Chris Hunt

Liverpool John Moores University | LJMU · School of Natural Sciences and Psychology

Research on Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer diet has focused on the consumption of animals. Evidence for the use of plant foods is comparatively limited but is rapidly expanding. The authors present an analysis of carbonised macro-remains of processed plants from Franchthi Cave in the Aegean Basin and Shanidar Cave in the north-west Zagros Mountains....

Résumé Le Moustérien du Zagros est un complexe lithique techno-typologique du Paléolithique moyen trouvé dans les montagnes du Zagros, en Irak et en Iran. Il est associé à des restes squelettiques de Néandertaliens dans quatre sites archéologiques, dont le plus célèbre est la grotte de Shanidar. Sa chronologie pose problème, mais tout porte à croir...

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

In part 1 of this work we discussed the possibilities for the selection of a GSSP for the Berriasian Stage of the Cretaceous System, based on prevailing practical methods for correlation in that J/K interval, traditional usage and the consensus over the best boundary markers that had developed in the last forty years. This consensus has developed f...

Abstract. In part 1 of this work we discussed the possibilities for the selection of a GSSP for the Berriasian Stage of the Cretaceous System, based on prevailing practical methods for correlation in that J/K interval, traditional usage and the consensus over the best boundary markers that had developed in the last forty years. This consensus has d...

Here in the first part of this publication we discuss the possibilities for the selection of a GSSP for the Berriasian Stage of the Cretaceous System, based on the established methods for correlation in the Tithonian/Berriasian interval. This will be followed, in the second part, by an account of the stratigraphic evidence that justifies the locali...

Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan became an iconic Palaeolithic site after Ralph Solecki’s discoveries in 1951-1960 of 10 Neanderthals, some of whom he argued had died in rockfalls and others–controversially–buried with formal burial rites, including one with flowers. New excavations began in 2015. In 2018 the team discovered the articulated upper b...

Annual growth patterns in marine mollusc shells are valuable indicators of the condition of marine ecology through time. In archaeological contexts, the mollusc's time of death (i.e. the last season of growth) is an indicator of human exploitation patterns throughout the year, enabling the reconstruction of when and how often gathering occurred as...

Since 2009 the Berriasian Working Group (ISCS, ICS) has been searching for the best sequence globally to represent the Tithonian/Berriasian (Jurassic/Cretaceous) boundary. To take this forward, it has made field assessments of more than sixty localities, documenting their sequences, fossil biotas and magnetostratigraphy. Only on such a sound factua...

Abstract The dry limestone geology of the Maltese islands presented a challenging environment to prehistoric communities, who required reliable water sources to support agricultural subsistence. Ġgantija, one of the iconic Maltese Late Neolithic Temples on Gozo, and now a World Heritage Site, was surveyed using Ground Penetrating Radar to reveal a...

Whilst there has been significant interest in the origins and spread of the Aurignacian industry, usually linked with the dispersal of anatomically modern humans into Europe, comparatively little attention has been paid to possible origins or movements further east. Recent work at Shanidar Cave, a site better known for the Neanderthal evidence disc...

Little is known of the human use of rainforest plant resources of prehistoric Sri Lanka due to the lack of preservation of organic material and the effects of various destructive taphonomic processes. Phytoliths recovered from a AMS radiocarbon and OSL dated sequence at Fahien Rock Shelter indicate interactions of anatomically modern humans with th...

Archaeological shell middens are particularly important for reconstructing prehistoric human subsistence strategies. However, very little is known about shellfish processing, especially when related to the use of fire for dietary and disposal purposes. To shed light on prehistoric food processing techniques, an experimental study was undertaken on...

READ ONLY OPEN ACCESS AT: rdcu.be/xl8s Understanding the timing, conditions, and characteristics of the Middle to Later Stone Age (MSA/LSA) transition in North Africa is critical for debates regarding the evolution and past population dynamics of Homo sapiens, especially their dispersals within, out of, and back into, Africa. As with many cultura...

The Neanderthal remains from Shanidar Cave, excavated between 1951 and 1960, have played a central role in debates concerning diverse aspects of Neanderthal morphology and behaviour. In 2015 and 2016, renewed excavations at the site uncovered hominin remains from the immediate area where the partial skeleton of Shanidar 5 was found in 1960. Shanida...

In this paper we present a multi-proxy study of tropical limestone forest and its utilization by human groups during the major climatic and environmental upheavals of MIS-2 (29-11.7 ka BP). Our data are drawn from new field research within the Tràng An World Heritage property, on the edge of the Red River Delta, northern Vietnam. Key findings from...

