Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
301-325 (409 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Controlling the use of fire was a technological milestone in human evolution. The beginnings of the control of fire remain controversial because preserved hearths containing a combination of combustion residues are easily altered and their identification in the archaeological record can be hindered by taphonomic biases. Excavations at the Gruta da Aroeira...
Reconstructing the Amanzi Springs Acheulian Site, South Africa, 50 Years after Hilary Deacon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Amanzi Springs Acheulian site in South Africa was first excavated by Ray Inskeep and then Hilary Deacon for his Masters project in the 1960s. Deacon excavated two spring he designated Areas 1 and 2 and this work suggested that Amanzi Springs preserved stratified Acheulian bearing deposits, something rare in the South African archaeological record. The...
Reconstruction of pyrotechnology connected with the earliest pottery. Micromorphology and -FTIR at Xianrendong and Yuchanyan, South China. (2018)
The sites of Xianrendong (Jiangxi) and Yuchanyan (Hunan), China, contain the earliest pottery yet discovered, dating respectively 20,000 cal BP and 18,600 cal BP. This pottery is found in otherwise Late Paleolithic, hunter-gatherer contexts. To understand human activities at these caves we employed micromorphology and -FTIR on the sediments. Here we present the results of analysis of the layers containing combustion episodes, which suggest low heating temperatures at both sites. and infer...
A Regional Perspective on the Final MSA in KwaZulu-Natal, 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. The final MSA of southern Africa (~40–28ka) represents one of the most understudied technocomplexes in this part of the world. Researchers often focused on earlier time periods or those shortly after, encompassing the transition between Middle and Later Stone Age....
The Relationship between Knapping Technology and Stone Use in the MSA Landscape of Northern Butana in Sudan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022 we recorded more than 40 variously dense stone artifact concentrations of the Middle Stone Age in northern Butana between the Nile Valley and the Atbara paleolake in east-central Sudan. In general, the entire region between the Upper Egypt and the Ethiopian Highlands has seen very little...
Residue Analysis in Chinese Paleolithic Studies: Perspectives and Case Studies (2015)
Archaeological plant residue analysis has developed considerably in China during the last ten years. In terms of the Paleolithic, state of the art technology has been broadly and successfully applied by archaeologists at various sites. Issues about stone tool function, plant use, the origin of agriculture and the like can now be deeply discussed with the direct evidence of residues from stone artifacts. This is the case for either chipped stone or ground stone tools. However, this technology...
Rethinking the Variability of Cobble-Tool Industry in South China and Southeast Asia during Late Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The lithic industry of South China has been characterized as simple "cobble-tool" industry persisting from early Pleistocene to Holocene and the most representative industry of Southeast Asia was also marked by pebble-tool techno-complex termed Hoabinhian during late Pleistocene-early Holocene. The possible cultural link of the...
Rethinking Trees, Species and Hybridization in Recent Human Evolution (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. Models of recent human evolution are fundamentally rooted in the idea of tree-like genealogies and species concepts, regardless of the specifics. The range of explanatory models has elicited some consideration of the need for flexibility, yet without a reconsideration of the fundamental heuristics, we are...
Revealing Hominin Occupation of the Western Margin of the Red Sea Basin: Recent Progress (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 western periphery of the Red Sea (WPRS) occupies a pivotal location as a potential biogeographic corridor for hominin movement between Africa and Southwest Asia. Its long, coastal niche that once extended into the Danakil Depression would have made the WPRS a natural destination for hominins dispersing from the...
Revisiting the Evolutionary Significance of Stone Tools (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. Because lithics preserve better than almost any other trace of human existence in the deep past, they receive the lion’s share of attention from Pleistocene archaeologists. In this paper we explore the theoretical and practical limitations of using lithics as subjects of evolutionary analyses. We base our...
Revisiting the Rolland and Dibble Synthesis: The Emergence of Artifact Retouch and Artifact Density Variability in Paleolithic Assemblages (2023)
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 Rolland and Dibble synthesis was an ambitious attempt to reframe the interpretation of Middle Paleolithic variability. The model postulates that Middle Paleolithic assemblage variability is continuous in nature, driven principally by raw material availability and occupation intensity....
Rock Music: The Sounds of Flintknapping (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. All natural substances have intrinsic acoustical properties. Flint, obsidian, and basalt, because of their comparable structure, have very similar sound properties. We explore here whether every piece of knappable stone, within certain parameters, will produce the same fundamental pitch along with its associated partials. The partials of the harmonic sequence...
Rocks through the Ages: A 360° Geometric Morphometric Approach to Middle Pleistocene Bifacial Technological Variability in Central Armenia (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 applies a three-dimensional landmark-based geometric morphometric (GM) technique to evaluate chronological variation in Acheulian bifacial technology during the Middle Pleistocene of Armenia. This analysis utilizes 360° documentation of biface shape to supplement more commonly used single-surface and outline GM approaches. Furthermore, traditional...
