Vera Aldeias

Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior · University of Algarve

The Paleolithic site of La Ferrassie (Dordogne, France) has contributed significantly to the understanding of Middle and Upper Paleolithic technocomplexes, as well as Neanderthal skeletal morphology. Excavations at the site have spanned more than a century and uncovered rich archaeological assemblages associated with the Mousterian, Châtelperronian...

Understanding Palaeolithic hominin subsistence strategies requires the comprehensive taxonomic identification of faunal remains. The high fragmentation of Late Pleistocene faunal assemblages often prevents proper taxonomic identification based on bone morphology. It has been assumed that the morphologically unidentifiable component of the faunal as...

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 Miocene was a key time in the evolution of African ecosystems witnessing the origin of the African apes and the isolation of eastern coastal forests through an expanding arid corridor. Until recently, however, Miocene sites from the southeastern regions of the continent were unknown. Here, we report the first Miocene fossil teeth from the shoul...

A Third Neanderthal Individual from La Ferrassie • 99 ABSTRACT The Paleolithic site of La Ferrassie (SW France) has been extensively studied since its discovery during the 19th century. In addition to a large sequence including Middle and Upper Paleolithic layers, the site has yielded two very complete adult Neanderthal skeletons, five partial imma...

The analyses of the stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ¹³C), nitrogen (δ¹⁵N), and oxygen (δ¹⁸O) in animal tissues are powerful tools for reconstructing the feeding behavior of individual animals and characterizing trophic interactions in food webs. Of these biomaterials, tooth enamel is the hardest, most mineralized vertebrate tissue and therefore l...

Pyrotechnology, the ability for hominins to use fire as a tool, is considered to be one of the most important behavioural adaptations in human evolution. While several studies have focused on identifying the emergence of fire use and later Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal combustion features, far fewer have focused on modern human fire use. As a res...

The archaeological visibility of hearths related to shellfish cooking methods is limited, particularly in pre-ceramic shell midden contexts. Important evidence for use of fire is the thermal alteration of components, namely the identification of burnt shells. Mollusk shells that mineralize as aragonite are particularly indicative of burning due to...

The expansion of Homo sapiens and our interaction with local environments, including the replacement or absorption of local populations, is a key component in understanding the evolution of our species. Of special interest are artifacts made from hard animal tissues from layers at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria) that have been attributed to the Initial...

Background Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique hosts a large population of baboons, numbering over 200 troops. Gorongosa baboons have been tentatively identified as part of Papio ursinus on the basis of previous limited morphological analysis and a handful of mitochondrial DNA sequences. However, a recent morphological and morphometric analysis o...

Significance DNA preserved in sediments has emerged as an important source of information about past ecosystems, independent of the discovery of skeletal remains. However, little is known about the sources of sediment DNA, the factors affecting its long-term preservation, and the extent to which it may be translocated after deposition. Here, we sho...

The ability to make and use fire can be considered as a behavioural threshold in human evolution. The aim of this chapter is to present an overview of the research on fire among Neanderthals. We compiled and reviewed the archaeological evidence and scientific studies on the topic, including different methodological approaches, theoretical considera...

The Miocene is a key time in the evolution of African mammals and their ecosystems witnessing the origin of the African apes and the isolation of eastern coastal forests through an expanding biogeographic arid corridor. Until recently, however, Miocene sites from the southeastern regions of the continent were unknown. Here we report discovery of th...

The identification and characterization of hearths is crucial for reconstructing the history of fire use and pyrotechnology. In addition to ashes and charcoals, an active fire will also produce alterations of the underlying substrate to varying degrees. To date, however, few studies have addressed how the characteristics of burned substrates relate...

The behavioral dynamics underlying the expansion of Homo sapiens into Europe remains a crucial topic in human evolution. Owing to poor bone preservation, past studies have strongly focused on the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) stone tool record. Recent excavations and extensive radiocarbon dating at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria) pushed back the arriv...

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...

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...

The expansion of Homo sapiens across Eurasia marked a major milestone in human evolution that would eventually lead to our species being found across every continent. Current models propose that these expansions occurred only during episodes of warm climate, based on age correlations between archaeological and climatic records. Here, we obtain dire...