Significant human impacts on tropical forests have been considered the preserve of recent societies, linked to large-scale deforestation, extensive and intensive agriculture, resource mining, livestock grazing and urban settlement. Cumulative archaeological evidence now demonstrates, however, that Homo sapiens has actively manipulated tropical fore...

Shanidar Cave contains one of the most important Palaeolithic archaeological sequences in West Asia. During renewed excavations of Baradostian (Upper Palaeolithic) layers in the cave, an incised land-snail shell fragment was recovered. A natural cause seems unlikely and it does not appear likely to reflect palaeoeconomic functions. It is suggested...

Shanidar Cave contains one of the most important Palaeolithic archaeological sequences in West Asia. During renewed excavations of Baradostian (Upper Palaeolithic) layers in the cave, an incised land-snail shell fragment was recovered. A natural cause seems unlikely and it does not appear likely to reflect palaeoeconomic functions. It is suggested...

Terrestrial gastropods are problematical for radiocarbon ( ¹⁴ C) measurement because they tend to incorporate carbon from ancient sources as a result of their dietary behavior. The ¹⁴ C ecology of the pulmonate land snail, Helix melanostoma in Cyrenaica, northeastern Libya, was investigated as part of a wider study on the potential of using terrest...

Cave sediments may contain important long-term records of past environments and human activity. Pollen provides key evidence, since it disperses widely and is relatively durable. We still know relatively little about the dispersal of pollen into caves, and its preservation within cave sediments, compared with our relatively detailed knowledge of po...

The paper presents the results of optical dating of potassium-rich feldspar grains obtained from the Haua Fteah cave in Cyrenaica, northeast Libya, focussing on the chronology of the Deep Sounding excavated by Charles McBurney in the 1950s and re-excavated recently. Samples were also collected from a 1.25 m-deep trench (Trench S) excavated during t...

Previously underused information from radiocarbon dates in well-characterised sedimentary sequences in the southern Yangtze Delta, China, is here utilised in reconstruction of patterns of ancient erosion. The southern Yangtze Delta was an important focus of food production in the early Neolithic. Anomalous radiocarbon dates in Holocene sediments fr...

Cave palynology has been widely used to reconstruct past vegetation in areas where other conventional sources of pollen are scarce. However, the mechanisms involved in pollen transport, deposition and accumulation in caves are still poorly understood, mostly because of the number of interplaying factors that affect these processes. In this paper we...

Rainforests are often described as the world's last virgin landscapes; however hunter-gatherers may have been modifying these environments for over 50,000 years. Despite this, the antiquity of early tropical forest exploitation by hunter-gathers and the transition to farming are still poorly understood. Today globalization drives deforestation of r...

Borneo has a 50,000-year record of Homo sapiens' interactions with rainforest on the coastal lowlands assembled especially by the interdisciplinary investigation of the archaeology and palaeoecology of the Niah Caves on the coastal plain of Sarawak (Barker et al., 2007; Barker, 2013). More recent work by many of the same team in the interior of Bor...

In this paper we present a multi-proxy study of tropical limestone forest and its utilization by human groups during the significant climatic and environmental upheavals of MIS-2 (29-11.7 kBP). Our data are drawn from new field research within the Tràng An World Heritage property on the edge of the Red River Delta, northern Vietnam. Key findings fr...

Book synopsis: Kurdistan is home to some of the most important archaeological sites in the world, ranging from the Stone Age to the most recent past. While in earlier decades this exceptional potential did not receive the degree of attention which it merited, the past ten years has seen a burgeoning of cuttingedge archaeological field projects acro...

Excavations at Haua Fteah cave in Cyrenaica , Libya , have revealed a cultural sequence that may span the last glacial–interglacial-glacial cycle. The TRANS-NAP project has been re-excavating Haua Fteah and conducting geoarchaeological survey of an ecologically diverse landscape that includes the fertile Gebel Akhdar and littoral, pre-desert, and d...

Spores from coprophilous fungi are emerging as an important palaeoecological indicator of the presence of large herbivores, but the methods by which they are recovered may have a significant impact on their preservation and recognition. Here, we test a number of chemical and mechanical techniques used in palynology. Spore occurrence, size and shape...

The seasonal pattern of shellfish foraging at the archaeological site of Haua Fteah in the Gebel Akhdar, Libya was investigated from the Epipaleolithic to the Neolithic via oxygen isotope (d 18 O) analyses of the topshell Phorcus (Osilinus) turbinatus. To validate this species as faithful year-round palaeoenvironmental recorder, the intra-annual va...

