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The use of elephant bones for making Acheulian handaxes: A fresh look at old bones
Abstract
In this study, we examine Lower Paleolithic archaeological assemblages that contain bifaces (handaxes) made of elephant bones from Africa, Europe, and the Levant. The aims of this paper are to summarize the available evidence of elephant bone tools manufacturing in the Acheulian, and to analyze patterns of elephant bone tool industry compared to stone tool industries and other taxa bone industries. We will focus on the association between stone and elephant bone bifaces at several Acheulian sites, and will present a new perspective on the connections between bifaces made of the two materials at these sites. Based on the long-term interaction between humans and elephants in Paleolithic times, the human dependence on elephant meat and fat for survival, and many lines of resemblance between elephants and humans, we propose that Lower Paleolithic elephant bone bifaces were not manufactured solely for functional purposes, and suggest that there were some cosmological, cultural and symbolic properties reflected in the production of Acheulian bifaces from elephant bones.
... The period sees a marked increase in sites and an expansion into central and eastern Europe, which is argued to reflect a more sustained human presence across the continent. It also corresponds with new technological strategies, including the beginnings of prepared core technology, working of wood and bone, improved hunting technology, and better evidence for the use of fire (Warren, 1911;Thieme, 1997;Roberts and Parfitt, 1999;White and Ashton 2003;Gowlett et al., 2005;Voormolen, 2008;Dennell et al., 2011;Roebroeks and Villa, 2011;Ashton, 2015;Schoch et al., 2015;Moncel et al., 2016aMoncel et al., , 2020bZutovski and Barkai, 2016;Davis and Ashton, 2019;Milks et al., 2019). These innovations also seem to correspond with current genetic data, which show that Neanderthal features emerged in populations between 600 and 400 ka (Hublin and Pääbo, 2005;Hublin, 2009;Bermúdez de Castro et al., 2013;Meyer et al., 2014). ...
... As with cleavers, it has long being suggested that some of this variation can be attributed to raw material quality and blank form (Villa, 1981;Ashton and McNabb, 1994;White, 1998), and this seems to be the case at MDI and even more clearly at Terra Amata, where a few crudely made handaxes and cleavers were made on local limestone beach pebbles (de Lumley, 2009;de Lumley et al., 2015). To add to the variation in form and raw material, there are several sites in Italy where bone was also used for handaxe manufacture (Boschian and Saccà, 2015;Santucci et al., 2016;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016). The variation in handaxe morphology seems to continue into MIS 10 and 9, as clearly shown at MDI. ...
... Systematic butchery can be seen on ungulate and small game carcasses. Bone tools only rarely survive, but dispersed evidence reflects widespread use (Brühl, 2003;Julien et al., 2015;van Kolfschoten et al., 2015;Moigne et al., 2016;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016). Alongside these developments we see better evidence for fireuse from MIS 11 at Beeches Pit (UK), Terra Amata (France) and Gruta da Aroeira (Portugal), together with MDI (Gowlett et al. 2005;Roebroeks and Villa, 2011;de Lumley et al., 2015;Sanz et al., 2020). ...
The establishment of the Acheulean in Europe occurred after MIS 17, but it was after the harsh glaciation of MIS 12 and during the long interglacial of MIS 11 that human occupation of Western Europe became more sustained, with an increased number of sites. Menez-Dregan I (Brittany, France) is one of the key sites in Western Europe that dates from this threshold, with an alternating sequence of 16 occupation levels and four marine deposits, from MIS 12 to 8. The large lithic assemblages of more than 154,000 artifacts from knapping (cores, flakes) and shaping (macrotools and shaping flakes) show the varying use of raw materials and activities at the site through the sequence. This work focuses on the study of the handaxes and cleavers using technological and metrical methods with multivariate analysis, in combination with geometric morphometrics, and places these analyses within the context of other technological changes at the site. Collectively, results show the persistent use through the sequence of the same lithic raw materials and technologies, including fire use and the import of glossy sandstone from 20 km away, but with variation in activities at the site. These findings suggest that Menez-Dregan I shows the development of a specific material culture that reflects the local resources and environment. Results further indicate that the site shows the sustained hominin occupation of the area, despite varying climate and environment, with strong traditions of social learning that were maintained through flexibility of site use, deep understanding of the local territory, and the innovation of new technologies, such as the use of fire. Evidence from the site is placed within the wider context of Europe, and contrasted with areas to the north, such as Britain, where hominin occupation was more sporadic and driven by cyclical climate change.
... Being the largest terrestrial mammals during the Pleistocene, proboscideans ideally constituted optimal sources and reserves of food (Ben-Dor et al., 2011;Reshef and Barkai, 2015; Agam and Barkai, 2016Barkai, , 2018 and raw material (Gaudzinski et al., 2005;Boschian and Saccà, 2015;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016) -albeit the nutritional/energy return in megafauna exploitation remains debated and non-dietary utilization of proboscidean carcasses might have had more importance than previously thought (Hawkes et al., 1991;Hawkes, 2000;Speth, 2010;Lupo and Schmitt, 2016;Barkai, 2019). Certainly, in the broader, long-last-ing debate about the role of meat consumption in the biological and cultural evolution of hominins (e.g., Leakey, 1971;Isaac, 1978;Binford, 1981bBinford, , 1984Potts, 1982;Blumenschine, 1988;Speth, 1989Speth, , 2010Domínguez-Rodrigo, 2002;Domínguez-Rodrigo et al., 2007b, 2014a, 2017aPante et al., 2012Pante et al., , 2015Thompson et al., 2019), evidence of elephant exploitation, if confirmed, provides further insights into past human behaviors, diet and subsistence strategies. ...