The Role of Artifact Functional Analysis in Understanding Variation in the Archaeological Record: Assessments from Studies on Tool Design and Use (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding artifact variability observed in archaeological assemblages may untangle key dynamics marking the evolution of major human behavioral traits. Variability likely reflects technological changes allowing early hominins to respond to dynamic Pleistocene environments and evolving...
The Role of Parsimony in Archaeological Inference Building (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In archaeology, distinct processes in the past can generate similar patterning in the material record under varying temporal and spatial scales. Facing this challenge of equifinality, archaeologists frequently use parsimony to help assess competing explanatory models by preferring simpler explanations over more complex ones. However, there is little...
Roots and Tubers in Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene China: Experimental Paleoethnobotany and Preliminary Case Studies (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent advances in paleoethnobotanical research reveal that plants have been critical to the human diet for longer and in more diverse ways than previously assumed. This paper addresses the relative dearth of paleoethnobotanical information on the early uses of vegetatively propagated plants in China, despite their significant representation in modern...
The Scientific Method in Paleolithic Archaeology (2018)
Paleoanthropological hypotheses are often qualitatively different from questions asked by scientists studying the evolution of other living groups. They are frequently complex and very specific. Rather than seeking to illuminate basic evolutionary processes and mechanisms, they focus on precisely reconstructing events in human prehistory. They are often driven, at least in part, by public interest. These characteristics can enhance paleoanthropological studies because they foster novel research...
The Scientific Method in Paleolithic Archaeology (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. Paleoanthropological hypotheses are often qualitatively different from questions asked by scientists studying the evolution of other living groups. They are frequently complex and very specific. Rather than seeking to illuminate basic evolutionary processes and mechanisms, they focus on...
Searching for Clues of Neanderthal Occupation and Mobility in Combustion Structure Residues: A Micromorphological and Biomarker Study of El Salt Unit Xb, Alcoy, Spain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Neanderthal lithic and faunal record shows a short-term occupation, high mobility trend throughout Eurasia. Although combustion structures, which are numerous and well preserved in most Middle Paleolithic sites, play a central role in short-term occupations, they have not been sufficiently investigated from a...
Searching for the Denisovans (2018)
In 2010, a finger bone discovered in Siberia was assigned using DNA to a previously unknown human group, the Denisovans. The Denisovans interbred with both Asian Neanderthals and modern humans over the past 100,000 years; their geographic distribution is now thought to have stretched from the Siberian steppes to the tropical forests of SE Asia and Oceania. Despite their broad spatio-temporal range, the Denisovans are only known from 4 bones, all from a single cave. This patchy knowledge of an...
Sedimentary Ancient DNA Metabarcoding for the Recognition of Human Plant Use at Aghitu-3 Cave, 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. Our knowledge of plants used by Upper Paleolithic humans is limited by the survival of identifiable plant parts. In this study, we present the results of ancient DNA studies of cave sediments from Aghitu-3 Cave in the Armenian Highlands. The cave contains a detailed record of human settlement and environmental...
Several Fallacies Handicap Thinking Regarding Pleistocene LCTs: For Example, the Victorian Pet Name “Handaxe” Has Biased Minds with Assumed Behavior for 150 Years (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several persistent fallacies have resulted in truncated and stagnated development of thought regarding lithic large cutting tools. First, the big one: the Victorian era nickname “handaxe” is nearly ubiquitous, hides as a clever and well-known and harmless handle for the whole tool class, but stealthily, and mainly without questioning, presupposes that the...
Shacks and Scraps: Understanding Middle Epipaleolithic Site Structure in the Southern Levant through Taphonomic Analysis of Faunal Refuse (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We explored the spatial organization of the Middle Epipaleolithic site of Neve David (Mt. Carmel, Israel) through macro and micro contextual taphonomy of ungulate bones. The Epipaleolithic (23,000-11,500 cal BP) of the southern Levant is renowned for its cultural diversity, culminating with the complex hunter-gather Natufian culture. Emerging research from...
Shaping Hominin Cognition: A Comparative Three-dimensional Shape Analysis of LCTs and Cores from the Early Acheulean at Kokiselei 4, West Turkana, Kenya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of ‘shaping’ abilities in hominin lithic technology involved increases in higher-order cognition including forward planning, working memory, and spatial reasoning. Longstanding assumptions engrained in lithic typologies claimed that "Long Core Tools" (LCTs), such as "handaxes", were the earliest shaped lithics....
Shedding New Light on Upper Paleolithic Cultural Landscapes of Northern Mongolia (2018)
Ongoing research on the Pleistocene of northern Mongolia has revealed intriguing patterns in the Upper Paleolithic cultural landscapes of the region. The distribution of sites suggest that maintaining social networks was potentially as significant as subsistence and shelter considerations for these early nomadic hunter-gatherers. In 2017, fifteen new Upper Paleolithic sites were documented in the Ikh Tolboriin Gol (Big Tolbor River, n=45) and Naryn Tolboriin Gol (Narrow Tolbor River, n=9)...