The predictable effects of displacement on the condition, weathering and size distributions of lithic assemblages is better understood. While topography is known to play a role in this process, the degree to which topographic variables...


Landscape Learning during the Early Upper Paleolithic of Southeastern Europe (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Wei Chu.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The initial settlement of western Eurasia by anatomically modern humans is thought to have taken place in discrete dispersal phases ca. 50–40 ka ago. Here, lithic toolkits are thought to be linked to founding phases indicative of discrete, rapid, westward movements into and across Europe triggered by climate amelioration...


Landscape Technological Strategies in the Southern Kalahari Basin: North of Kuruman Archaeological Survey, South Africa (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Schoville. Jayne Wilkins. Kyle Brown. Alex Blackwood. Jessica von der Meden.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southern Kalahari Basin in the northern interior of South Africa has provided evidence for early use of fire, Mode 3 technological developments, early stone-tipped spears and pigment use. Innovations seen in the southern Kalahari Basin early in the Middle Stone Age may represent changes in how human populations...


Large Mammal Fauna from Klasies River Main Site: Changing Environmental Conditions during the Late Pleistocene of South Africa (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerome Reynard. Liezl Van Pletzen-Vos. Sarah Wurz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Klasies River is one of the most significant Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in Africa with a sequence spanning from c. 120,000 to c. 50,000 years ago (ka). Because it yields one of the largest collections of human remains dated to the Late Pleistocene associated with an abundance of MSA cultural remains, it is an important site for understanding the development...


The Late Acheulean of the Azraq Basin, Jordan, and Its Implications for Hominin Dispersals into the Levant (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Beller. Mark Collard. Amer al-Soulimann.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Azraq Basin is an important physiogeographic feature and hydrological catchment area in the eastern desert of Jordan. At its heart are the Azraq wetlands, an ecologically fragile oasis complex characterized by the spring-fed historic Druze Marsh and rehabilitated Shishan Marsh. Archaeological investigation over the past 70 years has discovered multiple...


Late Pleistocene Archaeofauna from the Kasitu Valley of Northern Malawi: Palaeoenvironments and Evolution of Faunal Communities in the Zambezian Ecozone (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Bertacchi. Jessica C. Thompson. Stanley Ambrose. Andrew Zipkin. Elizabeth Gomani-Chindebvu.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Zambezian Ecozone of east-central Africa comprises faunal communities that include elements from both southern and eastern Africa. The region has long served as an important crossroads for faunal exchange, but its timing and implications for hunter-gatherer behavior are unknown. Late Pleistocene faunal assemblages...


Late Pleistocene Occupation in the Southern Kalahari: New Results from the North of Kuruman Palaeoarchaeology Project (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Schoville. Jayne Wilkins.

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. Recent investigations of the southern African Late Pleistocene archaeological record have transformed our understanding of the biocultural evolution of our species. Although the intensity of research on coastal and near-coastal records is greater than in the...


Late Pleistocene Refugia and Neanderthal Extinction in Southern Iberia (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Haws.

This is an abstract from the "Peninsular Southern Europe Refugia during the Middle Paleolithic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Iberian Peninsula has long been regarded as a glacial refugium for humans, as well as temperate, Eurosiberian flora and fauna. The well-documented Cantabrian region served as an "active" and densely populated refugium during the LGM and Late Pleniglacial. In southern Iberia, the Mediterranean-type biota found refugia...


Least-Effort Knapping as a Baseline to Study Social Transmission in the Early Stone Age (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Levi Raskin. Jonathan Reeves. Matthew Douglass. David Braun.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Variation in lithics has been used as a mechanism to infer diachronic aspects of hominin behavior. The emergence of the Acheulean industry is considered a major milestone in the evolution of hominin cognition. This perspective is predicated on the idea that Acheulean large cutting tools (LCTs) require mental templates imposed through knapping and that LCTs...


