Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
251-275 (409 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Current data from Africa and Eurasia suggest that the intercontinental transition from bifacial to hierarchical core technology occurred independently within different geographically dispersed hominin populations already adept at a variety of complex knapping procedures inherent to the Acheulean. The episodic...
A North American Plains Perspective on the East European Paleolithic (2018)
For historical reasons, the Middle and Upper Paleolithic record of Europe has been viewed largely through the prism of rockshelters in the southwestern corner of the continent. Europe is dominated geographically, however, by an immense plain that stretches from the Carpathians to the Ural Mountains, much of which is devoid of natural shelters. Vance Holliday has made a significant contribution to the study of soils, stratigraphy, and site-formation process in open-air Middle and Upper...
(Nut) Cracking the Code of Primate Cognition (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Old Technology, New Methodology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of percussive actions to access encased foods—e.g., nuts—has been proposed as a viable hypothesis to explain the emergence of stone tool technology in the hominin lineage. Observations of extant nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) or black-striped capuchins (Sapajus libidinosus) nut-cracking have been used to support the...
Oh Deer: A Zooarchaeological Approach to Understanding Hominin Behavior during the Last Interglacial (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of hominin subsistence behavior during the Last Interglacial is limited. Le Grand Abri aux Puces (GAP), a cave in Southern France in the foothills of the Alps, can provide a closer look into subsistence behavior as most of its layers are dated to the Last Interglacial. It has been suggested that hominins living around GAP during...
The Old Stone Age in the Shammakh-to-Ayl Archaeological Survey Area, west-central Jordan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chipped stone artifacts are nearly ubiquitous throughout the Middle East, and Jordan is no exception. Virtually indestructible, they testify to a human presence that extends back as far as 1.5 million years. They are commonly found on the deflated uplands of the...
On the Edge of the Kalahari: New Excavations of the Middle Stone Age Deposits at Olieboomspoort, 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. Olieboomspoort is one of the few rockshelters in South Africa documenting phases of use going back to the Acheulean and up until the very end of the Later Stone Age. Previous work has focused on the recent phases, consistent with traces left by the last...
On the Margin, Marginal Too? A Western Outpost of Paleolithic Cantabrian Cave Art (NW Iberia) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Franco-Cantabrian group of cave art ranks among the best known examples of Paleolithic symbolic behavior. For more than a century no decorated cave was reported beyond the Nalón Valley in the center of Asturias, until the carvings and paintings from Cova Eirós were discovered. At more than 100 km from the Nalón,...
On the Origin of Cultures (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. As an analytic category, a culture shares many of the same difficulties that a species has in biology: notably, fuzzy boundaries, temporal instability, and extensive substructuring, which render it difficult to define adequately and comprehensively. Nevertheless, the symbolic world or semiotic matrix that...
Opening Remarks: The Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology of Non-modern Humans (2018)
The study of archaic hominins (non-modern humans) poses some unique challenges to archaeological interpretation, and relies on close integration of archaeological data with those from other allied fields including palaeoanthropology, genetics, primatology, and ethnography. In this opening paper, I reflect on some of the recent advances and discoveries in these fields which are changing the ways in which we both conduct and conceptualise research in to non-modern humans in archaeology. I then...
Organic Molecular Proxies for Fire in Archaeological Sediments (2018)
A number of different direct and indirect proxies are used to identify fire at archaeological sites. We propose a new organic molecular proxy for identification of anthropogenic fire in archaeological sediments, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These molecules are a byproduct of the incomplete combustion of organic biomass, and are preserved well on deep time scales. We applied this proxy to Lusakert Cave, a Middle Paleolithic site in the Hrazdan Gorge, Armenia. From these same samples,...
Organization of Technology at Solak-1, an Upper Paleolithic Open-Air Site in the Armenian Highlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Solak-1 is an Upper Paleolithic open-air site located in central Armenia discovered by the Kotayk Survey Project. An obsidian-rich lithic assemblage totaling about 2,500 artifacts was recovered from six stratified horizons and subjected to techno-typological attribute analysis. Core reduction appears predominantly...
An Organization of Technology Model and Archaeological Inference (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late twentieth century, the investigation of settlement patterns and mobility were considered important archaeological endeavors. Analyzing stone tools assemblages to make inferences of group mobility was based on utilizing simple dichotomies. For stone tools, the concepts of curated and expedient dominated thinking. Likewise, the constructs of...
Origins of Parietal Art: Evidence from the Archaeological Record (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interpretation of drawings and engravings rely on our unique ability to internally process visual information and identify recognizable patterns. This same ability processes imaginary patterns, such as animals and faces of people in geological formations, clouds, and stars. The phenomenon of identifying imaginary patterns, referred to as “pareidolia,”...
