Middle Paleolithic (Other Keyword)
1-19 (19 Records)
It is common for open air sites dating to the Pleistocene to lack organic preservation, including bone. Many of these sites also do not contain features such as hearths. Therefore, the dominant signal that remains is the result of lithic reduction. Because knapping is a reductive process, it creates a large amount of waste material and this debris dominates the artifact count numerically and volumetrically. Lithic pieces associated with other types of activities, such as wood working or...
Arabian Late Pleistocene lithic variability and its implications for hominin behavior and demography (2016)
The last five years have seen a rapid acceleration in research on Late Pleistocene Arabia. A growing number of Late Pleistocene archaeological sites have now been identified. While Pleistocene hominin fossil remains are currently unknown in Arabia, a fast expanding corpus of faunal remains and paleoenvironmental archives provide important contextual information for hominin occupations. Claims have been made for close similarities between Arabian and broadly contemporary East and Northeast...
An Assessment of small game exploitation at Gruta Nova da Columbeira in the Middle Paleolithic (Portugal) (2017)
In Europe, differences in subsistence between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans are one of the ways in which archaeologists detect behavioral shifts in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. In this paper, I present faunal and stable isotopic analyses of Oryctolagus cuniculus (the European wild rabbit) from levels C.6, C.7, C.8 and C.9 of Gruta Nova da Columbeira, a Mousterian cave site located in central Portugal. I use these data to test two subsistence models: 1. Anatomically...
Biogeography of Neandertals: The Southern Italian Middle Paleolithic (2015)
Most research on the Middle Paleolithic in southern Italy has focused on the region of Apulia. This research has been extensive and productive, and so it stands to reason that other less researched regions of southern Italy hold similar potential. This paper uses predictive niche modeling to identify Neandertal niche from site location and environmental variables in Apulia, and applies the modeled niche to under researched regions to predict locations of new Middle Paleolithic sites. The model...
A Brief Review of the Work of Paul Goldberg in SW France (2015)
There are few researchers who have achieved the breadth of experience of Paul Goldberg, whose work spans almost every continent on the planet, and from the early Pleistocene to the Holocene. There are some regions, however, that have greatly benefited from his expertise, including SW France. In this paper we will review some of his work here, beginning with his dissertation work at the site of Pech de l’Azé II, and over the past 14 years at the sites of Pech de l’Azé I and IV, Roc de Marsal,...
Changes in occupational patterns during the Middle Paleolithic: the case of Teixoneres Cave Unit III (MIS 3, Moià, Barcelona, Spain) (2016)
The aim of this work is to contribute to the debate about Neanderthal behavioral diversity from the Middle Paleolithic site of Teixoneres Cave (MIS 3, Barcelona, Spain). During the formation of Unit-III, the landscape was dominated by a deciduous forest with wet meadows and a progressive climatic tendency toward cooling and aridity. The alternation between large carnivores and human groups marks the upper part of the unit. In this sub-unit, human occupations correspond to small groups that...
Chipped Stone Artifacts (2007)
Implement making is a definite human characteristic. Since the beginning, primitive man made and used artifacts. Some were fashioned for tools; others for weapons; still others were made for ornamental and ceremonial purposes. One of the major tasks of an archaeologist is the collection and classification of these artifacts.
Cutmark Orientation and the Identification of Skill in Experimental and Middle Paleolithic Contexts (2017)
The process of skill accumulation can reveal a great deal about learning, cultural transmission, and the value ascribed by societies to particular tasks or behaviors. Such information is of great interest to Paleolithic archaeologists who are charged with reconstructing these behaviors over vast expanses of space and time. Zooarchaeological remains, and the butchery marks that appear on them, are a potentially rich source of information on skill. Here, we present experimental data on cutmark...
Late Mousterian Industrial Variability in Southwestern France: A Case of Abri Peyrony (2015)
Variability of late Neandertal technological behavior has been a long debated question in which sites from southwestern France figure prominently. As suggested by some, rich datasets from this region show a pattern of chronological sequencing of late Mousterian technocomplexes. According to this model that assumes technocomplexes reflect different cultural groups among Neandertals, Quina Mousterian is always followed by Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition (MTA) and discoidal-denticulate is...
The Lower-Middle Paleolithic transition(s) – Between Southern and northern France a look from the Bifacial technologies perspective (2015)
The division of the Paleolithic era into the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic is an arbitrary research construct that confounds chronological, behavioral and evolutionary aspects. The Lower/Middle Paleolithic transition has received lesser attention. This transition is depicted as a worldwide change from biface production to flake production through Levallois flaking systems, similar to the way it has been perceived in the initial stages of research. Yet, some European Middle Paleolithic...
