April Nowell

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Verified

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Full) at University of Victoria

Indigenous Australian art relies on motifs and figures to visually symbolise a traditional story, myth and/or ritual, encompassing a narrated performance. In contrast, digital tracings or ‘finger flutings’ impressed into the soft precipitate covering cave surfaces are not typically considered visually symbolic expressions. Using Koonalda Cave in so...

Although archaeologists are learning more about the lives of Upper Paleolithic children, the significant contributions they made to the welfare of their communities, including their role in craft production, remain understudied. In the present study, we use high resolution photographs of 489 ceramic artifacts from Dolní Věstonice I and II, Pavlov I...

Childhood and adolescence are two life-history stages that are either unique to humans, or significantly expanded in the human life course relative to other primates. While recent studies have deepened our knowledge of childhood in the Upper Paleolithic, adolescence in this period remains understudied. Here, we use bioarchaeological maturational ma...

Archaeologists working in low light conditions have had difficulty producing 3D models that are both scientific and aesthetic. We are presenting chiaroscuro photogrammetry, a technique inspired by Renaissance artists, to solve this problem. The method is portable, inexpensive, low impact, adaptable, fast, and requires no additional expertise beyond...

Finger flutings are channels drawn in soft sediments covering walls, floors and ceilings of some limestone caves in Europe and Australia and in some cases date as far back as 50,000 years ago. Initial research focused on why they were made, but more recently, as part of a growing interest in the individual in the past, researchers began asking ques...

The body is a site of lived experience as people engage their social, cultural, and physical worlds through their bodies. As a product of both nature and culture, it can be modified to fulfil, challenge, or rebel against ideals and expectations. While not all the ways in which humans modify their bodies leave traces in the archaeological record, th...

In this paper, we examine the lunar calendar interpretation to evaluate whether it is a viable explanation for the production of Upper Palaeolithic parietal art. We consider in detail the history of this approach, focusing on recently published variations on this interpretation. We then discuss the scientific method and whether these recent studies...

Finger flutings are channels drawn in soft sediments covering walls, floors and ceilings of some limestone caves in Europe and Australia and in some cases date as far back as 50,000 years ago. Initial research focused on why they were made, but more recently, as part of a growing interest in the individual in the past, researchers began asking ques...

An archaeologist seeks to strip away modern misconceptions about our extinct relatives

In this chapter, we review the archaeological evidence supporting garment production in the Paleolithic with an emphasis on hide working and the rich textile industry of the Upper Paleolithic. We argue that textiles serve as an important vehicle for exploring questions related to planning, forethought, flexibility, seasonality, communities of pract...

In this article, I first provide an overview of the Neandertals by recounting their initial discovery and subsequent interpretation by scientists and by discussing our current understanding of the temporal and geographic span of these hominins and their taxonomic affiliation. I then explore what progress we have made in our understanding of Neander...

In this article, I first provide an overview of the Neandertals by recounting their initial discovery and subsequent interpretation by scientists and by discussing our current understanding of the temporal and geographic span of these hominins and their taxonomic affiliation. I then explore what progress we have made in our understanding of Neander...

Comprising at least half of the population of prehistoric societies, children were ubiquitous on Palaeolithic sites. Despite an extensive record of their lifeways, studying children in the deep past presents archaeologists with unique challenges including differential preservation, the use of children as holotypes, interpretive bias, choice of mode...

Archaeological ostrich eggshell (OES) bead assemblages manifest in a variety of colours that result from exposure to high temperatures. It is unclear, however, whether this colouration is taphonomic, through post-depositional heat exposure, or the consequence of intentional heat treatment of OES to produce a desired colour (or for some related purp...

The ways in which children learn in foraging societies differ from the classroom-based style of learning and teaching typical of industrialized societies in the West. This difference, however, has often been mischaracterized by anthropologists as an absence or rarity of direct teaching in foraging societies. In this paper, following Scalise Sugiyam...

Wadi Zarqa Ma’in 1 (WZM-1) is a natural faunal trap sinkhole 10 km southwest of the city of Madaba in Jordan, near the Dead Sea. The limestone karst feature measures over 30 m in maximum depth and is a significant regional source of faunal, microbotanical, and sedimentological data recording climate change and paleoecology. A new method of sampling...