Out with a Whimper or a Bang? Hunter-Gatherer Response to the End of the African Humid Period in Northern Malawi (2018)
The modern climate of the southernmost African Rift Valley is characterized by a single warm-wet season, which receives almost all annual precipitation. The other six months are arid, and surface water is confined to major river and lake features. In the northern basin of Lake Malawi, at the southern extent of the modern ITCZ, core records show a rapid increase in water surface temperatures peaking at ~5.5 ka, followed by a major expansion of grasslands. This coincides with the end of the...
An Overview of the Mousterian and Final Epigravettian at Arma Veirana (Liguria, Northwestern 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. This paper presents preliminary results of the first four years of archaeological investigation at the cave site of Arma Veirana, located near Erli (Savona), in western Liguria. The site has yielded in situ Middle and Upper Paleolithic deposits containing a variety of artifacts. One of the project’s principal goals to...
Paleoanthropology and Pedagogy: Raising Horizons for the Next Generations (2018)
The 21st century will be remembered as a period of exponential change within paleoanthropology. Though such developments pose academic challenges, an overlooked issue is how we communicate this information to students. A constantly changing foundation of knowledge that increasingly requires an understanding of complex theoretical techniques, coupled with the importance of student satisfaction surveys, educators are faced with a pedagogical dilemma: stick with ‘established’ teaching methods...
Paleocurrents in a Least-Cost Pathway Model of Human Dispersal from Sunda to Sahul, 65 – 45 Kya (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The timing of human colonization of Sahul, potentially as early as 65 ka (up from the previous 42 ka) has revised our understanding of the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMH). This movement represents, to date, the earliest known AMH long distance migration by sea, implying significant levels of complex language, marine technology, and colonization...
PALEOENVIRONMENTAL AND PALEOCLIMATIC RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CRVENA STIJENA SITE (MONTENEGRO, SOUTH EUROPE) (2023)
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. The small vertebrates from Crvena Stijena are a good proxy for the investigation of the changes in the ecosystems in the past, related to climatic variations. We investigate the local paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic changes that occurred in the area and compare the...
The Paleolithic Archaeology of Shirak Province (Armenia) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within Shirak Province in the Republic of Armenia, the open-air site complex at Aghvorik is currently the most prominent site. The Paleolithic sites of Shirak are geomorphologically associated with the Ashotsk Plateau in the north, the Shirak Depression and northwestern slopes of Mt. Aragats in the south, and the...
Paleolithic Art and Ritual: An Exploration on Human Activity inside Caves in Southwestern Europe (2018)
Caves provide a privileged context for the study of Prehistoric ritual activity. Inside them, we enjoy the unique possibility of directly observing and analyzing spatial features that have hardly changed (and in some cases have not changed at all) since the Paleolithic. However, the poor preservation of the archaeological evidence during the earliest years of the research, and particularly the enormous cultural gap between the Paleolithic codes and systems of beliefs and the modern observers...
A Paleolithic Bird Figurine from the Lingjing Site, Henan, China (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Carving a figurine requires the ability to mentally visualize a volume in matter and create symmetries in a three-dimensional space. During the Paleolithic, such objects were likely made to be transported, curated, manipulated, and hung on clothing. Thus far, no instances of three-dimensional portable art were documented in East Asia before the Neolithic. We...
Paleolithic Occupations at Riparo Bombrini (Liguria, Italy): Understanding the Spatial Organization of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of Liguria: Recent Research and Insights" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Riparo Bombrini (Liguria, Italy) offers a unique setting to compare the spatial organization of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens occupations in a single archaeological site. The disappearance of Neanderthals is one of the greatest debates in prehistory since the period of their decline corresponds to the...
Pedagogy in the Paleolithic? The Influence of Verbal Teaching on Stone Knapping Skill Acquisition (2018)
Teaching is uniquely developed in humans and was likely critical to the emergence of cumulative culture. However, the importance of various forms of teaching, including the use of language, in transmitting Paleolithic skills like stone knapping is less understood. Here we examine the knapping behaviors of 17 subjects who learned to make Oldowan and Acheulian stone tools from watching video demonstrations either with verbal instruction or without sound. Despite intriguing differences in brain...
Peopling of Jeju in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene (2017)
Paleolithic sties in Jeju Island have been found in the Quaternary sediment layers that are related to volcanic activities. Accordingly, research has been closely related to the geological investigation on sediment formation and volcanic activities. This presentation focuses on two Paleolithic sites, Oeododong along the north coast and Sangsugae cave along the south coast. The Oedodong site contains choppers and is dated to 32,000 BP; the Sangsugae cave site represents the Terminal Pleistocene,...
Peopling the Paleolithic: Demographic Approaches to Earliest Prehistory (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Peopling the Past: Critically Evaluating Settlement and Regional Population Estimates with New Methods and Demographic Modeling" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With its sparse and often fragmentary human fossil record, comparatively limited range of material culture, and almost total absence of structural evidence, reconstructing local and regional population levels in the Paleolithic is especially difficult. Focusing...