Manot 1 brain characteristics (2017)
Manot is a nearly-sealed, active karstic cave located in the hilly landscape of the western Galilee, Israel. It contains abundant archaeological accumulations attributed to the early phase of the Upper Palaeolithic (UP) period as well as evidence for the Middle Palaeolithic (MP). During the initial survey of the cave (2008), a nearly complete calvaria (Manot 1) was found. The specimen was dated to ~55 ky by the U-Th method. In an earlier study, Hershkovitz et al 2015 described the...
Middle Paleolithic Land Use and Behavior in the Armenian Highlands: A Preliminary Synthesis (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. Over the last two decades, international-Armenian projects have greatly expanded and refined the Middle Paleolithic (MP) record in the Armenian Highlands. Here, we preliminarily synthesize current chronometric, lithic, and faunal evidence. Our goal is to develop some hypotheses on hominin land use, subsistence, and...
Neandertal subsistence at the Late Mousterian site of Abri Peyrony, France (2015)
Beginning in 2009, the late Middle Paleolithic site of Abri Peyrony (also Haut de Combe-Capelle, as part of the Combe-Capelle sites, Dordogne, France) was reopened. Three seasons of fieldwork yielded rich lithic and faunal assemblages, as well as pieces of manganese dioxide, bone tools, and much needed information about the site’s formation and antiquity. The site yielded only Mousterian levels. Level L-3A is attributed to the Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA). The remaining levels,...
Neanderthal mobility in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula: the patterns of chert exploitation at the Abric Romaní rock-shelter (2015)
Understanding the changes in the technological organization of prehistoric hunter-gatherers is important to research into hominin foraging activities. During the Middle Paleolithic, the coexistence or the replacement between Levallois and discoid technologies has frequently been recorded, but there is still no clear understanding of the reasons for their alternating and fragmented use in the archaeological record. This paper aims to contribute with new data to the current debate, by exploring...
Neanderthal Short-Term Occupations in Open-Air Sites: An Overview from Eastern Germany (2017)
Prehistoric hunter-gatherers frequently relocated in order to avoid foraging in previously depleted areas, and lakes and rivers played important roles in these movements as fix locations on the landscape where foragers could have access to water and ambush parched animals. The types of human occupations along lakes and rivers could have been various according to the aims of displacements (e.g., logistical, residential) and the activities carried out at the shore (e.g., bivouac, hunting station,...
Phytolith Analysis at Roc de Marsal, SW France (2016)
Phytolith analysis at Roc de Marsal, a Middle Paleolithic cave site, SW France, is used to investigate both environmental change and hominin behavior. Specifically, the aims include correlating phytolith types with the microenvironmental context of the site, and how these conditions changed diachronically. We also explore the pyrotechnological skills of Neanderthals at the site, broad patterns of plant acquisition and use, and spatial differentiation. Preliminary analysis of phytolith samples...
Spatial Differences in Site Use at the Middle Paleolithic site of Lakonis (Peloponnese, Greece) (2017)
Lakonis is a Middle Paleolithic rockshelter on the coast of the Mani Peninsula of southern Greece. It is well-known for the preservation of a Neandertal tooth in the late Middle Paleolithic layers, which is one of the few Pleistocene hominin remains from Greece. The site preserves several occupation areas spanning 120,000-40,000 BP. Lithic and faunal remains are abundant, though the faunas are highly fragmented due to heavy concretion of the sediments. During excavation, researchers defined at...
Taphonomic analysis of the small mammal assemblage of Hayonim E:implications for paleoecology of the southern Levant during MIS 6 (2017)
This study presents the taphonomic history of the small mammal assemblage of Hayonim E, Israel, and compares it to those of other Middle Paleolithic (MP) sites. Levantine paleoecological changes during the MP have implications for hominin dispersal into the region. It has been suggested that a comparison of faunal assemblages from Hayonim (160–130 Kya), Qafzeh (120–90 kya) and Amud (75–45 kya) indicate a shift between glacial and interglacial fauna which mirror dispersals by Neanderthals and...
Technological adaptation and the emergence of Levallois in Central Europe: new insight from Markkleeberg and Zwockau open-air sites (2016)
The introduction of Levallois method in Europe is considered the technological innovation that marked the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic. In north-central Europe, the early evidences of this new concept of flake production are dated to the late MIS 9/ early MIS 8, a period in which were testified a deterioration of the climatic condition, a change from forested to tundra -cold steppe vegetation and the dispersal of the “Mammuthus - Coelodonta” faunal complex from the artic territories. This...