This poster presents the new MicroAsh project, with starting date September 1st 2021 and funded by a Marie Curie individual fellowship. Learning how to use and control of fire has been a major step in our technological evolution and has shaped who we are today. However, relatively little is known about the rise of early pyrotechnology. The Micro...

Significance The Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) marks a distinct cultural change possibly related to Homo sapiens dispersals into Eurasia. New radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dates from the recent excavations at Boker Tachtit, Negev, Israel, show that the IUP starts as early as around 50,000 y ago, and the later IUP phase dates t...

Despite advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Recent inquiries suggest that human evolution reflects a long history of interconnections between the behavior of humans and their surroundin...

Exploring the role of changing climates in human evolution is currently impeded by a scarcity of climatic information at the same temporal scale as the human behaviors documented in archaeological sites. This is mainly caused by high uncertainties in the chronometric dates used to correlate long-term climatic records with archaeological deposits. O...

The grand abri at La Ferrassie (France) has been a key site for Palaeolithic research since the early part of the 20th century. It became the eponymous site for one variant of Middle Palaeolithic stone tools, and its sequence was used to define stages of the Aurignacian, an early phase of the Upper Palaeolithic. Several Neanderthal remains, includi...

The stratigraphy at Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria, spans the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition, including an Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) assemblage argued to represent the earliest arrival of Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens in Europe. We applied the latest techniques in 14C dating to an extensive dataset of newly excavated animal and human b...

The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe witnessed the replacement and partial absorption of local Neanderthal populations by Homo sapiens populations of African origin1. However, this process probably varied across regions and its details remain largely unknown. In particular, the duration of chronological overlap between the two grou...

The use of space, both at the landscape and the site level, is considered an important aspect of hominin adaptations that changed through time. At the site level, spatial analyses are typically conducted on deposits thought to have a high degree of temporal resolution. Sites with highly time-averaged deposits are viewed as inferior for these analys...

The plant component of Neanderthal subsistence and technology is not well documented, partially due to the preservation constraints of macrobotanical components. Phytoliths, however, are preserved even when other plant remains have decayed and so provide evidence for Neanderthal plant use and the environmental context of archaeological sites. Phyto...

Here we present on the lithic assemblage from Layer I of the new excavation, known previously as Layer 11, which comes from the base of the Upper Palaeolithic sequence. This assemblage is difficult to place in the existing Middle-Upper Paleolithic framework. Kozlowski (1982) cautiously described it as Pre-Aurignacian, gave it the name Bachokirian,...

Significance Humans are distinguished from all other primates by their reliance on tool use. When this uniquely human feature began is debated. Evidence of tool use in human ancestors now extends almost 3.3 Ma and becomes prevalent only after 2.6 Ma with the Oldowan. Here, we report a new Oldowan locality (BD 1) that dates prior to 2.6 Ma. These ea...

Raw craniofacial landmark data comprising papio specimens from Gorongosa National Park and the comparative dataset from Dunn et al. 2013. 3D Mesh at: http://www.morphosource.org/Detail/MediaDetail/Show/media_id/40022

Most authors recognize six baboon species: hamadryas (Papio hamadryas), Guinea (Papio papio), olive (Papio anubis), yellow (Papio cynocephalus), chacma (Papio ursinus), and Kinda (Papio kindae). However, there is still debate regarding the taxonomic status, phylogenetic relationships, and the amount of gene flow occurring between species. Here, we...

In this paper, we investigate the microarchaeological traces and archaeological visibility of shellfish cooking activities through a series of experimental procedures with direct roasting using wood-fueled fires and controlled heating in a muffle furnace. An interdisciplinary geoarchaeological approach, combining micromorphology, FTIR (in transmiss...

First fossil sites from the Urema Rift, central Mozambique, and their paleoenvironmental and paleoecological contexts

Archaeologist who transformed our understanding of Neanderthals.

The East African Rift System (EARS) has played a central role in our understanding of human origins and vertebrate evolution in the late Cenozoic of Africa. However, the distribution of fossil sites along the rift is highly biased towards its northern extent, and the types of paleoenvironments are primarily restricted to fluvial and lacustrine sett...

