Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
151-175 (499 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Personal ornaments play an important role in our understanding of human cultural and behavioral change during the Upper Paleolithic. Although small, ornaments are often well-preserved, occur in large quantities, vary across space and time, and can shed light on intangible aspects of human lifeways (e.g., identity, relationships, movement, status). However,...
Fracture Mechanics, Virtual Knapper, and Controlled Experiments: Toward a Better Model of Flake Formation (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Insights into flake formation have come from fracture mechanics, controlled experiments, replication studies, and attribute analysis of lithic assemblages. Fracture mechanics would seem to offer great potential for offering insights into how the variables that knappers manipulate actually change flaking outcomes, and its strength is that it is based on...
From Kebara to KwaZulu-Natal: Integrating Micromorphology and Mineralogical Analyses in the Study of Diagenesis in Combustion Features (2015)
Since the 1990’s, Paul Goldberg’s micromorphological analyses at Kebara and Hayonim Caves (Israel) as well as his collaborative efforts to understand chemical diagenesis in caves have served as benchmarks for the high-resolution study of Paleolithic combustion features. This paper highlights the results of micromorphology, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy and microscopic x-ray diffraction measurements, which were employed together order to understand different diagenetic...
From the Canyon to the Staircase: Expanding the Paleolithic Presence in the Arizona Strip (2017)
Evidence of Paleoindian and Paleo-Archaic occupation of the Arizona Strip, in northwest Arizona and southwest Utah, largely remains limited to isolated projectile points found lying on the modern ground surface, dispersed across large swaths of land. Building upon the few isolated finds, this presentation discusses the recent identification of multiple fluted and unfluted lanceolate and Great Basin Stemmed projectile points. In contrast to the few previously known finds, the various projectile...
From the Lab to the Cave and Back: 3D Modeling Finger Flutings (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Finger flutings are lines and markings drawn with the human hand in soft sediments in caves and rock shelters throughout southern Australia, New Guinea, and southwestern Europe that date back to the Late Pleistocene. Over the last two decades, Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder developed a method to determine characteristics of the creators, such as age, sex...
From the Mountains to the Sea: A Deep-Time Perspective on the Heritage of Foods in Papua New Guinea (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) geography ranges from the high alpine mountains of its Highland provinces to remote oceanic islands and is home to a diverse spectrum of subsistence practices, most notably intensive tuber-focused horticulture, but also arboriculture and polycultures featuring many endemic...
From the Mousterian to the Bronze Age: The El Miron Cave Project (Cantabria, Spain), 1996-2018 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Miron Cave has a long, rich cultural sequence dated by 92 radiocarbon assays >46,000-c.500 BP. This large, strategically located site contains traces of Mousterian, Gravettian, Azilian, Mesolithic and historic uses and evidence of more significant occupations of diverse duration, intensity and function throughout the Solutrean, Magdalenian, Neolithic,...
From Triangles to Rectangles: Exploring Change Over Time at the Epipalaeolithic Site of Kharaneh IV, 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 multi-component Epipalaeolithic site of Kharaneh IV, located in the Azraq Basin of eastern Jordan, documents ~1,000 years of occupation by hunter-gatherer groups late in the Last Glacial Maximum. Multiple lines of geomorphological, faunal, and archaeobotanical evidence indicate that the environs around the site were well-watered, lushly vegetated, and...
From Wetlands to Deserts: The Role of Water in the Prehistoric Occupation of Eastern 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. In the Azraq Basin of Jordan, dramatic landscape changes from wetlands to desert resulted in shifts in settlement and land use over time suggesting that, like today, water availability was crucial for past populations. Changing environmental conditions throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene had...
From Zhoukoudian to Shuidonggou: The 100-Year Improvement of Paleolithic Excavation in China (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. For field excavation, it is most important to record and collect as much information as possible due to its non-repeatability. In China, the first formal Paleolithic excavation was in Shuidonggou site on 1923. But the excavation in Zhoukoudian in 1932 attracted more attention not only because the site was located in...
Functional Perspective on the Evolution of Hunting Technology in Africa and Europe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of hunting technology is a key aspect of human behavioral evolution. Many efforts have therefore been made to identify prehistoric projectiles and propulsion modes, especially to determine when long-range...
Further Considerations of Tip Cross-Sectional Area for Determining Projectile Systems (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins and evolution of projectile technology have been a major research focus in paleoanthropology because projectiles are thought to have had crucial impacts on human adaptation and dispersal in the Pleistocene....
A Geoarchaeological Study of Site Formation Processes at Arma Veirana, A Palaeolithic Cave in Liguria, Italy (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. Arma Veirana is a cave situated along the steep flanks of the Neva river valley, ca. 14 km from the modern-day Mediterranean coast in the mountainous interior of Liguria. The cave formed tectonically within marble, schist and other metamorphic rocks and presents a large but relatively short cavity. Excavations since...
