Deborah Olszewski

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Verified

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• Ph.D.
• Professor (Adjunct) at University of Pennsylvania

The primary objective of the current paper is addressing the question of recognizing “convergence” (i.e., the processes that yield similarity independent of lineage) in lithic artifacts. We discuss how similarity in lithic artifacts can be due to interpretive drivers, such as typology and function, and to contributing factors, including stone raw m...

Stone artifacts (lithics) preserve for extended periods; thus they are key evidence for probing the evolution of human technological behaviors. Africa boasts the oldest record of stone artifacts, spanning 3.3 Ma, rare instances of ethnographic stone tool‐making, and stone tool archives from diverse ecological settings, making it an anchor for resea...

Flaked stone (lithic) artifacts are a ubiquitous cultural material at Pleistocene sites and first appear in the archaeological record 3.3 million years ago (Ma) in East Africa. The African stone artifact record thus covers the longest time span of human prehistory compared to other regions. Lithic artifacts preserve well, and they are often the onl...

The Abydos Survey for Paleolithic Sites (ASPS) is a collaborative project that examined the high desert region west of Abydos in Middle Egypt. Its goals were to document Stone Age occupations along the Nile Valley corridor – one of the main routes for hominin dispersals out of Africa, to examine how the high desert was used during the wetter interv...

Surveys and excavations in the rugged terrain upstream from the Fourth Cataract of the Nile River in Sudan were rare until the Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Here, we report on Stone Age survey work done by the Arizona State University Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition between 2009 to 2016 on the right...

Grotte des Contrebandiers (Smugglers’ Cave) is one of several archaeology-bearing coastal caves in the Rabat-Temara region of Morocco. It lies c. 17 km south of Rabat and 250 m from the current Atlantic coastline. Archaeological work along the Atlantic littoral of Morocco began in the late 1930s. In 1956, J. Roche discovered Contrebandiers Cave whe...

The current state of human evolutionary studies owe much to the generations of committed researchers whose field expeditions to African Stone Age sites have produced groundbreaking findings. The research practices that characterize today’s archaeological fieldwork in Africa have come a long way since the pioneering era. Before the 1950s, most field...

This handbook showcases an Africa-wide compendium of Stone Age archaeological sites and methodological advances that have improved our understanding of hominin lifeways and biogeography in the continent. The focal time spans the Pleistocene Epoch (c. 2.5 million–11,700 years ago) during which important human traits, such as obligate bipedalism that...

Wadi Madamagh is a key site for the Late Upper Paleolithic and the Initial/Early Epipaleolithic in the Petra region of Jordan. First excavated in 1956 by Diana Kirkbride, it was subsequently tested in 1983, and excavated by two separate teams in the summer and fall of 2011. The approaches to classifying and describing the lithic industries thus hav...

The overarching goal of this study was to investigate the characteristics of fire at an archaeological site (mainly, the intensity and duration of a fire event) through the analysis of lithic heat fractures in a lithic assemblage. Previous attempts to understand these characteristics have relied on the analysis of organic fire residues, such as cha...

The primary focus of this paper is to examine the extent to which the pattern of Neandertal fire use in southwest France occurred at other times and places during the European Late Pleistocene. In previous studies, both direct and indirect data showed a pattern of limited fire use in layers associated with colder intervals in MIS 4 and 3 and more f...

The emergence of Homo sapiens in Pleistocene Africa is associated with a profound reconfiguration of technology. Symbolic expression and personal ornamentation, new tool forms, and regional technological traditions are widely recognized as the earliest indicators of complex culture and cognition in humans. Here we describe a bone tool tradition fro...

One of the greatest difficulties with evolutionary approaches in the study of stone tools (lithics) has been finding a mechanism for tying culture and biology in a way that preserves human agency and operates at scales that are visible in the archaeological record. The concept of niche construction, whereby organisms actively construct their enviro...

The stone artifact record has been one of the major grounds for investigating our evolution. With the predominant focus on their morphological attributes and technological aspects of manufacture, stone artifacts and their assemblages have been analyzed as explicit measures of past behaviors, adaptations, and population histories. This analytical fo...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained mistake in the presentation of the author’s name.

Wadi Madamagh, situated in the southern Levant, was occupied by humans during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; 26,500–19,000 years ago). The climatic and environmental conditions are reflected in the faunal assemblage, which derives from Late Upper Paleolithic and Early Epipaleolithic deposits. Zooarchaeological methods and a human behavioral ecology...

Komishan Cave is on the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea, close to the previously excavated Mesoli-thic caves of Hūto, Kamarband and Ali Tepe. The excavation in Komishan cave was initiated in with four major archaeological goals:) to establish a reliable framework for the Mesolithic technologies of the region since the last field research almo...