... Being the largest terrestrial mammals during the Pleistocene, proboscideans ideally constituted optimal sources and reserves of food (Ben-Dor et al., 2011;Reshef and Barkai, 2015; Agam and Barkai, 2016Barkai, , 2018 and raw material (Gaudzinski et al., 2005;Boschian and Saccà, 2015;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016) -albeit the nutritional/energy return in megafauna exploitation remains debated and non-dietary utilization of proboscidean carcasses might have had more importance than previously thought (Hawkes et al., 1991;Hawkes, 2000;Speth, 2010;Lupo and Schmitt, 2016;Barkai, 2019). Certainly, in the broader, long-last-ing debate about the role of meat consumption in the biological and cultural evolution of hominins (e.g., Leakey, 1971;Isaac, 1978;Binford, 1981bBinford, , 1984Potts, 1982;Blumenschine, 1988;Speth, 1989Speth, , 2010Domínguez-Rodrigo, 2002;Domínguez-Rodrigo et al., 2007b, 2014a, 2017aPante et al., 2012Pante et al., , 2015Thompson et al., 2019), evidence of elephant exploitation, if confirmed, provides further insights into past human behaviors, diet and subsistence strategies. ...
... Breakages for brain or marrow extraction are also relatively rare. The presence of marrow cavities in proboscidean bones seems to be random and not predictable Yravedra et al., 2012;Boschian et al., 2019) and it is not clear which breakages were exclusively functional to tool production and which were concurrent to marrow extraction (Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Boschian et al., 2019). Artifacts made of proboscidean bones are generally rare during the Lower Palaeolithic, although they were quite abundant in very few sites (e.g., Gaudzinski et al., 2005;Rabinovich et al., 2012;Saccà, 2012;Boschian and Saccà, 2015). ...
Human-proboscidean interactions are key nodes of complex ecological, cultural and socio-econom- ic systems. In the last decades, evidence has been provided in support of an early human exploitation of proboscidean carcasses, offering further insights into past human behaviors, diet and subsistence strategies. Nevertheless, the mode of acquisition of the carcasses, the degree of exploitation, its timing relative to carnivore scavenging and to the decom- position of the carcass, its ecological and socio-eco- nomical role are hitherto not fully understood and a matter of debate. By summarizing the empirical evidence for human-elephant interactions in Early and Middle Pleistocene open-air sites of western Eurasia, this contribution elaborates on the need for a more rigorous, spatially explicit inferential procedure in modeling past human behaviors. A renewed analytical approach, namely spatial ta- phonomy, is introduced. In its general term, spatial taphonomy refers to the multiscale investigation of the spatial properties of taphonomic processes. Building upon a long lasting tradition of tapho- nomic studies, it seeks for a more effective theoret- ical and methodological framework that accounts for the spatio-temporal dimension inherent to any complex system. By bridging into a spatio-tempo- ral framework the traditional archaeological, geo- archaeological and taphonomic approaches, spatial taphonomy enhances our understanding of the processes forming archaeological and palaeonto- logical assemblages, allowing a finer comprehen- sion of past human behaviors.
... However, bone artifacts were much less frequently produced by early hominins than stone tools, and finely shaped bone tools like bone handaxes are extremely rare (38,55,61). To date, only one bone handaxe has been reported from the pre-1 Mya African early Acheulean, at Olduvai Gorge Bed II (Table 1). ...
... Except at Castel di Guido in Italy (64), only single or two bone handaxes have been reported from these sites, mostly made from elephant bones. Due to the scarcity of bone handaxes as well to as the remarkable preference for elephant bones, ritual or symbolic purposes rather than functional purposes have been suggested, especially in Europe (61). ...
... Although only few use-wear studies have been undertaken on Acheulean stone handaxes, it is generally believed that handaxes were used in butchery tasks (91,95,96,(98)(99)(100). KGA13-A1 ZA1 shows that bone handaxes were produced by bifacial flaking in a manner similar to that used for stone tools; furthermore, use-wear analysis suggests that their functional roles may also have been similar. However, bone handaxes are found only rarely (3, 38,55,61), in contrast to the abundant stone handaxes. This may be due in part to taphonomic reasons, but probably also to the accessibility of suitable blanks and the difficulty of controlling bone percussion (55,79). ...
Significance
We report a rare example of a 1.4-million-y-old large bone fragment shaped into handaxe-like form. This bone tool derives from the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia, where abundant early Acheulean stone artifacts show considerable technological progression between ∼1.75 and <1.0 Mya. Technological analysis of the bone tool indicates intensive anthropogenic shaping. Edge damage, polish, and striae patterns are consistent with use in longitudinal motions, such as in butchering. The discovery of this bone handaxe shows that advanced flaking technology, practiced at Konso on a variety of lithic materials, was also applied to bone, thus expanding the known technological repertoire of African Early Pleistocene Homo .
... I believe that the central role of proboscideans as a food source, coupled with the social, behavioural and even physical resemblance between these animals and humans (Lev & Barkai 2016), were the reasons behind the cosmological conception of elephants and mammoths by early humans. The archaeological evidence for such speculation can be found, for example, in the use of elephant bones for making tools that resemble the characteristic Lower Palaeolithic stone handaxes (Zutovski & Barkai 2016), as well as the elaborate depictions of mammoths in cave 'art' and the production of mammoth and human sculptures/amulets/ charms and engravings made from mammoth ivory and bone in Europe during Upper Palaeolithic times (e.g. Braun & Palombo 2012;Hussain & Floss 2015;Munzel et al. 2016). ...
... A clear preference for elephant bones was detected in Acheulean bone biface production (Fig. 11.3). All eight archaeological sites analysed in our 2016 paper (Zutovski & Barkai 2016) contained bones of other large taxa in significant numbers, in addition to elephant bones. However, no handaxe was manufactured from any other animal than elephant, despite bones of other large mammals (1.8/1.6-0.250 million years ago in Africa and the Levant); and its persistent morphology and production technology (Finkel & Barkai 2018).The available functional, technological and experimental evidence would seem to suggest that the primary use of Palaeolithic handaxes lay in processing animal carcasses (e.g. ...
