Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
401-409 (409 Records)
Large scale surface surveys represent singular insights into the landscape scale variation in behaviors. Detailed investigations of the spatial distribution of artifacts across large spatial extents allow archaeologists to investigate a landscape as a single site. Surface assemblages have the advantage of large sample sizes and large aerial extents. However, biases associated with the formation processes of surface assemblages often undermine our confidence in the behavioral inferences derived...
Why Build When There Are Caves? Investigating the Construction and Use of a Stone Structure in Pleistocene France (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. The Late Pleistocene in Western Europe is the origin of the idea of the "caveman," and the majority of research has historically focused on cave sites. In regions of Europe where caves are not present but archaeological evidence is, the assumption is that people used lightweight ephemeral shelters such as...
The Wooden Club: The Oldest Weapon or Myth? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a popular idea that archaic humans commonly used wooden clubs as their weapons. This is not based on archaeological finds, which are minimal from the Pleistocene, but rather on a few ethnographic analogies and the association of this weapon with simple technology. This paper presents the first quantitative cross-cultural analysis of the use of...
You're Going to Carry that Weight a Long Time (2018)
Mobility is a phenomenon of importance across all past and present societies. For hunter-gatherers, mobility structures ecological strategies, social organization, and response to environmental change. For prehistoric societies, we cannot observe mobility but it is possible to study it through a proxy record of discarded material items and biological remains that form the archaeological record. Increasingly archaeological practice has shifted from proposing intuitive links between mobility and...
You’ve Got Tools: Evaluating Comparability Among 3D Lithic Angle Measurement Tools (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is widely accepted that angle measurements taken on lithic artifacts form a crucial part of lithic analysis. Thanks to advances in 3D-scanning technology, researchers now have virtual angle-measuring options. However, since these new virtual tools were created independently and thus are utilizing their own “suite” of algorithms dependent on the...
Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Late Pleistocene Cave Site in Northwestern Italy, Arma Veirana (2018)
Italy serves as a critically important region for better understanding the late Pleistocene as it was home to Neandertals and other hominins. Archaeological excavation in northwestern Italy at the cave site of Arma Veirana, with layers dating back to 44 ka, intends to provide insight into this ambiguous period in prehistory. Preliminary data from zooarchaeological analysis of 1,414 specimens indicate that Neandertals primarily hunted medium-sized bovid/cervids, including Capra ibex, Cervus...
Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Late Pleistocene Interglacial-Glacial Transition at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6, South Africa (2018)
Understanding if and to what extent early anatomically modern humans adapted to dramatic climatic events is essential to human origins research. Pinnacle Point — a complex of cave sites and rockshelters along the southern coast of South Africa — offers a unique opportunity to study human adaptability through time. The long sequence at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6 (PP5-6) spans 164 - 44 thousand years ago and encompasses two Interglacial to Glacial Marine Isotope Stage transitions (Stages 5-4-3)....
Zooarchaeological insights into modern human mobility at Riparo Bombrini (2018)
Human-environmental interactions can be discussed on different scales, and from diverse perspectives and specializations in archaeology. We propose to examine human mobility on the local scale of Riparo Bombrini, a key site in Northwest Italy to understand Anatomically Modern Human dispersals along the Mediterranean coast during the early Upper Paleolithic. Previous studies including spatial, lithic, and raw material data revealed distinct mobility signatures from the site’s two Protoaurignacian...
Zooarchaeology and Taphonomy of Unit III in the Middle Paleolithic Site of Nesher Ramla (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Levantine Middle Paleolithic period plays a crucial role in human origins research, encompassing vast cognitive and technological developments. Faunal remains are an important source of knowledge regarding hunting patterns, reflecting both human behavior and subsistence strategies. This paper addresses questions of hunting, transport, butchery patterns and...