Modern Human Origins (Other Keyword)
1-5 (5 Records)
About 50,000 years ago, modern humans expanded from Africa to Eurasia. Significant behavioral change accompanied this expansion, and archaeologists commonly seek its roots in the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) before 50,000 years ago. Easily recognizable art objects and "jewelry" become common only in sites that postdate the MSA in Africa and Eurasia, but some MSA sites contain possible precursors. Population growth is the most popular explanation for these precursors and for the post-MSA...
Coastal marine resource exploitation during the Late Pleistocene at Contrebandiers Cave (Temara, Morocco) (2016)
Increasingly, researchers have considered the role of coastal marine resource exploitation in influencing the trajectory of human behavioral and biological evolution, specifically relating to modern human origins. However, these models have focused almost exclusively on the relatively rich and well-documented record from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of coastal South Africa. Here, we present data on coastal marine resource exploitation during the Late Pleistocene at Contrebandiers Cave [La Grotte...
Cost Thresholds and Differential Resource Exploitation Behavior during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic in Southwest France (2016)
"Specialization" and "generalization" are used as descriptors for Paleolithic subsistence behavior, particularly when differentiating the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. These terms, however, dichotomize and obscure the complexity of subsistence decision-making. Instead, it is more productive to investigate whether Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMH) differed in their perception of thresholds of cost versus gain in processing food. These thresholds are points beyond which the...
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....
Semiosis in the Pleistocene Scene (2017)
One of the distinctive aspects of human behavior is the ability to think symbolically. However, the ability to track this capacity archaeologically is complicated by debates on what makes an object symbolic. Rather than initially asking if materials are symbols/symbolic, we offer that it may be better to ask if and how they are signs. A more nuanced view of "symbol" in the archaeological record, combined with aspects of Peircean semiotics, can help to bridge the gap between the material record...