... Moreover, bone handaxes were found only at sites where stone handaxes were present as well. In other words, while there are numerous Acheulean sites with stone handaxes completely devoid of bone bifaces, no Acheulean site to date without stone handaxes has ever featured elephant bone bifaces (Zutovski & Barkai 2016). An intriguing bond between early humans, handaxes cant food source but were also ubiquitously depicted and sculptured in painted caves (e.g. ...
... Osseous artifacts found within IUP sites are generally formal tools, made with techniques specific to working hard animal tissues such as scraping, grinding, and grooving (Mellars, 1973;Klein, 2009;d'Errico et al., 2012a), though informal bone artifacts are also found in some deposits . Similar informal or expedient bone tools including knapped bones have been documented from African Early Stone Age sites as well as in later Eurasian assemblages (e.g., Vincent, 1993;Radmilli and Boschian, 1996;Mania and Mania, 2005;Daujeard et al., 2014;Julien et al., 2015;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Pante et al., 2020;Sano et al., 2020;Villa et al., 2021). Although formal bone tools are sometimes recognized within later MP deposits (Gaudzinski, 1999;Soressi et al., 2013;Stepanchuk et al., 2017), formal bone working appears to have a deeper history in Africa beginning from around 120e90 ka in northwest Africa (El Hajraoui and Deb enath, 2012;Jacobs et al., 2012;Bouzouggar et al., 2018;Hallett et al., 2021) and shortly after in other regions (Yellen et al., 1995;d'Errico and Henshilwood, 2007;d'Errico et al., 2012a). ...
... In these cases, impact fractures occur on various surfaces of a bone and not only within the medullary cavity as is common for marrow extraction. Knapped or flaked bone tools of this type have a long history in the African Early Stone Age (Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Pante et al., 2020;Sano et al., 2020) and have been preserved in Middle and Late Pleistocene assemblages (e.g., Vincent, 1993;Radmilli and Boschian, 1996;Mania and Mania, 2005;Julien et al., 2015;Baumann et al., 2020;Kozlikin et al., 2020;Doyon et al., 2021;Villa et al., 2021), including those within the MP and UP in southeast Europe (Guadelli, 2011). Both direct and indirect percussive techniques were used on the Bacho Kiro Cave bone tools to produce and shape the bone tool blanks, but also to refine their ends and edges for cutting or other tasks that required a sharp edge. ...
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 Upper Paleolithic. The Initial Upper Paleolithic is characterized by Levallois-like blade technologies that can co-occur with bone tools and ornaments and likely represents the dispersal of H. sapiens into several regions throughout Eurasia starting by 45 ka or possibly earlier. Osseous artifacts from the Initial Upper Paleolithic are important components of this record and have the potential to contribute to our understanding of group interactions and population movements. Here, we present a zooarchaeological, technological, and functional analysis of the diverse and sizable osseous artifact collection from Bacho Kiro Cave. Animal raw material sources are consistent with taxa found within the faunal assemblage including cervids, large bovids, and cave bears. A variety of bone tool morphologies, both formal and informal, indicate a diverse technological approach for conducting various on-site activities, many of which were focused on the processing of animal skins, likely for cold weather clothing. Technological flexibility is also evident in the manufacture of personal ornaments, which were made primarily from carnivore teeth, especially cave bear, though herbivore teeth and small beads are also represented. The osseous artifacts from Bacho Kiro Cave provide a series of insights into the bone technology and indirectly on the social aspects of these humans in southeast Europe, and when placed within the broader Initial Upper Paleolithic context, both regional and shared behaviors are evidently indicating widespread innovation and complexity. This is especially significant given the location and chronology of the site in the context of H. sapiens dispersals.
... In addition to their high fat content, high energetic return, and significant biomass, it is suggested that early human were capable and skillful in hunting megaherbivores (Bunn and Pickering, 2010;Bunn and Gurtov, 2014;Domínguez-Rodrigo et al., 2017;Agam and Barkai, 2018b;Bunn et al., 2019;Ben-Dor and Barkai, 2020;Ben-Dor et al., 2021a;Ben-Dor et al., 2021b;Ben-Dor and Barkai, 2021). Proboscidean remains are indeed found at many Lower Paleolithic Acheulian sites in the Levant and beyond (e.g.,: Goren-Inbar et al., 1994;Solodenko et al., 2015;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Ben-Dor and Barkai ,2020a;Barkai, 2021;Konidaris and Tourloukis, 2021). ...
... The disappearance of elephants from the Levantine post-Acheulian landscape, marking the end of the Acheulian mode of adaptation, was probably a slow process, but one that must have had severe consequences for the Acheulian groups, who had lived in their presence for hundreds of thousands of years. The strong spiritual bond between early humans and elephants might be expressed in the production of replicas of the iconic handaxes from elephant bones, which seems to have accelerated towards the end of the Acheulian (Mussi, 2005;Costa and Latium, 2010;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Barkai, 2019;Barkai, 2021). ...
The life cycle of a successful technological innovation usually follows a well-known path: a slow inception, gradual assimilation of the technology, an increase in its frequency up to a certain peak, and then a decline. These different phases are characterized not only by varying frequency of use but also by degree of standardization and distinguishability. The Levallois method, a sophisticated Middle Paleolithic technology aimed at producing desired stone items of predetermined morphology, is one such innovation. It has been repeatedly suggested that the Levallois method originated within earlier Lower Paleolithic Acheulian industries, and this work contributes to this discussion. We analyze the reduction trajectory of prepared cores and predetermined blanks from the late Acheulian sites of Jaljulia and Revadim, adding important new evidence for the Lower Paleolithic origins of the Levallois method and its adoption and assimilation in the human stone-tool repertoire of this period in the Levant. Revadim and Jaljulia also provide a rare opportunity to study patterns in the early assimilation of technological innovations. These sites yielded rich lithic assemblages typical of the late Acheulian in the Levant. The assemblages include handaxes but are mostly dominated by flake production technologies and flake-tools. The early appearance of prepared cores at both sites signals, in our view, the inception of concepts related to the Levallois method, termed here proto-Levallois, in the late Acheulian Levant. Through a detailed analysis of prepared cores and their products, we are able to characterize the early stages of assimilation of this method, using it as a case study in a broader discussion of the adoption and assimilation of technological innovations during Lower Paleolithic times.