Shanidar Cave (Zagros Mountains, Kurdish Iraq) is one of the most interesting archaeological sites of the Near East due to the discovery, during the 1950s, of the first adult Neanderthal skeletons in Iraq, some of which were probably burials. This preliminary study presents the result of the analysis of surface samples collected from a transect ins...

Caves provide important locations for the study of ancient human activity and environment. One important strand of this ancient environmental work is palynology, yet the taphonomy of pollen in caves is locally contingent and often complex. Shanidar Cave in Kurdish Iraq was the site of important Neanderthal finds and early palynological research, bu...

Excavations in the photic zones of caves have provided cornerstone archaeological sequences in many parts of the world. Before the appearance of modern dating techniques, cave deposits provided clear evidence for the antiquity, relative ages and co-occurrence of ancient human remains, material culture and fauna. Earlier generations of archaeologist...

For the greater part of the last century, anthropogenic palynology has made a sustained contribution to archaeology and to Quaternary science in general, and pollen-analytical papers have appeared in Journal of Archaeological Science since its inception. The present paper focuses selectively upon three areas of anthropogenic palynology, enabling so...

In this study we compare carbon isotope values in modern Helix melanostoma shell carbonate (δ13Cshell) from the Gebel al-Akhdar region of Libya with carbon isotope values in H. melanostoma body tissue (δ13Cbody), local vegetation (δ13Cplant) and soil (δ13Csoil). All vegetation in the study area followed the C3 photosynthetic pathway. However, the δ...

Volume 52 of the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society contained two articles (Salisbury 1986; Tipping 1986) critical of our paper ‘The stratigraphy of Kirkhead Cave, an upper palaeolithic site in northern England’ (Gale and Hunt 1985). Here we reply. Before dealing with the criticisms made by Salisbury, we correct the factual errors in his paper....

In the areas adjacent to the drowned Pleistocene continent of Sunda - present-day Mainland and Island SE Asia - the Austronesian Hypothesis of a diaspora of rice cultivators from Taiwan ~4200 years ago has often been linked with the start of farming. Mounting evidence suggests that these developments should not be conflated and that alternative exp...

Little is known about late Holocene environmental change in Cyrenaica. The late Holocene sequence in the Haua Fteah, the key regional site, is highly discontinuous and characterised by stable-burning deposits. The geoarchaeology of the late-Holocene cave fill of a small cave, CP1565, located close to the Haua Fteah, is described. The well-stratifie...

A late Pleistocene vegetation record is presented, using multi-proxy analysis from three palaeochannels in the northern (Bario) and southern (Pa'Dalih) Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Before 50 000 cal a BP and until ∼47 700 cal a BP [marine isotope stage 3 (MIS3)], two of the sites were probably being influenced by energetic fluvia...

The paper describes the initial results from renewed investigations at Niah Cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, famous for the discovery in 1958 of the c. 40,000-year old ‘Deep Skull’. The archaeological sequences from the West Mouth and the other entrances of the cave complex investigated by Tom and Barbara Harrisson and other researchers hav...

The 1950s excavations by Charles McBurney in the Haua Fteah, a large karstic cave on the coast of northeast Libya, revealed a deep sequence of human occupation. Most subsequent research on North African prehistory refers to his discoveries and interpretations, but the chronology of its archaeological and geological sequences has been based on very...

Holocene vegetation records are presented from palaeochannels in the southern Kelabit Highlands, at Pa’Dalih (PDH 212) and at Pa’Buda (BPG); and from a peat bog in the northern Kelabit Highlands, at Bario (Ba). Results are based on changes in the sediment lithology, loss on ignition, magnetic susceptibility, pollen, phytoliths and other palynomorph...

Rice and sago are today important staples for many subsistence farmers and nomadic hunter-gatherers living in interior Borneo, but the cultural antiquity of these staples remains poorly understood. This study examines a 2300 yr sedimentary record from a palaeochannel near the village of Pa’Dalih in the southern Kelabit Highlands. Pollen and phytoli...

Cave sediment sequences hold significant potential for recording histories of environmental change that can be tied concretely to the archaeological sequences they contain. The >14m deep sequence at the Haua Fteah, Libya, offers an unprecedented opportunity to examine the relationship between environmental and cultural change from the Middle Stone...

