Paleolithic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sydney James. Jonathan Reeves. Matthew Douglass. David Braun.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A defining feature of human tool use compared to our closest living relatives is the transport of tools. This distinction is most evident in the Early Stone Age where transport is a feature of even the earliest industries. Spatial variability in raw material proportions has often been assumed to reflect transport patterns; however, these measures must be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Ahern. Ivor Jankovic. Darko Komšo. Siniša Radovic. Rory Becker.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of past and recent systematic research on the late Upper Paleolithic carried out in Ljubićeva Cave near Marčana, Croatia. The first excavations of the site occurred between 2008 and 2011 and yielded late Upper Paleolithic as well as Neolithic and Bronze Age discoveries. Since 2019, systematic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Li Li. Sam Lin. Jonathan Reeves. Shannon McPherron.

This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The underlying physics of stone tool production is an important component in the studies of lithic technology. The field of fracture mechanics offers rich literature on the basic principles of flake initiation, propagation, and termination. However, results from these fracture mechanics...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivor Jankovic.

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. In 2020, a four year Action, entitled Integrating Neandertal Legacy: From Past to Present (iNEAL) (CA19141) financed through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), started. The Action is aimed at assessing and addressing biases in Neandertal legacy and creating a pan-European (and wider) network of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Goran Pajovic. Gilbert Tostevin. Samantha Porter. Nikola Borovinic. Anne Melton.

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. Theoretically informed research methods are only as good as the ability of the research team to put the methods into action. Between the well-intentioned plans of the PIs and the successful elucidation of fascinating anthropological questions lie the practicalities of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivor Karavanic. Antonela Barbir.

Paleolithic sites situated in the Hrvatsko zagorje region of north-western Croatia (Krapina, Vindija) are well known because they contain important finds of fossil human remains associated with both faunal remains and lithic industry. However, in recent years, work on Mousterian sites in Dalmatia (south Croatia) has intensified. It focuses on three types of sites, (caves, open-air, and an underwater site) as well as on a systematic survey of the region. This poster briefly presents one of each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petraglia.

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As early humans and Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, they encountered diverse communities of mammalian faunas in Asia. Here we document hominin migrations out of Africa over the last 500,000 years, discussing the degree to which humans interacted with faunas in Arabia and South Asia. Climate change seems to be the primary reason for the demise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Conard. Mareike Brenner. Knut Bretzke. Christopher Miller. Manuel Will.

Sibudu Cave in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa is a key Middle Stone Age site that provides a high-resolution stratigraphic record of cultural change. The sequence from Sibudu is well-dated and has been the focus of intense geoarchaeological research. This paper examines the spatial distribution of lithic artifacts, faunal remains, worked ochre, burnt materials and botanical finds to see if these distributions provide meaningful information on the changing use of space at the site. The study will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jayne Wilkins. Benjamin J. Schoville. Robyn Pickering. Luke Gliganic. Benjamin Collins.

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. Investigations of the southern African Middle Stone Age archaeological record are transforming our understanding of Homo sapiens origins and evolution, however, the intensity of research on coastal and near-coastal Middle Stone Age (MSA) records has outweighed that on the deep interior record. The North of Kuruman...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Coco. Talgat Mamirov.

This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The surface site complex of Semizbugu is a well-known Paleolithic site in Pribalkhash, Kazakhstan. Tens of thousands of artifacts from all Paleolithic periods have been collected from 11 different locations across this landscape between 1961 and 2013. During our 2022 field season, we conducted a new study at Semizbugu. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natasha Phillips. Ian Moffat. Matthew Shaw. Chris Ames. Alex Mackay.

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. Southern Africa’s Late Pleistocene archaeology is pursued through the lens of rockshelter deposits. However, their spatial coverage is small and geographically biased, distorting our understanding of human behavioral evolution. To overcome this, researchers are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Steele. Mareike Stahlschmidt. Susan Mentzer.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists commonly interpret burnt materials at archaeological sites as relicts of human fire use activities, but processes other than human fire use may create burnt materials. Here, we examine if wildfires would leave specific heating signatures regarding the temperature or heating pattern on the skeleton that would be different from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Whelton. Lisa-Marie Shillito. Ian Bull.

Coprolites contain a suite of lipid biomolecules and are an invaluable source of palaeobiological and palaeoecological information. The identification of faecal matter through the presence of highly-specific lipid biomarkers (5β-stanols and bile acids) has been used to identify and characterise faecal input from a range of different sources. Differentiation of these faecal markers is enabled through the diet, digestion and metabolism of the source animal. Lipid analysis of coprolites has also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivano Rellini. Roberto Cabella. Roberto Maggi. Gabriele Martino. Marco Firpo.

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. The Arene Candide Cave, a key sequence for western Mediterranean prehistory, became famous in 1942 after the discovery of a Gravettian adolescent buried in a pit filled with ochre and spectacularly ornamented. At the end of the last glaciation, with a similar choice, at least 20 Final Epigravettian burials were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giulia Gallo.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The initial status of bone prior to burning and thermal alteration influences the resultant chemical and structural composition, monitored in this study with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) with an attenuated total reflectance (ATR) attachment. Fresh, fully hydrated mammalian cortical bone and dry mammalian cortical bone, with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no consensus about how to define the first paleoarchaeological record, or how old it is. An assemblage of flaked stone artifacts from Lomekwi 3, Kenya, dates to 3.3 million years ago. Two fossil specimens at the 3.34-million-year-old site of Dikika-55, Ethiopia, preserve butchery marks on their surfaces. The strength of interpretation that these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Somaye Khaksar. Gilbert Tostevin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic blank/tool efficiency has been the subject of some experimental research in the last two decades. However, most of the research has largely been focused on the general morphology of the edge (straight, convex, or concave), or on some specific characteristic such as angle or the length of the cutting portion. What has not received attention is the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zeljko Rezek.

This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic experimentation and the understanding of the so-called nubian-levallois technology are just two among many aspects of Harold’s legacy. The results of so far the only controlled experiment on core surface morphology, some of which resembles nubian-levallois in featuring a prominent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pei-Lin Yu.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Neolithic transition of Taiwan, current evidence indicates that farmer-gardeners immigrated from China's southeast coast about 6,000 BP and brought a diverse subsistence of cultivation, foraging, and fishing. The migration would have influenced habitat choice and interactions with Paleolithic foragers already existed in residence. The Ideal Free...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hervé Bocherens. Dorothée Drucker. Martina Láznicková-Galetová. Mietje Germonpré. Christoph Wissing.

Predators are usually considered not so informative in zooarchaeological investigations, except when their bones carry cut-marks. They are more viewed as a disturbing factor for the bone assemblage. However, tracking their paleoecology using stable isotopes in their bones can yield valuable information on several key aspects of their relationships with paleolithic human populations. Especially carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic composition in bone collagen of predators compared to those of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Clark.

Open-air Middle Paleolithic sites in France are characterized by dense piles of lithic material surrounded by low density "empty" areas. Spatial analysis can be used to segregate lithics artifacts based on whether they are located in the high or low density zones. This analysis is supported by the spatial tracking of refitting sets. The results indicate that high density zones likely correspond with knapping locations and low density areas contain lithics selected from the knapped material for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Wren. Ariane Burke.

During the Last Glacial Maximum the population of Western Europe contracted its range as the climate became less hospitable and more unpredictable. Mobility decisions must have been a key part of human adaptation during this time but are notoriously difficult to extract from archaeological data. Agent-based modelling offers one way to explore human mobility heuristically, producing test implications that can be tested using the archaeological record. We use a model of habitat suitability derived...

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...

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...

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...