Paleolithic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luc Doyon.

It has been argued that Aurignacian projectile points made of antler, bone, or ivory represent a proxy for the initial dispersal of Homo sapiens into Europe. Our research reassesses this claim by using geometric morphometric analysis to study 547 Aurignacian osseous implements recovered from 49 European sites. This approach allowed the identification of eight volumetric templates reproduced by Aurignacian artisans during the manufacture of split-based points. Two templates were identified for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksandra Savkovic. Katarina Bogicevic. Dragana Djuric.

This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Avian remains from the Paleolithic site of Crvena Stijena, located near the village Petrovići, Eastern Montenegro, have been studied. The inspected material comes from the samples collected in the field during the previous three years of research (2018, 2019, and 2021)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Belmaker. Omri Barzilai.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 'Ubeidiya, Central Jordan Valley, Israel, is one of the earliest prehistoric sites outside Africa. Extensive excavations in the second half of the twentieth century yielded important archaeological, paleontological, and geological data, which provided insights into early Pleistocene hominins’ expansion out of Africa. The primary geological descriptions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Coppe. Veerle Rots. Marc Pirlot. Valérian Clarenne.

Projectile points have recently taken a prominent position in debates on the complexity of Paleolithic human behavior. While the appearance of hunting weapons in the archaeological record was a central element in early discussions, the debate has shifted towards the appearance of specific projecting modes. Given that the organic propulsion tools (bow, spear-thrower) are only rarely preserved, energy has been invested in experiments to explore how the projecting mode can be identified based on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Utting.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By studying stone tool technology, archaeologists and anthropologists shed light on big questions in human prehistory, including how ancient peoples adapted to changing environments, moved throughout landscapes, and interacted with other groups of people. There are many methodological approaches for characterizing stone tool technology,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald.

Searching for the origin points of major cultural revolutions and transitions has long been a driver of archaeological research, yet led to research focused on perceived boundaries, rather than continuity. Research into the origins of so-called modern human behavior, the origins of social complexity, the earliest domesticates, among others, all focus on defining moments of change that may be undetectable in the archaeological record. Perhaps some of the most enduring archaeological questions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Neunzig.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Why was the bow and arrow so widely used to replace the atlatl? To address this question, I present a study on the creation and use of the longbow and arrow in its early use, as well as the transition from the atlatl with focus on the effectiveness of both tools in penetrating power and accuracy at varying ranges to determine which is the overall more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Radu Iovita.

One of the most important methodological issues facing modern paleoanthropology is the so far failed matching of archaeological material with specific hominins, at least at the metapopulation level. Due largely to the plethora of scenarios produced by genetic and genomic data in the last few years, the demand for archaeological confirmation or refutation of diverse dispersal scenarios has increased. Yet our understanding of lithic assemblages is not sufficiently nuanced to answer these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ran Chen. Yue Wu.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The miniaturization of lithic artifacts indicates a significant shift in lithic technology and functions since the Upper Paleolithic, revealing a probable shift in subsistence strategy. Microblades are specific kinds of small stone tools that occur in sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic through Neolithic in many parts of the world. Although it is widely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hallett. Jacopo Niccolo Cerasoni.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bone has been used as a raw material for a range of activities for at least two million years. The criteria for determining whether a bone was used—or shaped and then used—have been established by archaeologists following decades of experimental research. In contrast, the antiquity of using bone for pressure flaking stone is less well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Merritt. Monica Avilez. Jonathan Reeves.

Fossil bone surface assemblages include differential specimen preservation (weathering stage, cortical surface exfoliation, polish, roundedness, fracture type) and identifiability (taxonomic or anatomical precision). Three 1x1 meter inventory squares placed on steep, moderate, and minimally sloping areas of a fossiliferous outcrop test whether outcrop shape is a megabias that influences assemblage attributes. A digital elevation model created from drone-captured aerial imagery describes outcrop...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Braun. Tyler Faith. Benjamin Davies. Mitchell Power. Matthew Douglass.

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. Although the past thirty years has witnessed tremendous advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we still know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Are there events in human evolution that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Clark.