The basal fill of the Navan ditch provides information about human activity and vegetation at an important time in the evolution of the site. Palynofacies analysis of the basal fill is characterised by thermally mature (charred) pith of the Juncus rush, together with abundant other thermally mature matter. This is a very unusual assemblage, suggest...

The paper reports on the sixth season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project (CPP) undertaken in September 2012. As in the spring 2012 season, work focussed on the Haua Fteah cave and on studies of materials excavated in previous seasons, with no fieldwork undertaken elsewhere in the Gebel Akhdar. An important discovery, in a sounding ex...

Holocene climates and human impact in the Mediterranean basin have received much attention, but the Maltese Islands in the Central Mediterranean, although a pivotal area, have been little researched. Here, sedimentary and palynological data are presented for three cores from the Holocene coastal and shallowmarine deposits of the Maltese Islands. Th...

There has been considerable uncertainty about the nature of Pleistocene environments colonised by the first modern humans in Island SE Asia, and about the vegetation of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in the region. Here, the palynology from a series of exposures in the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, spanning a period from ca. 52,000...

A 40 m core from Loagan Bunut, Malaysian Borneo, yielded a high-resolution early Holocene (11.3–6.75 ka) sequence of marginal-marine deposits. Palynological analysis showed relatively stable fire-regulated lowland forest through this time, with the local development and regression of mangrove vegetation. A general trend of rising rainfall and thus...

The paper reports on the fifth (2012) season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project. The primary focus of the season was the continuation of the excavation of the prehistoric occupation layers in the Haua Fteah cave. A small trench (Trench U) was cut into Holocene (Neolithic) sediments exposed on the south wall of Charles McBurney's Uppe...

During the course of his expedition to Borneo in 1855 to make collections of “shells, insects, birds, and the orang-utan” (Wallace 1913, 27), the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace was informed about enormous caverns at Niah and Mulu (Figure 8.1). Though he was unable to visit them, he was convinced that such caves were likely to be the bes...

The Haua Fteah cave in Libya contains one of the longest and most complete sequences of human occupation in North Africa. This rich archaeological assemblage occurs in tandem with abundant material for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. In this study, stable isotope analyses of the archaeological mollusc assemblage from the Haua Fteah have allowed...

This paper discusses the marine and terrestrial shell on Epipalaeolithic to Classical-period sites in the Cyrenaican coastlands, northeast Libya, with particular reference to the Haua Fteah, with parallel studies at a late-Roman farmstead and two small caves. Together they provide evidence for coastal and terrestrial environments and for the contin...

Our tentative proposal is that several biological markers have potential to help define any putative boundary in the traditional basal Berriasian interval. That is, between the base of the Berriasella jacobi Subzone and the base of the Pseudosubplanites grandis Subzone, and therefore straddling the base of magnetozone M18r. Promising micropalaeonto...

This chapter reviews existing information, describes new geoarchaeological evidence and from this infers aspects of the human paleoecology and land use in a landscape heavily affected by millennia of metal-winning and metal-processing in the Wadi Faynan and its tributaries in southwest Jordan. The Wadi Faynan lies in an ecotonal position on the mar...

Caves have yielded some of the most globally important archaeological sequences, but often their interpretation has suffered from assumptions about cave sedimentary processes. Caves contain distinctive sedimentary environments: this has major implications for the understanding of contained archaeological materials. This paper describes and analyses...

The paper reports on the fourth (2010) season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project, and on further results of analyses of artefacts and organic materials collected in the 2009 season. Ground-based LiDar has provided both an accurate 3D scan of the Haua Fteah cave and information on the cave's morphometry or origins. The excavations in...

The paper reports on the third (2009) season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project, and on further results from the analysis of materials collected in the previous (2007 and 2008) fieldwork. Sediments in a 14 m-deep core drilled beside the McBurney trench provide an invaluable overview of the overall stratigraphic sequence, including at...

The Dominant Animal. Human Evolution and the Environment BY EHRLICHPAUL R. AND EHRLICHANNE H.428 pp., 24 × 16 × 3 cm, ISBN 978 1 59726 096 1 hardback, US$ 35.00, Washington, DC, USA: Island Press, 2008 - Volume 36 Issue 3 - CHRIS O. HUNT

Neptune's Cave in the Velfjord–Tosenfjord area of Nordland, Norway is described, together with its various organic deposits. Samples of attached barnacles, loose marine molluscs, animal bones and organic sediments were dated, with radiocarbon ages of 9840 ± 90 and 9570 ± 80 yr BP being derived for the barnacles and molluscs, based on the superseded...