Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
176-200 (499 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Harold Dibble was one of the most prominent Paleolithic archaeologists of the last century researching the Middle Paleolithic of Eurasia. While he made significant contributions in a number of important areas, one of his main contributions was to encourage researchers to try to think...
An HBE Perspective on Niche Construction (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. Decades of research in human behavioral ecology (HBE) demonstrates that questions about human ecological and reproductive adaptations generally lead to questions about cooperation. Partly for this reason, much recent research in HBE has focused on issues such as marriage, cooperative child raising, and...
High-Altitude Adaptation in the Middle Palaeolithic of the Zagros Mountains, Iran: a view from Houmian (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Intensification of fieldwork in the Zagros Mountains over the past two decades have provided crucial new insights into the region, revealing a much more complex patchwork of MP lithic industrial variability than hitherto appreciated. We present a series of new case studies on the high-altitude MP rockshelter of Houmian in the Iranian Zagros. Posited to be...
A High-Resolution Investigation of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition at Riparo Bombrin (Balzi Rossi, Liguria) (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. This paper presents an overview of the results of the 2015-2018 field seasons at Riparo Bombrini, a collapsed rock shelter part of the storied Balzi Rossi site complex in Liguria, immediately next to the border with France. The excavation has sought to capitalize on the insights of the 2002-05 excavations at the site...
High-Resolution Microarchaeological Techniques for Understanding Depositional and Postdepositional Processes in Mugr-el Hamamah Cave (Jordan) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rich archaeological record of the Mughr-el Hamamah (MHM) site in Jordan is key to understanding the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in the Levant. However, important postdepositional processes due to pastoral activities during the twentieth century have affected the archaeological deposits and need to be taken into account. The archaeological...
Hilary Duke and Sonia Harmand—A New Approach to the Evolution of Early Pleistocene Hominin Cognition and Technological Change: Examining the Technological Context of LCT Emergence 1.8–1.76 Ma at Kokiselei, West Turkana, Kenya (2018)
The eastern African Early Pleistocene witnessed critical shifts in climate, environment, hominin anatomy and behavior. The lithic record shows change within this broader context. After 1.8 Ma, Large Cutting Tools (LCTs), such as bifaces, entered the hominin lithic repertoire. These artifacts are widely viewed as the first evidence of lithic shaping. Many archaeologists theorize both cognitive and practical differences between "flaking" and "shaping" among knapping strategies. Most of these...
The Hippos Who Would Not Die: Akrotiri Aetokremnos, Cyprus, and a Scientific Dilemma (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Akrotiri Aetokremnos, a collapsed rockshelter in Cyprus, was excavated over 30 years ago. The site caused controversy for two reasons: it was the oldest site on the island, and it was associated with extinct pygmy hippopotami. The first issue has been resolved, with over 70 radiocarbon determinations centered around 10,000 cal BC, placing the site in the...
The History and Practice of European Prehistory through a Black Feminist Lens (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classics is undergoing a very public and painful reckoning with its use by white nationalists. Prehistoric archaeologists working in Europe have largely stayed out of the fray, perhaps due to many practitioners seeing our research subjects as “pre-racial” or our work as otherwise unrelated to these discussions. However, if we look at...
Horse Mandibles in the Paleolithic as Liminal Bodies (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The deep bond between humans and horses is well reflected in the Paleolithic record from its earliest stages. The significant role of horses (Equus) in Paleolithic diet is evident from the presence of horse skeletal remains, and...
Hot Spots of Cobblestone Tool Reduction Incidents and Potential Chronological Staging of the Technology along California's Lower Colorado River Shorelines (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatial autocorrelation software for the Moran I statistic in ArcGIS v10.6 was used to combine archaeological site location data with “intensity” or weight defined by the number of artifacts in each of the 280 loci contained within an 80-acre portion of CA-SBr-1456 along the California side of the Lower Colorado River. That data was then processed to...
How to Deal with Homogeneous Stratigraphies: Excavation, Sampling, and Analysis Strategies at Umhlatuzana Rockshelter, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Developing Paleolithic Excavation Methods for the Twenty-First Century" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To ensure proper context control for archaeological samples, it is crucial that excavations determine and, where possible, follow the natural stratigraphic subdivisions in a sedimentary sequence. In cases with a single, unchanging source of sedimentary input, this may pose challenges. We present our strategies to...
Human Adaptability to Fauna and Flora Changes during MIS 5-3. Is the Iberian Mediterranean Region a Refuge? (2019)
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. Neanderthal and AMH from the Early Upper Palaeolithic have a really good knowledge of their environment and its potential resources. The local landscape and its changes should influence their behavior and the availability of resources. In this sense, the faunal remains have been better documented than flora. But our team...
Human Occupation of the Central Balkans during the Last Glacial Maximum: Recent Results from Serbia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Research into the Late Pleistocene of Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), or Marine Isotope Stage 2, produced some of the most extraordinary environmental challenges faced by Homo sapiens during the Pleistocene. Large parts of temperate and subarctic Eurasia were depopulated, as humans retreated to areas with relatively favorable conditions. Although the Balkans...