This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hunter-gatherers are mobile because their resources shift based on season or by ecological zone. This mobility means that their built environments are ephemeral and their mark on the land is light. Many of the traces of structures or land modifications are therefore invisible within the archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald.

This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A place is structured and given meaning through human experiences at both individual and group levels. Places are created through repeated human action and made tangible in the landscape by material culture. These places become part of a built environment, marked by daily routines or habitus. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Ambrose.

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. Chronometric dating of Late Pleistocene environmental changes and archaeological sites can be refined by correlations with precisely dated volcanic isochrons, stalagmites, and marine isotope stages (MIS). Lake Malawi cores have volcanic ash from the Toba super-eruption, dated ~74 ka at levels previously dated to ~62.5...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Clark.

This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Blue duiker (Philantomba monticola) is a small, forest dwelling bovid present throughout Central and southern Africa. The species remains an important source of bushmeat in Central Africa, and in southern Africa, its exploitation dates at least as far back as 77,000 years ago. At the Middle Stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Kissel.

Discerning what makes Homo sapiens distinctive among the rest of the species on the planet has been a difficult task. One suggestion has been our use of symbolic culture, the use and transmission of symbols intergenerationally. There is much discussion, however, about who the first ‘symbol users’ were, partly due to debates as to what actually makes something ‘symbolic.’ In this paper, I discus how anthropologists first came to use symbol as the sine qua non of modern human behavior. Then, using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Porter. Maryse Biernat. W. Andrew Barr. David Patterson. David Braun.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite the numerous hominin fossils found in the Omo-Turkana Basin dating to between 2.0 and 1.4 Ma., a resolved understanding of their dietary ecology has been challenging due to limited research on similar patterns in contemporaneous large mammals In this study, we use a sample (n = 390) of enamel δ13C values of six Bovidae, Suidae, and Equidae taxa as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gayoung Park. Ben Marwick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone artifact assemblages can be an important source of information about hunter-gatherer mobility and subsistence, according to behavioral ecological theory that links technological changes to environmental adaptation. We examined stone artifacts from 28 sites in South Korea to investigate technological innovations during the Late Pleistocene and their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fumiko Ikawa-Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Apart from sporadic finds of human bones and artifacts, systematic research on the Palaeolithic began in Japan with the Iwajuku excavation in 1949. In spite of the relatively short history of 70 years, and the negative impact of the "Fujimura Scandal" of 2000, which resulted in nullification of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Skosey-LaLonde. Jonathan Reeves. Matt Douglass. David Braun. Emmanuel Ndiema.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Any inference of behavior based upon the spatial distribution of archaeological material requires an understanding of site formation processes. Natural agents, such as water flow, may be responsible for post-depositional alteration of buried materials and can result in spatial patterns which mask the behavioral processes associated with the initial deposition...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Parish. Nora Franco. Dagmara Werra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of reflectance spectroscopy in sourcing studies of quartzite and flint illustrates the broad potential that the technique has in helping us explain human behavior using lithic provenance data. An ongoing line of research is to characterize tool stone used by prehistoric peoples in order to source artifacts back to known deposits. The large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Riel-Salvatore. Fabio Negrino. Marco Peresani. Martina Parise. Jamie Hodgkins.

This paper presents a description of recently studied assemblages from Middle and Upper Paleolithic levels at the site of Arma Veirana, a large cave located in the mountainous hinterland of Liguria. While one Mousterian level shows an intense occupation, all other levels indicate rather short-lived, low intensity occupations. Beyond technological and typological analyses of these assemblages undertaken to characterize them, we also report preliminary data on raw material procurement patterns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mareike C. Stahlschmidt. Christopher Miller. Susan M. Mentzer.

This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Middle and Later Stone caves and rockshelters in South Africa are commonly rich in organic matter. The formation history of the organic component in the archaeological deposits is still unclear and several natural and anthropogenic processes can be considered. This paper will focus on a discussion of possible anthropogenic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Stewart. Genevieve Dewar.

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 roots of long-distance social networking run deeper than Facebook. At some point in the Pleistocene, hunter-gatherers began exchanging ‘non-utilitarian’ artifacts like beads and other ornaments over hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of kilometers. Among ethnographically documented foragers these networks...