Geoarchaeological Survey of the Irtysh River Basin, East Kazakhstan (2018)
Evidence for the earliest human occupation of Eastern Kazakhstan is poorly known, despite it being part one of the largest countries in the world and flanked along its borders with important paleoanthropological sites in Russia and China. We sought evidence of prehistoric sites by foot and vehicle survey around the Irtysh Basin. At each major point of interest we took photographs geotagged with geographic coordinates, and collected global positioning system (GPS) data. Although much of the area...
Geoarchaeology, the French Paleolithic, and Harold (2023)
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. Geoarchaeology requires the practitioner to be versed in both geology and archaeology. To do it right necessitates active participation of other specialists on the team, starting with the archaeologist(s). Without them, even the best geoarchaeological endeavors can fall flat. Both of us...
Geochemical and Sedimentary-Based Reconstruction of the Palaeoenvironment and Formation of the Late Stone Age Site of Txina-Txina (Massingir, Mozambique) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study aimed to reconstruct Txina-Txina site (located between the junction of Machampane and Chifati rivers, Southeastern Mozambique) paleoenvironment and site formation processes to better understand its occupation pattern, preservation of archaeological materials and the impact of palaeoenvironmental changes on human evolution. For this, we collected...
Geographically Broad Social Networks in Southwest Europe during the Solutrean: The Origin of Siliceous Rocks Exploited at Peña Capón (Central Spain) (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 Solutrean of southwest Europe (∼25,000–20,000 cal BP) is an outstanding case for studying human mobility and social networks within harsh environmental conditions, given its coincidence with the Last Glacial Maximum. However, little is known about these topics in the inland territories of the Iberian Peninsula....
Geometric morphometry versus traditional stone artefact typology in the Hoabinhian of northern Vietnam (2017)
Hoabinhian typologies dominate stone artifact analysis in discussions of late Pleistocene archaeology in mainland Southeast Asia. Although, the objective reality of the types in this system has been questioned, there has been little empirical work to test the usefulness of the commonly used types as discrete entities. We collect 3D scan models of 110 artifacts from Mau A, a recently excavated site in northern Vietnam, where the Hoabinhian was was first described. We derive semi-landmarks along...
Getting a Handle on Form and Function: Functional Analysis of Aurignacian Formal Tools from Abri Pataud (Périgord, France) (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. In Paleolithic Europe, the Aurignacian period marks the beginnings of the production of a multitude of formal tools, each with specific typologies that sometimes have been attributed to one or several functions and actions. Functional studies have shown that morphology does not suffice to infer...
GIS-Based Approaches to Obsidian Studies in Eastern Africa (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. Studies of obsidian transport during the Late Pleistocene of eastern Africa have been largely productive for reconstructing raw material procurement patterns and movement across landscapes. Due to a limited sample, however, these studies are often descriptive of particular sites and related explicitly to material...
Give Me Shelter: Reverse Engineering a Paleolithic Home (2019)
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. Humans today are ubiquitous shelter makers but despite this, relatively little is known about the construction of the earliest shelters built by palaeolithic humans. While there is possible evidence for earlier shelters, archaeological evidence in Europe and Asia indicate shelter construction had become...
Good Things Come in Small Packages: Acheulian Small Tool Assemblages from the Shishan Marsh site (Jordan). (2015)
Over the past century, prehistorians studying Acheulian assemblages have focused their energies largely on the handaxe arguing that its iconic symmetrical, tear drop shape can be a window onto the origins and evolution of modern cognition, sociality, language, teaching, skill acquisition, and even symbolic behavior. This focus on the handaxe, and by extension big game hunting, has largely been at the expense of Acheulian small tool and microlithic assemblages and their associated tasks. These...
GSTs and Foodscapes: Unfolding Homo sapiens’ Diet When Venturing the Eurasian Steppe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeogastronomy: Grocery Lists as Seen from a Multidimensional Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The surfaces of lithic artifacts, namely of ground stone tools (GSTs), are a rich repository of structured use-related biogenic residues (SU-RBR) such as starch, revealing the mechanical processing of starch-rich organs, naturally biodegradable and therefore vulnerable. The recovery of SU-RBR on the surfaces of...
Habitat Preferences in Early Hominins and the Origin of the Human Lineage (2018)
Early hominins, such as australopithecines, are characterized by bipedality and enlarged posterior teeth. Originally, these traits were thought to be adaptations to an open environment. However, discoveries of older hominins, such as Ardipithecus that were possibly only occasionally bipedal and did not have enlarged teeth, have refocused the origins of early hominins within a much more closed, wooded setting. Even the later australopithecines are currently cast as inhabitants of mosaic...
Harold Dibble: Skepticism, Null models, and p < 0.05 (2023)
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 thought that one of the most important attributes of a good scientist is deep skepticism. He brought a persistent skepticism to every aspect of his scientific curiosity whether it was in his own field of prehistory or elsewhere. His skepticism also made him argumentative, a...