Komishan Cave is on the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea, close to the previously excavated Mesoli-thic caves of Hūto, Kamarband and Ali Tepe. The excavation in Komishan cave was initiated in with four major archaeological goals:) to establish a reliable framework for the Mesolithic technologies of the region since the last field research almo...

One of the greatest difficulties with evolutionary approaches in the study of stone tools (lithics) has been finding a mechanism for tying culture and biology in a way that preserves human agency and operates at scales that are visible in the archaeological record. The concept of niche construction, whereby organisms actively construct their enviro...

This is an updated version of my textbook. It covers earlier prehistory, transitions to food production economies, and the rise of socially and politically complex societies (North American Southwest and East, Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Indus Valley, Mesoamerica, South America, and Africa.

Obituary

While lithic objects can potentially inform us about past adaptations and behaviors, it is important to develop a comprehensive understanding of all of the various processes that influence what we recover from the archaeological record. We argue here that many assumptions used by archaeologists to derive behavioral inferences through the definition...

The Warwasi (Iran) sequence contains Early Zagros Aurignacian, Late Zagros Aurignacian, and Zarzian lithic assemblages. By examining attributes of the lithic assemblages from each of the 10 cm arbitrary levels, several patterns characteristic of each of chronological block of deposits emerge. These document aspects of how the Warwasi rockshelter wa...

Early Epipaleolithic groups in the Levant often are described as highly mobile. Although there are some exceptions (e.g., Kharaneh IV and Ohalo II), most sites are aerially small and said to represent short-term camps. In this paper, we use information from the Early Epipaleolithic occupations at KPS-75, Yutil al-Hasa, Tor Sageer, and Tor at-Tareeq...

**This is a book; not available in pdf**

The degree of mobility of prehistoric hunter-gatherer-foragers is often seen as linked to the abundance and distribution of food resources in the landscape, with the premise being that larger quantities of localized resources helped create conditions for residential stability, for example, as at the Early Epipaleolithic Ohalo II on the shores of th...

Available on request.

One inclusive view of archaeology is that the field is concerned with providing theoretically informed narratives of the cultural past that arise from unbiased engagements with the archaeological record. To achieve this lofty objective, archaeologists routinely examine their assumptions about the interpretation of archaeological variability (e.g.,...

Available on request.

The lithic assemblages from the Wadi al-Hasa region Early Epipaleolithic site occupations reveal long-term patterning as well as distinctions. These assemblages are records of time-averaged deposition of multiple activities in these persistent places in the landscape. In this paper we examine the characteristics of the lithic assemblages from the r...

Three decades of archaeological investigation in the upper and lower horizons of the Early Epipaleolithic occupation at the site of Tor at-Tareeq (WHS1065) in the western highlands of Jordan have suggested that occupation intensity co-varied with climatic shifts at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. The faunal record is a sensitive indicator of s...

We investigate the effects of the Last Glacial Maximum (~25,000e18,500 cal BP) on human hunting and settlement strategies through the study of faunal remains from four Early Epipaleolithic sites located in the western highlands region of Jordan. Human mobility is monitored by reconstructing site occupation intensity using zooarchaeological measures...

Research concentrated on the Early Epipaleolithic (Nebekian) in central and southern Jordan. Four archaeological field seasons occurred during the summers of 2009-2012. The excavated sites were on the Kerak Plateau (KPS 75), in the Wadi al Hasa (Yutil al-Hasa and Tor at-Tareeq), and at the Wadi Madamagh rockshelter in the Petra region. Excavations...

The Early Epipaleolithic at Yutil al-Hasa (WHS 784) was recognized by Gary Rollefson during the MacDonald survey in 1982. The site actually has three occupations (late Upper Paleolithic, Early and Late Epipaleolithic) that have been tested on four occasions by three different projects. This paper discusses two adjacent units which were dug in Area...

Accretionary desert pavements on the eastern Libyan Plateau of central Egypt support a rich Middle and Upper Paleolithic artifact assemblage exhibiting intensive blank production and minimal tool production. These assemblages appear to be in primary context with numerous examples of lithic refits showing on-site lithic production. However, the smal...

Survey and excavations in the Wadi al-Hasa, Jordan, between 1979 and 1998 yielded three Natufian sites. WHS 1021 is an open-air site that was surface collected, while the open-air site at Tabaqa and the rockshelter at Yutil al-Hasa Area D were surface collected and excavated. A calibrated radiocarbon date from the lower deposits at Yutil al-Hasa Ar...