Archaeological deposits are often complex and illustrative of an intricate interplay between geogenic and anthropogenic inputs and formation processes. Even for those archaeologists—particularly prehistorians—who consider the basic principles of natural stratigraphy to excavate their sites, they nonetheless typically underutilize the observations a...

Significant variability has been observed in the frequency of fire use over the course of the Late Pleistocene at several Middle Paleolithic sites in southwest France. In particular, Neandertals appear to have used fire more frequently during warm climatic periods and very infrequently during cold periods. After reviewing several lines of evidence...

A major puzzle in human origins research is the question of where, when, and under what environmental conditions our lineage originated in Africa, but answers are hampered by the scarcity of Mio-Pliocene paleontological sites. To help fill these gaps, the Paleo-Primate Project Gorongosa, a multidisciplinary research initiative on human origins, was...

Analyses of archaeological material recovered from several Middle Paleolithic sites in southwest France have provided strong corroborating data on Neanderthal use of fire. Both direct and indirect data show that Neanderthals in this region were frequently and/or intensively using fire during warmer periods, but such evidence declines significantly...

The uses and functions of fire in early human adaptations are commonly debated and at times very controversial topics. It is important to recognize under what circumstances and conditions specific fire-related traces can be produced and preserved in the archaeological record. Currently, a growing body of data is emerging on the application of exper...

In concert with the formation of inland estuaries during the early Holocene, the shell middens of Muge and Sado are primal examples of Mesolithic coastal adaptations. These sites result mainly from anthropic accumulations and activities, and are, therefore, excellent sedimentary archives of past human actions. Their sedimentary signatures are bette...

A plethora of information is embedded in archaeological sediments at a microscale. The study and characterization of micro remains can provide data on the sedimentation environment at a given site, and the identification of specific human activities and interaction between human and animal occupations. Understanding the microstratigraphic context o...

The site of La Ferrassie (Dordogne, France) is well known for the presence of several (N=7) Neandertal individuals, and here we focus on two adults (LF1 and LF2) discovered by Peyrony and Capitan in the early 20thc [1], and LF8, a child excavated by Delporte in the 1970s [2]. In spite when the LF1 and LF2 discoveries were made, we know that they we...

The first evidence of the partial infant Neandertal skeleton La Ferrassie 8 (LF 8) (Grand Abri of La Ferrassie, Dordogne, France) was discovered in 1970, although most of the remains were found in 1973 as part of the 1968–1973 work at the site by H. Delporte. This individual and the other Neandertal children from La Ferrassie were published in the...

Session 30: ”Advances in high-resolution geoarchaeology in southern Africa.” Poster Title…. The microstratigraphic record of Montagu Cave (South Africa)… Authors Vera Aldeias1, 2, Darya Presnyakova3, Shira Gur-Arieh4, Alexandra Sumner5, Matt Shaw5, Louisa Hutten5, Guillaume Porraz6,7, Will Archer1 1 Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institu...

Located between modern-day South Africa and Tanzania, both of which have well-known and extensive Stone Age records, Mozambique's Stone Age sequence remains largely unknown in the broader context of African Pleistocene prehistory. Such lack of data occurs despite the key geographical location of the country, in southern Africa at the southeastern t...

Located in southwest France, Roc de Marsal is a cave with a rich Mousterian stratigraphic sequence. The lower part of the sequence (Layers 9–5) are characterized by assemblages dominated by Levallois lithic technology associated with composite faunal spectra (including red deer, roe deer and reindeer) that shows a gradual increase in the frequency...

Shellmound formation processes are greatly influenced by human inputs associated with an intensive exploitation of marine and estuarine resources. The complex stratigraphy of shellmounds has been difficult to decipher and few studies have focused on the microstratigraphic record of midden formation, especially in European Mesolithic contexts. Cabeç...

Located between modern-day South Africa and Tanzania, both of which have well-known and extensive Stone Age records, Mozambique's Stone Age sequence remains largely unknown in the broader context of African Pleistocene prehistory. Such lack of data occurs despite the key geographical location of the country, in southern Africa at the southeastern t...

The interpretation of Stone Age settlement patterns in the Lunho valley based on GIS and quantitative analysis to explore a series of simple but important issues in relation to GIS-led survey and to visibility and patterning of archaeological data. We draw on information collected during archaeological field survey, and consider the spatial distrib...