The Shape of Change: A Cross-Regional Exploration of Relationships between Biface and Prepared Core Technologies In Eurasia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This research examines and compares the origins of Levallois technology and its relationship with Lower Palaeolithic bifacial production systems in the Armenian Highlands and Britain. While some argue for a single African origin for Levallois technology, increasingly support is found for a multiple origins model in which it independently evolves out of underlying technology in different regions of Africa and Eurasia. It has been proposed that the technology is realized through the evolution of either Lower Palaeolithic core technology or Acheulian bifaces. We explore these hypotheses by examining the relationships between early Levallois technology, proposed transitional types, and Lower Palaeolithic production systems in geographically discrete regions. The sites of Nor Geghi-1 (Armenia) and Purfleet (Britain) are the focus here, as they contain evidence for the in-situ development of Levallois technology. Landmark-based geometric morphometrics is applied to 3D scans of lithic artifacts from Lower–Middle Palaeolithic sites in the two regions. As this research is focused on morphological characteristics, we also explore factors that may affect shape diversity, i.e., raw material, size, and reduction intensity. Our results indicate that the appearance of Levallois prepared core technology is the outcome of distinctive processes in the two study regions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51841