Levallois, Learning, and Lithic Variation: Results from Porcelain Flintknapping Experiments (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Ranhorn. David R. Braun. Francys Subiaul. Alison Brooks.

The ability to transmit cultural information with high-fidelity across generations is a defining trait of modern humans. It is unclear, however, how and when this adaptation emerged in the human lineage. The earliest forms of human technology—stone artifacts—required knappers to understand raw material mechanics, as well as geometry (volume reduction, angles), and physics. Thus, it is often assumed that the spread of lithic technologies involved some degree of information transmission. However,...


Life and Death of the Pleistocene Child: Children’s Burials in Gravettian Europe (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only April Nowell.

The Gravettian (ca. 28,000-21,000 BP), has been referred to as the "Golden Age" of the European Upper Paleolithic. Innovations in technology, increased sedentism and the development of larger regional centers, the oldest known ceramics, some of the earliest evidence for loom-woven textiles, and the emergence of so-called "Venus" figurines all characteristic of this period. The Gravettian is also well known for its often spectacular single, double and triple burials of sub-adults including...


Life in the Margins: The Pre-Still Bay Deposits from Varsche Rivier 003, Southern Namaqualand, South Africa (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Steele. Alex Mackay. Mareike Stahlschmidt.

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. Varsche Rivier (VR) 003 is located in the Knersvlakte, the quartz-gravel plains of southern Namaqualand, South Africa. While currently a marginal, low-rainfall region within the Succulent Karoo Biome, conditions were more favorable during the Late Pleistocene....


Lithic Adaptive Strategies of Early Modern Humans in Southwestern Iberia: New Data from Vale Boi’s Layer 7 and 8 (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Horta. João Cascalheira. Nuno Bicho.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The arrival of modern humans in Iberia is a continuously debated topic, especially when it comes to its southernmost regions due to the evidence of late Neanderthal occupations. In Southwestern Iberia, there is evidence for the presence of both groups in the late Pleistocene. Although the exact moment of replacement is still unclear due to the lack of absolute...


Lithic Analysis of Paleolithic Surface Scatters from Pleistocene River Terraces in the Republic of Serbia (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Heffter.

During the past two decades Paleolithic research in Serbia has rapidly expanded with numerous cave sites currently under excavation. However, this focus on caves in largely upland terrain may create a biased understanding of the Paleolithic record. Typically, open-air sites are integrated into research projects to correct for this bias. Unfortunately, Serbia has very few open-air sites, requiring us to use other sources of evidence as proxies for understanding the Paleolithic record in lowland...


Lithic Micro-Wear Traces at Morphological Junctions: Function Vs. Typology Reconsidered in Terms of Technological Organizations (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaoru Akoshima.

The paper investigates some fundamental aspects of use-wear of lithic artifacts, concerning the relations between function and morphology. During the course of micro-wear research since the 1960s, it was often questioned whether tool typologies actually reflects their functions, or which morphological attributes are diagnostic of their utilization. Case studies in the Upper Paleolithic of East Asia also revealed variability in end-scrapers whose functions seem to be relatively consistent as hide...


Lithic Procurement at a Levantine Desert Refugium during the Middle Pleistocene (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Beller.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 in the Azraq Basin, Jordan have uncovered several artifact-bearing layers that date to the late Middle Pleistocene (300-220kya; 130-120kya). A paleoecological assessment of sediments from this period indicates predominantly arid and warm conditions in the region, similar to those of the present. Hominins living under these...


Lithic Procurement at Montlleó Open-Air Site (SW Europe): Tracing Past Human Routes (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marta Sánchez De La Torre. Xavier Mangado. François-Xavier Le Bourdonnec. Bernard Gratuze. Mathieu Langlais.

This is an abstract from the "Case Studies in Toolstone Provenance: Reliable Ascription from the Ground Up" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Montlleó open-air-site (Prats i Sansor, Catalonia) is located in one of the largest high-attitude valleys in the Pyrenees, the Cerdanya Valley, in SW Europe, at 1,144 masl. The site is in a natural road to cross the Pyrenees in the eastern part. The site, discovered in 1998 and excavated since the 2000 by a...


