Rocks through the Ages: A 360° Geometric Morphometric Approach to Middle Pleistocene Bifacial Technological Variability in Central Armenia

Summary

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 metric classification schemes are used to contextualize the source of variation documented by GM. Structured light 3D-scanning is employed in this research to obtain highly-accurate models of bifaces from three Armenian Middle Pleistocene assemblages for use in GM analysis. Bifaces from Hatis I (>MIS 11), Nor Geghi I-South (~MIS 11), and Nor Geghi I-North (MIS 9e) reveal a sequential pattern of expansion and retraction in biface variability. Principal component analysis and metric classifications suggest that this variation is consistent with a chronological trend from elongated pointed forms to discoidal forms. Additionally, this trend reveals a shift from maintenance of rounded proximal ends to reduction strategies that produce flatter proximal areas. Similar trajectories in Western Europe are rationalized as a product of the linear evolution of form, differences in resharpening behaviors, or raw material dissimilarities. These explanations as well as considerations of reduction strategies, social learning, and the relationship between core and biface shape trajectories are investigated.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24831