... The oldest bone tools include bifaces and other pieces that were intentionally reduced or shaped by hominins in a similar way as lithics (Anzidei et al. 2012;Anzidei and Cerilli 2001;Boschian and Saccà 2010;Dobosi 2003;Kretzoi and Dobosi 1990;Mania and Mania 2003;Marder, Milevski, and Matskevich 2006;Rabinovich et al. 2012;Saccà 2012;Segre and Ascenzi 1984;Wei et al. 2017), as well as bones used as soft hammers or percussors/retouchers to shape stone tools (Julien et al. 2015;Kolfschoten et al. 2015;Moigne et al. 2016;Rosell et al. 2015;Stout et al. 2014;Tourloukis et al. 2018). Current debates address the extent to which Middle Pleistocene hominins recognized unique properties of bone materials when using them for tools, whether bone bifaces had similar functions as stone bifaces, and if elephant bone bifaces had cosmological, cultural, or symbolic significance (see Zutovski and Barkai 2015). ...
... Bone tools such as retouchers or percussors and flaked bone made from megafauna, including proboscideans, are found in the Lower Paleolithic of Eurasia (see reviews in Rosell et al. 2015;Zutovski and Barkai 2015). Bone tools made from megafauna are not common, but they have been found in low frequency at several sites, and the Castel di Guido site in Italy reportedly had 99 bifacial hand axes made from megafauna bone . ...
This article presents a pilot experiment conducted to better understand how Middle Pleistocene hominins might have processed and exploited elephants using simple stone and bone tools. The experiment was conducted in three phases: (1) production of small, flake-based stone tools, (2) butchery of the lower hind-leg of an Indian elephant, and (3) manufacture of bone tools from the tibia. The experiment shows it is possible to cut through elephant skin in under four minutes using small chipped-stone flakes; disarticulating the astragalus from the tibia is relatively easy, whereas disarticulating the astragalus from the other tarsals is difficult; breaking open an elephant tibia is possible in two minutes; the tibia of the elephant used in the experiment lacked a hollow marrow cavity; extraction of the large fatty cushion encased in the metatarsals and phalanges required several hours; and elephant bone tools are useful for retouching lithic materials of differing quality.
... Acheulian hominins coexisted with elephants for a very long time and most likely were dependent on this important dietary source for hundreds of thousands of years. Although human diet during Lower Paleolithic times was based on a large variety of prey animals, none 'resembles the "ideal" fat and meat package offered by the consumption of elephants' (Zutovski and Barkai 2016). ...
... Barkai (2019) suggests that early humans manufactured handaxes from elephant bones as an expression of their 'dissonance at consuming those impressive animals they shared the world with.' The manipulation of elephant bones could thus point to a deep bond between the producers of the tools and the animal from which the bones were taken (Zutovski and Barkai 2016). ...
For indigenous hunter-gatherers, dependent for their subsistence and well-being on prey animals, animal extinction had significant and multifaceted effects, only some of which are reflected in the archaeological record. Contemporary hunter-gatherers often view animals as equal partners in a shared habitat, where these animals are simultaneously hunted and revered. We posit that this same duality existed among past hunter-gatherer groups. The disappearance of a species that supported human existence for millennia triggered not only technological and social changes but also had profound emotional and psychological effects. We present several selected case studies that reflect the complex dual relationship between indigenous hunter-gatherers and their prey under different environmental conditions. We focus on the material and mental effects of animal population decline over diverse cultures, geographies, and time scales. Our study sheds light on the vital role of specific animal taxa in human biological and cultural evolution. It also deepens our understanding of how indigenous hunter-gatherer societies expressed their awareness of coexistence with other species. In the age of the Sixth Extinction, this study might be more relevant than ever not only for reconstructing the life ways of indigenous hunter-gatherers but for all human and nonhuman species populating the planet.
... Blasco et al. 2013;Solodenko et al. 2015), as well as elephant bones which were found in direct association with Fig. 9 Type BJ-nummulitic debris (a) and an echinoid spine (b), in plane-and cross-polarized light bifacial tools (e.g. Goren-Inbar et al. 1994;Zutovski and Barkai 2016, and see additional references therein). The important role of elephants in the diet and adaptation of Acheulian populations has already been suggested in the past Barkai 2016, 2018b;Ben-Dor et al. 2011), and is further supported by many Acheulian sites containing elephant remains (e.g. ...
... Thus, Finkel and Barkai suggest that handaxes were an essential tool in large game processing during the Acheulian. The appearance of bifacial tools made of elephant bones further implies that elephants had major nutritional and social roles in the lives of these hominin groups (Zutovski and Barkai 2016). Additional support for the connection between handaxes and elephants is provided by the geographical and chronological synchronization between these two elements (Finkel and Barkai 2018). ...
The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake
... Blasco et al. 2013;Solodenko et al. 2015), as well as elephant bones which were found in direct association with bifacial tools (e.g. Goren-Inbar et al. 1994;Zutovski and Barkai 2016, and see additional references therein). The important role of elephants in the diet and adaptation of Acheulian populations has already been suggested in the past Barkai 2016, 2018b;Ben-Dor et al. 2011), and is further supported by many Acheulian sites containing elephant remains (e.g. ...
... Thus, Finkel and Barkai suggest that handaxes were an essential tool in large game processing during the Acheulian. The appearance of bifacial tools made of elephant bones further implies that elephants had major nutritional and social roles in the lives of these hominin groups (Zutovski and Barkai 2016). Additional support for the connection between handaxes and elephants is provided by the geographical and chronological synchronization between these two elements (Finkel and Barkai 2018). ...