Adolescence is a stage of development unique to the human life course, during which key social, physical, and cognitive milestones are reached. Nonetheless, both the experience of adolescence and the role(s) of adolescents in the past have received little scholarly attention. Here we combine a broad interpretative framework for adolescence among pr...

Despite a remarkably persistent pop culture image of Neanderthals as semi-upright, hairy, cavemen wielding clubs, science provides us with a different picture. There is no doubt that the evolutionary forces that shaped Neanderthals and Homo sapiens differed, but recent evidence of interbreeding tells us that our anatomy and physiology were compatib...

The Azraq oasis in the Eastern Desert of Jordan has produced considerable stone artefacts attributed to the early Palaeolithic, yet relatively few data are available regarding the chronology and palaeoenvironmental contexts of the remains. In this study, we present stratigraphic, sedimentological, and micropalaeontological analyses of the Late Ache...

Ruminations about the lessons learned about scenes in rock art

In prehistoric societies children comprised 40-65% of the population, yet by default, our ancestral landscapes are peopled by adults who hunt, gather, fish, knap tools and make art. But these adults were also parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who had to make space physically, emotionally, intellectually and cognitively for the infants, childr...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Dating back to at least 50,000 years ago, rock art is one of the oldest forms of human symbolic expression. Geographically, it spans all the continents on Earth. Scenes are common in some rock art, and recent work suggests that there are some hints of expression that looks like some of the conventions of western scenic art. In this unique volume ex...

In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If maturing individuals just learn their parental generation’s material culture, then what is the origin of key innovations as documented in the archaeological record? We approach this question by coupling a life-history model of the costs and benefits of ex...

The importance of care of infants and children in palaeoanthropological and human behavioural ecological research on the evolution of our species is evident in the diversity of research on human development , alloparental care, and learning and social interaction. There has been a recent surge of interest in modelling the social implications of car...

During the Upper Paleolithic, Ice Age peoples in Europe and Australia used their fingers to trace figurative and non-figurative images in soft sediments that lined the walls and ceilings of the limestone caves they encountered. The resulting images, while fragile, are preserved in at least 70 caves with the oldest dating to approximately 36,000 yea...

Ostrich eggshell and gastropod shell beads provide important evidence for understanding how past peoples decorated and cultured their bodies and may also be used as proxy evidence for interpreting the nature and extent of past social networks. This study focuses on the ostrich eggshell and gastropod shell bead assemblages from the terminal Pleistoc...

Childhood and adolescence are two stages of development that are unique to the human life course. While childhood in the Pleistocene has received considerable attention in recent years, adolescence during the same period remains an understudied area of research. Yet it is during adolescence that key social, physical and cognitive milestones are rea...

Archaeological ostrich eggshell (OES) bead assemblages often comprise a variety of colours. However, it is unclear if the range of colours seen in OES beads were caused deliberately by anthropogenic action, or accidentally by post-depositional taphonomic factors. In this study, OES fragments were heated to four different temperatures (200 °C, 350 °...

Questions of identity are fundamental to even the most empirical of human evolutionary studies. These questions structure the hypotheses that we, as researchers, test in ways that we, as actors embedded in specific societal contexts, may not always be entirely aware of. Whether we approach the Neandertals as if they represent “Us” or “Them” is an i...

Recent excavations at the site of Shishan Marsh 1 in the Azraq basin, Jordan have uncovered several artifact-bearing layers that date within the Middle (266 ± 40 kya) and Late (125 ± 12 kya) Pleistocene. A paleoecological assessment of sediments from this period indicates predominantly warm and dry conditions in the region, similar to those of the...

This chapter reviews current evidence of infant development and pelvic morphology from the hominin fossil record over our evolutionary history and considers the implications for understanding obstetrical dilemmas from ecological and evolutionary perspectives, and for infant care and survivorship over time and across species. We begin by defining in...

Excavations from 2013 to 2015 at the site of Shishan Marsh 1 (SM1) in the Azraq Basin of eastern Jordan have yielded substantial late middle Pleistocene lithic assemblages in association with faunal remains. Faunal preservation is poor, but multiple taxa have been identified, including cf. Panthera leo, Gazella sp., Bos cf. primigenius, Camelus sp....

In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If maturing individuals just learn their parental generation's material culture, then what is the origin of key innovations as documented in the archeological record? We approach this question by coupling a life-history model of the costs and benefits of exp...