Lithic Residue Analysis in 2018: Prospects and Challenges (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Gilliane Monnier.

Lithic residue analyses have produced exciting results in recent years: microscopic bits of plant and animal tissue adhering to stone tools tens of thousands of years old; the remains of hafting materials such as bitumen and birch-bark pitch; and fiber technology from the Paleolithic, to mention but a few. Yet, for many archaeologists these results seem ‘too good to be true’. How can biological materials be preserved for thousands of years in temperate environments? How can they appear, under...


Lithic Taphonomy and Digital Hydrogeologic Models: A GIS Based Approach to Understanding the Formational History of Surface Assemblages (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Seeley. Jonathan Reeves. Matthew Douglas. David R. Braun.

Surface assemblages play an important role in understanding human behavior. However, modern erosional processes—specifically flowing water—can limit the behavioral inferences that can be gained from surface assemblages by transporting materials from their original discard sites. The influence of these processes can be observed in the size distribution and condition of surface lithic assemblages. The topography and geomorphology of the landscape heavily dictates the degree to which fluvial...


Lithics and Learning: Communities of Practice at Kharaneh IV (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Felicia De Pena.

Flintknappers during the Levantine Epipaleolithic were proficient at microlith production, these skills were learned and passed down from one flintknapping generation to another as no one is born with the innate ability to flintknap. By utilizing practice theory and a chaîne opératoire approach to the Epipaleolithic chipped stone tool reduction sequences of narrow-nosed cores at Kharaneh IV, I strive to identify how individuals learned to flintknap, from raw material acquisition to the...


Machine Learning Species Identification with ZooMS Collagen Fingerprinting (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Buckley. Muxin Gu.

The creation of a robust method of species identification using collagen fingerprinting, also known as ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) has been useful for objectively defining the composition of the fragmentary component of archaeological assemblages. The method usually works through the measurements of the sizes of collagen peptides following enzymatic digestion, which yield a fingerprint that can be genus or even species-specific. However, even these peptide biomarkers have been...


The Magdalenian-Azilian Transition: Contributions from the Rocher de l’Impératrice Rock-shelter (Brittany, France) (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Naudinot. Michel Le Goffic. Elena Man-Estier. Patrick Paillet.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Succeeding the Magdalenian, the Azilian is one of the last techno-complexes of the Western Europe Upper Paleolithic. This period is characterized by major socio-cultural changes illustrated by techno-economic but also symbolic changes. One of the most famous elements of this process is the abandonment of naturalistic figurative art on portable pieces or on...


Mammalian Enamel Stable Isotopic (δ13C, δ18O) Evidence for Environmental Change during the MSA-LSA Transition at the Kisese II Rockshelter, Tanzania (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Carley Quirin. Rhonda Quinn. Jason Lewis. Kathryn Ranhorn. Christian Tryon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Environmental perturbations are invoked as an influence of hominin speciation, dispersal and technological innovations. Archaeological occurrences preserving the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Later Stone Age are critical to gauging environmental influences of human adaptations, yet there is a dearth of well-dated sites in eastern Africa. The...


The Many Meanings of Red: Ochre Use through Time in Southern Africa (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Hodgskiss.

This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From c.100 000 years ago, ochre pieces were habitually collected and used at Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa. This earthy iron-rich rock has been continually used since then and still has many applications today, such as pigment, sunscreen or body paint for ritual purposes. Although a range of colors were...


Marxism in Chinese Archaeology (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Shijia Zhan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, Marxism became a kind of official philosophical thinking embeded in all the humanities. Thus, in most Western archaeologists’ minds, Chinese archaeology is a kind of Marxist archaeology, as Bruce Trigger described. We admit to this kind of definition, but the status of contemporary archaeology is already...