This paper presents the results of a flint type analysis performed for the small assemblage of bifaces found at the Acheulo-Yabrudian site Qesem Cave (QC), Israel (420–200 kya), which includes 12 handaxes, three bifacial roughouts, one trihedral, and one bifacial spall. The analysed artefacts were measured and classified into flint types based on visual traits. Also, extensive fieldwork aimed at locating potential sources was carried out. The bifaces were then assigned to potential flint sources, using both macroscopic and petrographic data, and were compared with a large general sample (n = 21,102) from various typo-technological categories and from various QC assemblages, studied by the same analytic process. Our results show that while the site is located within rich flint-bearing limestone outcrops of the Bi’na Formation (Upper Cretaceous Turonian), which dominate the general sample, non-Turonian flint types dominate the biface assemblage. The presence of roughouts and complete handaxes, alongside the complete absence of bifacial knapping by-products, as well as the absence of a clear spatial distribution pattern of the bifaces throughout the site’s sequence, stresses the fragmentation of the bifacial chaîne opératoire and suggests that the bifaces were not produced at the site but, rather, were brought to the cave in their current state. The extremely low quantity of bifaces at QC, compared with the overall rich lithic assemblages, suggests that handaxes did not play a major functional role in the QC hominins’ everyday lives. It is therefore possible that the QC bifaces originated from older contexts, most likely Acheulian sites existing in the vicinity of the cave, as part of the habit of the QC hominins of collecting older, previously knapped artefacts.
... Древнейшие свидетельства изготовления больших серий костяных орудий двусторонней оббивкой и ретушированием, в том числе и из диафизов хоботных, на европейском континенте датируются MIS 11, то есть синхронны верхним слоям Меджибожа А (Villa et al. 2021). В пределах Европы костяные бифасы известны также в памятниках Венгрии и Германии; известны такие изделия и за пределами Европы (Zutovski, Barkai 2016). Стоянки среднего палеолита уже повсеместно содержат разнообразные орудия из кости, включая обработанные ретушью или оббивкой (Голованова 2017;Степанчук, Васильев 2018;Burke, d'Errico 2008;Kozlikin et al. 2020;Doyon et al. 2021). ...
The paper presents the first publication of unique ivory micro-artefacts identified in materials of the multilayered Palaeolithic sites Medzhibozh A and Zaskalnaya V. The objects under discussion represent the oldest currently known instances of anthropogenic modification of tusk material using the bipolar-on-anvil knapping and trimming techniques and retouching. Medzhibozh A is located in the Southern Bug valley; layer I—II with a Mammuthus trogontherii tusk artefact is dated to the Middle Pleistocene (MIS 11) and contains archaic core-and-flake lithic industry. Zaskalnaya V is located in Eastern Crimea; layer IV with a worked Mammuthus primigenius tusk fragment is dated to the Late Pleistocene (MIS 5a), and the accompanying industry is referred to as Micoquian. Despite the significant chronological and geographical remotedness, as well as different cultural and technological contexts, the objects in question are fundamentally similar in processing technology, identical in raw material, and have close dimensions and general morphology. In both cases, the likely intention was quite similar and rather unusual: to create useless, from a practical point of view, tiny objects from small fragments of marginally suitable for splitting material. The makers used the technology routinely applied to manufacture stone tools. The similarity of the tasks and solutions can find a reasonable, though speculative, explanation by assuming that in both cases we are dealing with a simulation of the stone-working process by children.
... Древнейшие свидетельства изготовления больших серий костяных орудий двусторонней оббивкой и ретушированием, в том числе и из диафизов хоботных, на европейском континенте датируются MIS 11, то есть синхронны верхним слоям Меджибожа А (Villa et al. 2021). В пределах Европы костяные бифасы известны также в памятниках Венгрии и Германии; известны такие изделия и за пределами Европы (Zutovski, Barkai 2016). Стоянки среднего палеолита уже повсеместно содержат разнообразные орудия из кости, включая обработанные ретушью или оббивкой (Голованова 2017; Степанчук, Васильев 2018; Burke, d'Errico 2008;Kozlikin et al. 2020;Doyon et al. 2021). ...
For the first time, we publish data on unique micro-artefacts from а tusk, identified in materials of multilayered Palaeolithic sites Medzhibozh A and Zaskalnaya V. The objects are the oldest currently known instances of anthropogenic modification of tusk material using the bipolar-on-anvil knapping and trimming techniques and retouching. Medzhibozh A is located in the Southern Bug valley; the layer I-II with Mammuthus trogontherii tusk artefact is dated to the Middle Pleistocene (MIS 11), and contains archaic core-and-flake lithic industry. Zaskalnaya V is located in Eastern Crimea; the layer IV with a worked tusk fragment of Mammuthus primigenius is dated to the Late Pleistocene (MIS 5a), and the accompanying industry is referred to as Micoquian. Despite the significant difference in age, the remote geographical location, the mismatch in cultural and technological context and the anthropological type of the makers, the identified objects are fundamentally similar in processing technology, identical in material, and close in dimension and general morphology. In both cases, the likely intention was quite similar and rather unconventional: to create a useless, from a practical point of view, tiny object from a small fragment of an unusual and marginally suitable for splitting material. The makers used the technology their contemporaries routinely applied to manufacture stone products. The similarity of the task and solutions can find a reasonable, though speculative, explanation by assuming that we are dealing with a simulation of the stone-making process by children.
... However, evidence from different sites suggests other motivations for these behaviours (Bourguignon et al., 2004;Faivre, 2008;Parush et al., 2015;Preysler et al., 2015;Venditti et al., 2019a;Mathias and Bourguignon, 2020). Moreover, such an explanation is highly unlikely for the case of stone-rich Jaljulia, and other lines of interpretations were suggested in the past for both bone retouchers and the use of bones for the production of Lower Palaeolithic bifaces Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Barkai, 2020;. At this stage, we believe that the use of bulb retouchers at Jaljulia was not due to a shortage of stone. ...