Using examples drawn from the European Upper Palaeolithic, this article advocates a visual cultures approach to studying the art of this period. Visual culture is defined as the biological, cognitive and social underpinnings of how we see, while the term art refers to what we see. A visual cultures approach to these images allows the archaeologist...

Excavations from 2013-2015 at the open-air site of Shishan Marsh 1 (SM1) located along the former wetlands shoreline in the Azraq Basin of eastern Jordan have yielded substantial Middle Pleistocene lithic assemblages in association with faunal remains. Skeletal preservation is poor, favoring the representation of megafaunal species and more robust...

For the past few years, people everywhere have been “going Paleo.” Websites and social media touting the benefits of eating a “Paleo diet” and following a “Paleolithic life style” serve as calls to arms for health-conscious individuals seeking information about the latest health and fitness trends. Many of these people participate in programs such...

Excavations at Shishan Marsh, a former desert oasis in Azraq, northeast Jordan, reveal a unique ecosystem and provide direct family-specific protein residue evidence of hominin adaptations in an increasingly arid environment approximately 250,000 years ago. Based on lithic, faunal, paleoenvironmental and protein residue data, we conclude that Late...

The life history pattern of modern humans is characterized by the insertion of childhood and adolescent stages into the typical primate pattern. It is widely recognized that this slowing of the maturational process provides humans with additional years to learn, transmit, practice and modify cultural behaviors . In both human and non-human primates...

This volume introduces a model of the expansion of cultural capacity as a systemic approach with biological, historical and individual dimensions. It is contrasted with existing approaches from primatology and behavioural ecology; influential factors like differences in life history and demography are discussed; and the different stages of the deve...

Many children growing up during the Upper Paleolithic lived within rich pictorial cultures. This article explores how these children might have employed metaphorical thinking in the production and decoding of this imagery. Metaphors are said to act as a bridge between different realities, different levels of meaning and different realms of experien...

Dunbar Robin , Gamble Clive & Gowlett John (ed.). Social brain, distributed mind. xxii+528 pages, 57 illustrations, 18 tables. 2010: Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press for The British Academy; 978-0-19-726452-2 hardback £60. - Volume 85 Issue 328 - April Nowell

During the Late Pleistocene, children in southwest France and northern Spain grew up engaging with the world around them through the lenses of locally and historically situated pictorial cultures. This particular period and region is not the site of the earliest example of symbolic behaviour, nor is it the only example of the production of imagery...

From Hand to Handle: The First Industrial Revolution. Barham Lawrence . 2013. Oxford University Press, Oxford, xiii + 357 pp. $150.00 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-19-960471-5. - Volume 80 Issue 2 - April Nowell

Tracing the evolution of human culture through time is arguably one of the most controversial and complex scholarly endeavors, and a broad evolutionary analysis of how symbolic, linguistic, and cultural capacities emerged and developed in our species is lacking. Here we present a model that, in broad terms, aims to explain the evolution and portray...

The Shishan Marsh was a spring-fed wetland in northern Jordan that has been completely dry since the late 1980s. The site of SM-1, first excavated in 2013, is located at the southern edge of the former Sawda spring pool, and contains a Middle Pleistocene occupation horizon characterized by bifaces and flakes. From a section at SM-1 we present new s...

Since the discovery of the Grotte Chauvet (Ardèche, France) in the mid-1990s, there has been a debate regarding the accuracy of assigning this site to the Aurignacian period. The main argument stems from a perceived lack of agreement between the radiocarbon age of the imagery (>32,000 years BP [before present]) and its stylistic complexity and tech...

Using the recent discovery of the Hohle Fels figurine as a catalyst, in this article we briefly review the history of scholarship regarding Upper Paleolithic figurines that are often referred to as "Venus" figurines. We integrate this review with a critical examination of the assumptions underlying the "Venus hypothesis"-the perspective that these...

Since the 1990s, archaeological publications concerned with Palaeolithic personal ornaments have diversified. This proliferation has resulted in an intense exploration of the multiple roles, whether symbolic, cultural or social, that these items might have played in prehistoric groups. As a result of this process, there is now a broad consensus tha...

Large open-air archaeological sites provide a unique contribution to our understanding of the range of environments exploited by hominins and how their mobility patterns were affected by local, regional, and global environmental fluctuations. The challenge, however, is that in open-air contexts the distribution of buried and surface archaeological...

