Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
226-250 (499 Records)
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...
Large-Scale Analyses Show Flexible Paths of Aurignacian Lithic Production at Vogelherd Cave in Lone Valley (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Examining Spatial-Temporal Variation in the Lithic Technology of the Early Upper Paleolithic" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aurignacian marks the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic in southern Germany. During this time blade and bladelet production became the central focus of the stone knapping. Lithic technology of the Swabian Aurignacian is nowhere better documented than at Vogelherd. Here Riek’s original...
The Late Acheulean of the Azraq Basin, Jordan, and Its Implications for Hominin Dispersals into the Levant (2023)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...
Local Materials, Global Ideas: The Lithic and Symbolic Record from NW Iberia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The NW of the Iberian Peninsula is defined by the scarcity of flint and the predominance of acid soils that prevent the preservation of organic remains. These are the main handicaps affecting Paleolithic research. The lithic assemblages of the Galician Upper Paleolithic sites are defined by the hegemonic use of local...
Local or Exogenous? The Different Facets of Chert During the Gravettian at Vale Boi (Southwestern Portugal) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hunter-gatherers relied strongly on lithic raw materials, making them essential to characterize mobility and land-use, raw material provisioning, technology, social organization, exchange, and the functioning of social networks. As such, the characterization of hunter-gatherer lifeways is often the result of the...
Low-Cost Centripetal Technology in the LSA of Southern Mozambique (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Expedient Technological Behavior: Global Perspectives and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Centripetal lithic technology, including various forms of Levallois technique, is very common in the African MSA. This technology is commonly identified by prepared core technology, where striking platforms are fully prepared to produce a variety of blanks. In Mozambique, both Levallois and prepared discoidal...
Machine Learning for Chronology Building in Regional-Scale Synthesis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chronlogical control is essential for regional-scale research in order to establish contemporaneity or temporal sequences among spatially distributed assemblages. Archaeology has benefitted from advances in radiometric dating methods, as well as statistical protocols for combining dates to achive greater precision age...
Machine Learning Species Identification with ZooMS Collagen Fingerprinting (2018)
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...
Macroscopic Comparative Studies of Archaeological Data: Spatiotemporal Variability in Lithic Technology of Paleolithic Asia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Comparative studies using archaeological data on a broad spatiotemporal scale can provide an overview for investigating significant questions in human history and can promote discussions among scholars from different disciplines. This talk will present the results of a quantitative analysis of lithic technologies from the...
The Magdalenian-Azilian Transition: Contributions from the Rocher de l’Impératrice Rock-shelter (Brittany, France) (2019)
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...