Human-Environment Dynamics at the Arid Margin of the Levant: Fluctuating Freshwater Resources between 400,000 and 40,000 Years Ago in the Greater Azraq Oasis Area, Jordan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Azraq Basin is a 12,000 km2 internal drainage system at the eastern margin of the Levant. The center of the basin, which we refer to as the Greater Azraq Oasis Area (GAOA), is characterized by a mudflat flanked by two historical wetlands. Desiccation of these wetlands in the early 1990s and...
Human-Material Interactions during the Aurignacian of Europe, 35,000–27,000 BP: An Analysis of Marine Shell Ornament Distribution (2018)
This research explores dynamic relationships between people and materials during the Aurignacian period of Europe, 35,000-27,000 BP. More specifically, a network analysis is used to determine whether there are discernible patterns in the geographic distribution of marine shells used for the creation of beads and pendants. As early inhabitants of Europe moved across the landscape they came into contact with others and left behind material traces of these interactions. Whether these artifacts came...
Hunter-Gatherer Responses to the "Early" African Humid Period ~15-12 ka (2018)
Recent paleoclimate studies indicate rainfall increased dramatically over many parts of northeastern and eastern Africa at the end of MIS 2 and the hyper-arid LGM ~14.7 ka, thereby marking the beginning of MIS 1 and the "African Humid Period" (AHP). These studies also suggest that not only should the "early" AHP be decoupled from the start of the Holocene some 3000 years later, it should also encompass the cooler, more arid Younger Dryas (12.9-11.7 ka). This paper explores two key questions: 1)...
Hunting Activities of Upper Paleolithic Humans in the Japanese Archipelago (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of the Japanese archipelago is covered with layers of acidic loam originating from volcanic eruptions. For this reason, there are very few Paleolithic sites that contain well-preserved faunal remains. In fact, there are only six known sites on the four main islands of Japan (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu Islands) which have seen the excavation of...
“I've been havin' some hard travelin'. . .”: Using the “Evolutionary Chain” Concept in a Dynamical Approach of Silicites (2021)
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. Studies about characterization and sourcing of the various siliceous materials (flint, chert, silcrete, and hydrothermal silicite) used by prehistoric foragers became progressively routine. However, simply locating the stratigraphic origin of a rock is insufficient as it may have been collected from varied...
Identifying Consumption of Putrefied Meat in the Archaeological Record from δ15N Values (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Speth (2017) proposed that the consumption of putrid meat and fish might be a dietary item that is underexplored in the Upper Paleolithic food menu. In this presentation we explore ways to identify the consumption of putrid foods. We compare the results from our study of Δ15N observed in mammal muscle tissue decomposing during winter with published stable...
Identifying Signatures of Bone Grease Rendering in Archaeological Contexts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Toward the end of the Paleolithic, foragers have been inferred to render small amounts of fat from cancellous bone in a process known as bone grease rendering (BGR). As the goal is to extract additional energy from each animal, the technology possibly emerged in response to seasonal resource stress. BGR is presently associated with the Holocene; more...
An Ideology of Blood at the Root of Symbolic Culture (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At ~160ka, roughly at the end of our African speciation, archaeologists identify a change from sporadic to habitual use of red ochre. This has been interpreted as primarily a pigment for decorating performers’ bodies during...
Impact Notches on Megafaunal Limb Bones: Hammerstone Versus Carnivore Tooth Notch Shapes on Samples of Experimental, Paleontological, and Archaeological Bones (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Impact notches on megafaunal limb bones can be diagnostic of marrow extraction and tool blank production behavior by hominins. Notch shape statistics have been applied to impact-fractured megafaunal limb bones from Old World Paleolithic sites to demonstrate hominin technology that begins 2.6 mya in Africa. We compare data from experimental cow femora...
Imports and Outcrops: Characterizing the Baantu Obsidian Source and Artifacts from Mochena Borago Rockshelter, Wolaita, Ethiopia, Using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Material Sourcing and Provenience Studies in Africa" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Forty-two obsidian samples from the Baantu obsidian source, including 25 outcrop samples and 17 surface artifacts, were characterized using portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. These source data were then compared to 116 obsidian artifacts from Mochena Borago Rockshelter, excavated from levels dated to >50 ka BP...
In and "Out" of the Cave: Queerness on the Upper Paleolithic Funerary Landscape (2018)
Amongst many other facets of human life, the practice of burying the dead demarcates and changes a space, it becomes imbued and entwined with the identity of the deceased. The physical act of placing a body into the ground is a place-making practice, a performative act, and, in the process, the place becomes gendered. This has been true since the origins of burial practices in the human lineage, dating to at least the early Upper Paleolithic, and perhaps earlier. This paper is a preliminary...
An In-Depth Study of the Arma Veirana Pierced Shells and Pendants used as Grave Goods (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. During the 2017 excavation season at Arma Veirana, a cave site located in the Italian pre-Alps, a Final Epigravettian burial was discovered. Careful excavation of the feature has uncovered an important number of grave goods comprised of over 80 perforated marine shells. The majority of these ornaments were made from...