WZM-2, a flint-source on the edge of the Madaba Plateau, Jordan, exemplifies many of the problems archaeologists confront in investigating open-air sites. This site has a complex history of alternating episodes of deposition, erosion and colluvial movement of sediments, as well as bioturbation and recent plowing, that has altered the spatial relati...

A geoarchaeological study of sediments in the Azraq Oasis, in the Eastern Desert of Jordan, provides information on the fluctuations of the geomorphic and hydrologic systems in this region in relation to the local Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic occupations. The study shows that local geomorphic and hydrological environments fluctuated bet...

Neanderthals had shorter childhoods than us – which profoundly influenced their minds, argues archaeologist April Nowell

Lascawc and Preservation Issues in Subterranean Environments. COYE NÖEL . 2011. Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris. 360 pp. €59.00 (cloth), ISBN-13 978-2-7351-1123-7. - Volume 77 Issue 3 - April Nowell

The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial, by PettittPaul, 2010. London: Routledge; ISBN 978-0-415-35489-9 hardback £70.00 & US$115; ISBN 978-0-415-35490-5 paperback £22.99 & US$35.95; xi + 307 pp., 77 figs., 9 tables - Volume 22 Issue 2 - April Nowell

The authors deconstruct the basis for dating the Palaeolithic cave paintings of France and find it wanting. Only five per cent are directly dated and the remainder belong to a stylistic framework that has grown organically, and with much circularity, as new paintings were brought to light. Following a constructive bouleversement , the authors recom...

Preliminary taphonomic investigations were carried out at the site of Wadi Zarqa Ma'in 1 (WZM-1), at 31o37'N, 35o43'E, approximately 730 m above mean sea level and 10 km south-southwest of Madaba, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This large, open sinkhole is a natural faunal trap and raptor roosting site, accumulating significant faunal remains within...

The Ma'in Site is a complex of Paleolithic sites located on the western rim of the Madaba Plateau, above the escarpment facing the Dead Sea Rift. The site was a lithic acquisition and initial processing location used primarily by both Middle Paleolithic peoples and unidentified groups in the early Holocene. It also includes some late Lower Paleolit...

This review summarizes current thinking about the concept of modern behavior in the context of Neandertals and anatomically modern humans. The decoupling of modern anatomy and modern behavior has prompted researchers to reframe studies of the emergence of modern humans as a debate that explicitly focuses on the origins of behavioral modernity makin...

Hominin evolution is the result of complex interactions of biology and behavior within particular physical, social, and cultural environments. While evolution takes place at the species level, species are made up of individuals engaging in a social world. Extensive research into topics such as theory of mind and social intelligence have highlighted...

Stone tools are among the most distinctive features of the lives and evolution of hominins and, through them, material culture came to play an increasingly important role in the behavior of our ancestors. As a result, material culture and stone tools in particular have given archaeologists a window onto behaviors and lifeways that have long since d...

From a life history perspective, it is possible to argue that the Middle Pleistocene was one of the most dramatic periods in human evolution. Paradoxically, the Acheulian industries that dominate the Middle Pleistocene record over large areas of Eurasia and Africa are often described as "monotonous" or "stagnant." In this chapter we consider the lo...

Stone tools are among the most distinctive features of the lives and evolution of hominins and, through them, material culture came to play an increasingly important role in the behavior of our ancestors. As a result, material culture and stone tools in particular have given archaeologists a window onto behaviors and lifeways that have long since d...

Stone tools are the most durable and common type of archaeological remain and one of the most important sources of information about behaviors of early hominins. Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition develops methods for examining questions of cognition, demonstrating the progression of mental capabilities from early hominins to modern h...

Level IV of Molodova I, an open-air Middle Paleolithic site in the Ukraine has been described by some researchers as a possible source of evidence for early symbolic behavior. We examined bone objects from this layer that were identified by Ukrainian researchers as exhibiting possible Neandertal produced engravings including two anthropomorphic fig...

This paper serves as an introduction to two special issues on advances in the method and theory of Pleistocene imagery and symbol use. In order to contextualize the contributions that comprise these two issues, this paper defines the temporal and geographic scope of Pleistocene imagery, outlines the contexts in which the images are found, briefly r...

This paper examines recurrent spatial patterns of prehistoric sites in relation to landforms, alluvial fills, and soil development in the uplands and valleys of the Madaba and Dhiban Plateaus of Jordan. Mousterian lithics (Middle Paleolithic) are largely found on high strath terraces plateaus, where they are associated with red Mediterranean soils....