Bulb retouchers (or flint retouchers) are a specific tool category applied in stone knapping activities, commonly associated with Middle Palaeolithic assemblages and late Pleistocene hominins in north Africa, the Levant and Europe. A few flint flakes with pits on the ventral surface were identified in the lithic assemblage of Area D at late Acheulean Jaljulia, dated to ca. 500 ka. Here we present a techno-typological analysis of these items as well as the percussive marks. Like many Middle Palaeolithic bulb retouchers, those used at Jaljulia consist mainly of retouched items or combined matrices (a tool and/or a core). Here we present the earliest evidence for the use of bulb retouchers during late Acheulean times in the Levant, thus demonstrating their roots in the Lower Palaeolithic lithic repertoire. Further analyses will allow us to more accurately interpret their use as a percussor. This study constitutes the first step in understanding the role and significance of bulb retouchers in early human tool-kits during the late Lower Palaeolithic in the Levant and demonstrates that such items were envisioned and employed hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously known.
... Elephants were a source of meat, fat, and marrow, which are all very suitable high-energy foods (Ben-Dor et al., 2011;Reshef & Barkai, 2015). Elephant bones were also exploited as raw material to produce flakes and various types of large tools among which handaxes are the most iconic (Zutovski & Barkai, 2016;Barkai, 2021;Villa et al., 2021). ...
During the Lower Paleolithic, the interaction between hominins and elephants through the medium of lithic tools is testified by numerous sites in Africa, Europe, and Asia. This interaction ensured hominins a large source of food and of knappable raw material, bone. The availability of the huge package of resources represented by these animals had a deep impact on hominins behavior and their strategies of exploitation of the landscape. This article, for the first time, documents this behavior with a spatial and chronological viewpoint. At the Late Lower Paleolithic site of La Polledrara di Cecanibbio (Rome), the outstanding in situ find of a quite entire carcass of Palaeoloxodon antiquus surrounded by lithic tools of small dimensions allowed us to explore the relation between the elephant, fatally entrapped in muddy sediments, and the hominins that exploited its carcass with their lithic toolkit. The application of an integrated approach including technology, refitting, use-wear, residues, and spatial analyses to the study of the small tools allowed us to unveil the activities carried out around the elephant in a timeline. As a result, hominins exploited the carcass for meat and fat possibly in more than one time and selected the area of the carcass as an atelier to knap and possibly cache their lithic products for future use. These data introduce the intriguing suggestion that the carcass was, besides a source of food and raw material, also a landmark for humans in the landscape.
... However, even around the time of early Homo groups, animals were more than just an objectified food source. Handaxes made from elephant bone, found from about 1.4 million years ago, for example, are less practical than their stone counterparts and suggest that elephants had some particular meaning (Barkai 2021;Zutovski and Barkai 2015). Humans might even have recognised their empathy and capacity to care for others. ...
In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transition, dedicated chapters examine evolutionary pressures, responses in changes in human emotional capacities and the archaeological evidence for human social behaviours. Starting from our earliest origins, in Part One, Professor Spikins explores how after two million years ago, movement of human ancestors into a new ecological niche drove new types of collaboration, including care for vulnerable members of the group. Emotional adaptations lead to cognitive changes, as new connections based on compassion, generosity, trust and inclusion also changed our relationship to material things. Part Two explores a later key transition in human emotional capacities occurring after 300,000 years ago. At this time changes in social tolerance allowed ancestors of our own species to further reach out beyond their local group and care about distant allies, making human communities resilient to environmental changes. An increasingly close relationship to animals, and even to cherished possessions, appeared at this time, and can be explained through new human vulnerabilities and ways of seeking comfort and belonging. Lastly, Part Three focuses on the contrasts in emotional dispositions arising between ourselves and our close cousins, the Neanderthals. Neanderthals are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today. This new narrative breaks away from traditional views of human evolution as exceptional or as a linear progression towards a more perfect form. Instead, our evolutionary history is situated within similar processes occurring in other mammals, and explained as one in which emotions, rather than ‘intellect’, were key to our evolutionary journey. Moreover, changes in emotional capacities and dispositions are seen as part of differing pathways each bringing strengths, weaknesses and compromises. These hidden depths provide an explanation for many of the emotional sensitivities and vulnerabilities which continue to influence our world today.
... Perhaps as far back as over a million years ago, animals came to mean something more to people than simply being a source of food. The creation of elephant bone handaxes, for example, suggests that some kind of meaning, or even symbolism, was attached to the use of elephant bones (Lev and Barkai 2015; Zutovski and Barkai 2015). The appearance and extinction of animals mattered to past humans in emotional terms (Halfon and Barkai 2020). ...
In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transition, dedicated chapters examine evolutionary pressures, responses in changes in human emotional capacities and the archaeological evidence for human social behaviours. Starting from our earliest origins, in Part One, Professor Spikins explores how after two million years ago, movement of human ancestors into a new ecological niche drove new types of collaboration, including care for vulnerable members of the group. Emotional adaptations lead to cognitive changes, as new connections based on compassion, generosity, trust and inclusion also changed our relationship to material things. Part Two explores a later key transition in human emotional capacities occurring after 300,000 years ago. At this time changes in social tolerance allowed ancestors of our own species to further reach out beyond their local group and care about distant allies, making human communities resilient to environmental changes. An increasingly close relationship to animals, and even to cherished possessions, appeared at this time, and can be explained through new human vulnerabilities and ways of seeking comfort and belonging. Lastly, Part Three focuses on the contrasts in emotional dispositions arising between ourselves and our close cousins, the Neanderthals. Neanderthals are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today. This new narrative breaks away from traditional views of human evolution as exceptional or as a linear progression towards a more perfect form. Instead, our evolutionary history is situated within similar processes occurring in other mammals, and explained as one in which emotions, rather than ‘intellect’, were key to our evolutionary journey. Moreover, changes in emotional capacities and dispositions are seen as part of differing pathways each bringing strengths, weaknesses and compromises. These hidden depths provide an explanation for many of the emotional sensitivities and vulnerabilities which continue to influence our world today.