New excavations at Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco, began in 2007 and continued through 2010. This site, originally excavated by Roche in the 1950s, contained deposits with Aterian, Iberomaurusian, and Neolithic materials, although the latter were completely removed during Roche's excavations. This report presents an overview of the recent excavations...

Although the Zarzian was first identified in the 1920s, it has not been until recently that detailed investigations of it have been undertaken. In contrast to the intensive research on the Epipaleolithic period in the Levant, the Zarzian in the Zagros area is less well known, although it shares some similarities (as well as differences) with the Le...

First identified 100years ago, the Iberomaurusian is an Epipaleolithic industry that was described from a number of sites across western North Africa. One of these is Grotte des Contrebandiers (Smugglers’ Cave) in Morocco, where Abbé Jean Roche recovered Iberomaurusian materials in excavations in the late 1950s. Although the lithics were published...

Systematic survey by the Abydos Survey for Paleolithic Sites project has recorded Nubian Complex artifact density, distribution, typology, and technology across the high desert landscape west of the Nile Valley in Middle Egypt. Our work contrasts with previous investigations of Nubian Complex settlement systems in Egypt, which focused on a small nu...

Our understanding of the Early Natufian period primarily is based on data from the western Levant, particularly from Mediterranean woodlands and coastal contexts. Sites here have produced a wealth of information critical to build ing an understanding of Early Natufian complex hunter-gatherer adaptations including their subsistence strategies. The a...

The Epipalaeolithic cultures of Western Asia represent hunter-gatherer groups whose subsistence strategies eventually led to the development of food production (agricultural) economies. During the interval from about 22. 600 to 10. 100. years ago, most of these hunter-gatherers were highly mobile and exploited a variety of wild plant foods and wild...

Examinant les conditions ecologiques probables ayant existe dans la foret mediterraneenne du Sud Levant et reconstruisant la subsistance ecologique des Natufians, l'A. revoit la these selon laquelle ces derniers auraient ete les initiateurs de l'intensification de la culture des cereales.

Transitions in the lithic archaeological record are subject to diverse questions. These include whether this record is characterized by gradualism or by punctuated changes; how different terminologies (for example, the Middle Stone Age and the Middle Paleolithic) affect interpretations; at what point a lithic assemblage is classified as Upper rathe...

Recent work in the high desert west of the historic site of Abydos has revealed a number of technologies that date from the Middle Paleolithic through later periods. The earliest of these include both Nubian and classical Levallois technologies, which are abundant and demonstrate virtually all stages of production. Presumed later technologies inclu...

Recent work in the high desert west of Abydos in Egypt has focused on the Middle Palaeolithic technologies known as Nubian 1 and 2 types and classic Levallois, which are abundant and are found in virtually all stages of production. Although these were originally defined and treated as three discrete technologies, refitting and quantitative analyses...

Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture. Douglas J. Kennett and Bruce Winterhalder, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 394 pp.

This is a book; there is no pdf for it.

Recent work in the high desert of Egypt, near the historic site of Abydos, has revealed a Paleolithic landscape that, in many respects, has remarkable potential for archaeological research. It is a virtually undisturbed landscape with millions of lithic artifacts left as they were discarded tens and even hundreds of thousands of years ago. Furtherm...

Prehistoric human populations were influenced by climate change and resulting environmental variability and developed a wide variety of cultural mechanisms to deal with these conditions. In an effort to understand the in-

No two archaeological assemblages are ever identical. Archaeologists are thus continually faced with the problem of recognizing groups of assemblages that are more or less similar. Once grouped, these become named industries, traditions, techno-complexes, and so forth. Such entities are then contrasted with other groupings that contain different ch...

This edited volume discusses the multi- and interdisciplinary Stage 3 Project, an interesting and ambitious eight-year undertaking concerned with questions regarding the interplay between climatic, environmental, flora, and faunal variables and the effects of changes in these on both Neandertals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs) during Oxygen I...

In the winters of 2000 and 2002-2003 we surveyed a portion of the high desert immediately adjacent to the Nile Valley at Abydos, Egypt. The initial field season assessed the area's potential to contribute to the existing database of Paleolithic landscapes. Limited work done prior to our initial survey indicated that such Paleolithic sites in this r...

Early and Middle Epipaleolithic periods. Compared to excavations during the seasons in I984 and 1992, the field season in 2000 reconfirmed an Early Epipaleolithic occupation with at least two phases (the earliest emphasizing increased mobility compared to the later phase), and the presence of a Middle Epipaleolithic occupation. The results of this...

Burins have long been considered to represent a special class of stone tools, used primarily for engraving. A number of studies, however, have indicated that burins functioned in a variety of very different ways. This study finds evidence that burins were used as cutting/scraping tools, engraving tools, hafting elements, and bladelet cores at three...