... Changes in environment would trigger shifts in population with an increase in exchange of technological knowledge, acculturation and increased gene-flow. This enabled the transmission of technological practice on a broader scale, such as western and central Europe, where by MIS 11 there is evidence for efficient hunting, skilled butchery, wood-, hide-and bone-working, and the use of fire at several sites across the region (Warren, 1911;Thieme, 1997 the use of fire; Roberts and Parfitt, 1999;Gowlett et al., 2005;Voormolen, 2008;Roebroeks and Villa, 2011;Schoch et al., 2015;van Kolfschoten et al., 2015;Ravon et al., 2016aRavon et al., , 2016bRavon et al., , 2022Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Milks et al., 2019). ...
The appearance of the Acheulean and the production of new bifacial tools marked a revolution in human behavior. The use of longer and complex operative chains, with centripetal and recurrent knapping, adapted to different raw materials, created long useful edges, converging in a functional distal end. How and why these handaxes vary has been the subject of intense debates. Britain provides a clearly defined region at the edge of the hominin occupied world for discussing variation in Acheulean assemblages. The environmental changes from MIS 15 to MIS 11 are significant in understanding population change, with probable breaks in evidence during MIS 14 and MIS 12, followed by several sites during the long stable climate of MIS11c. In this latter period, different Acheulean technological expressions appear to coexist in Britain. This paper draws together different studies, combining technology and geometric morphometrics to analyze handaxes from six British sites: Brandon Fields, Boxgrove (Q1B), High Lodge, Hitchin, Swanscombe (UMG), and Elveden. Compared to the earlier Acheulean of MIS 15, the assemblages of MIS 13 show increased standardization and the use of soft hammer percussion for thinning mid-sections and butts of tools, or sharpening tips through tranchet removals. Although there is regional population discontinuity through MIS12 there is no evidence of a marked change in technology after this glacial period. Rather, there is a development towards more intense shaping with the same underlying techniques, but with flexibility in imposed handaxe form. From MIS11 there appear to be distinctive localized traditions of manufacture, which suggest that a recognition of place and territories had developed by this time. These are expressed over medium time-scales of several thousand years and have significance for how we view cultural expression and transmission.
... Proboscidean compact bone was flaked into bifaces in several Lower and Middle Palaeolithic sites in Africa and Eurasia [372]. Interpretations differ as to why this was carried out, ranging from a purely functional explanation (useful cutting edges were made available by the shaping) to an "act of reverence" that reflected a cosmologically significant relationship that hominins are thought to have had with elephants [373] (p. ...
This is a peer-reviewed and corrected/updated discussion of >100 late Quaternary proboscidean sites in Africa, Europe, and Asia with evidence for hominin involvement. Lower Palaeolithic/Early Stone Age hominins created far fewer proboscidean assemblages than hominins in later Palaeolithic phases, in spite of the time span being many times longer. Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age hominins created assemblages at eight times the earlier hominin rate. Upper Palaeolithic/Later Stone Age hominins created site assemblages at >90 times the rate of Lower Palaeolithic hominins. Palaeoloxodon spp. occur in nearly one third of the sites with an identified or probable proboscidean taxon and Mammuthus species are in nearly one half of the sites with identified or probable taxon.
... Bone knapping is sporadically documented during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic in Eurasia. Bifaces, choppers, trihedral picks, scrapers, denticulates, and smoothers made on complete or purposely fragmented anatomical elements of proboscideans and big-middle sized ungulates, demonstrate that hominins knapped and/or retouched bone, possibly to overcome limitations in the good quality stone availability in the surroundings of the site (Dobosi, 2001;Gaudzinski et al., 2005;see Rosell et al., 2011;Soressi et al., 2013;Romandini et al., 2014;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Villa et al., 2021;Pante et al., 2020 for references). It is also well-known that flake bones were used to retouch stone tools since the mid of the Middle Pleistocene (Blasco et al., 2013;Julien et al., 2015; papers in Hudson et al., 2018 for recent advancements). ...
Neanderthals collected unusual, sometimes colorful mineral materials from different sources. Several green serpentinite smooth pebbles with a flat shape and use modifications were unearthed at Fumane Cave in northern Italy. This study explores cognitive and functional criteria that influenced the selection and use of unique pebbles based on their regional geology, morphology, petrology, use wear, and residues. Besides the attraction for green materials, there is no evidence for the use of soft green and flat pebbles, like those from Fumane Cave, during the Middle Palaeolithic. Moreover, these materials were collected by Neanderthals only from ca. 44 ka cal BP, despite the large availability of green serpentine pebbles in the alluvial beds near the cave. Ultimately, we provide new data to understand the role of aesthetic and technological factors in shaping the human behavioral range in the Middle Paleolithic.
... Modern observations also indicate that cut-marks on elephant bones occur infrequently in cases where human activity is ascertained, mostly because of the thickness of the periosteum, which protects the underlying bone (Crader 1983, Haynes 1991. As Zutovski and Barkai (2016) describe, the archaeological record reveals that Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian early humans exploited elephants by hunting and/or by collecting carcasses, and butchered and processed elephants apparently for meat and fat consumption, and possibly also to extract bone marrow. This pattern of behaviour and adaptation was evidently practiced over three continents of the Old World for hundreds of thousands of years. ...
This richly illustrated book gives a detailed account of excavations that extended over
ten years at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, following the discovery of a mammoth tusk
in 1989. More than 1500 vertebrate fossils and a wealth of other biological material
were recorded and recovered, along with 36 stone artefacts attributable to
Neanderthals.
Today the Upper Thames Valley is a region of green pastures and well-managed
farmland, interspersed with pretty villages and intersected by a meandering river.
The discovery in 1989 of a mammoth tusk in river gravels at Stanton Harcourt,
Oxfordshire, revealed the very different ancient past of this landscape. Here, some
200,000 years ago, mammoths, straight-tusked elephants, lions, and other animals
roamed across grasslands with scattered trees, occasionally disturbed by small bands
of Neanderthals.
The pit where the tusk was discovered, destined to become a waste disposal site,
provided a rare opportunity to conduct intensive excavations that extended over a
period of 10 years. This work resulted in the recording and recovery of more than 1500
vertebrate fossils and an abundance of other biological material, including insects,
molluscs, and plant remains, together with 36 stone artefacts attributable to
Neanderthals. The well-preserved plant remains include leaves, nuts, twigs and large
oak logs. Vertebrate remains notably include the most comprehensive known
assemblage of a distinctive small form of the steppe mammoth, Mammuthus
trogontherii, that is characteristic of an interglacial period equated with marine isotope
stage 7 (MIS 7).
Richly illustrated throughout, Mammoths and Neanderthals in the Thames Valley
offers a detailed account of all these finds and will be of interest to Quaternary
specialists and students alike.
... Early instances are found at Middle Stone Age sites from southern, northern, and central Africa (Brooks et al., , 2006Yellen et al., 1995;Henshilwood et al., 2001;Backwell et al., , 2018d'Errico et al., 2012;d'Errico et al., 2020;El Hajraoui and Debénath, 2012;Backwell and d'Errico, 2015). More debated issues concern the first use of bone modified with techniques generally applied to stone such as knapping (Backwell and d'Errico, 2004;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Doyon et al., 2020;Pante et al., 2020;Porraz et al., 2020), and the use of minimally modified bone fragments. Ever since the discovery of the species Australopithecus africanus, referred to then as A. prometheus, Dart (1949), Dart (1957), Dart (1959a, b), Dart (1960Dart ( , 1961aDart ( , b, 1962 proposed that this hominin was able to use bone as a tool. ...
Bone tool-use by Early Pleistocene hominins is at the centre of debates in human evolution. It is especially the case in South Africa, where 102 bone tools have been described from four Early Stone Age archaeological sites, which have yielded Oldowan and possibly Acheulean artefacts, as well as Paranthropus robustus and early Homo remains. Here we describe a bone tool from Cooper's D. The deposit, dated between 1.4 and 1.0 Ma, has yielded seven P. robustus remains and 50 stone artefacts. Our results highlight similarities in morphology and use-wear patterns between the Cooper's D bone tool and those previously identified at nearby Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai and Drimolen. Our findings increase the number of Early Stone Age bone tools and provide further evidence of their association with P. robustus. They suggest P. robustus had the cognitive capacities to develop this cultural adaptation and the manipulative abilities to implement it.
... Our knowledge of animal symbolism in southern Africa comes primarily from nineteenth and twentieth century ethnography, although it likely has a great antiquity [129]. Animal symbolism from archaeological remains, such as those recovered from rain-making sites in Limpopo Province, are also inferred from references to these ethnographies and recorded folk tales. ...
Animal symbolism is a prominent feature of many human societies globally. In some cases, these symbolic attributes manifest in the technological domain, influencing the decision to use the bones of certain animals and not others for tool manufacture. In southern Africa, animals feature prominently in the cosmogenic narratives of both hunter-gatherer and Bantu-speaking farmer groups. Whenever these two culturally distinct groups came into contact with each other there would be an assimilation of cosmogenic concepts of power and the adoption of certain symbolically important animals. In this paper, we report on which animals were selected to make bone tools during the first millennium AD contact period in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa, and explore the extent to which this selection may have been influenced by the symbolic associations of specific animals. Our results show selective targeting of specific animals for tool manufacture at some sites, with a narrowing of the range of selected species during the first millennium AD contact period. Certain antelope tribes, such as Aepycerotini, Cephalophini and Antilopini, appear to have been deliberately avoided, thus arguing against opportunistic selection. Nor does the range of selected animals appear to show any obvious mechanical considerations, as has been noted in similar studies. We highlight the potential of ZooMS for understanding the dynamics of animal symbolism in the past.
... In return, humans are obliged to treat the hunted animal with respect, waste nothing of the carcass, and follow strict customs regarding the use and disposal of the inedible remains (Nadasdy 2007;Tanner 2014). In prehistoric societies as well, suggested evidence of ontological relationships between hunters and their prey is found in all chronologies, and these relationships are possibly reflected in the extensive exploitation of animal carcasses and stones at archaeological sites, following the concept of 'nothing is wasted' (Barkai et al. 2017;Blasco et al.2019aBlasco et al. , 2019bVenditti & Cristiani et al. 2019;Venditti & Nunziante-Cesaro et al. 2019), in the shaping of selected inedible animal bones into 'tools' (Barkai 2019;Blasco et al. 2013;Zutovski and Barkai 2016), the use of inedible animal body parts in certain activities (Conneller 2004), the insertion of animal bones in rock cracks at decorated caves (Clottes 2009;Garate et al. 2019), among other examples. ...
In this paper, we present a novel hypothesis as to what led humans in the Upper Paleolithic to penetrate and decorate deep, dark caves. Many of the depictions in these caves are located in halls or narrow passages deep in the interior, navigable only with artificial light. We simulated the effect of torches on oxygen concentrations in structures similar to Paleolithic decorated caves and showed that the oxygen quickly decreased to levels known to induce a state of hypoxia. Hypoxia increases the release of dopamine in the brain, resulting in hallucinations and out-of-body experiences. We discuss the significance of caves in indigenous world views and contend that entering these deep, dark environments was a conscious choice, motivated by an understanding of the transformative nature of an underground, oxygen-depleted space. The cave environment was conceived as both a liminal space and an ontological arena, allowing early humans to maintain their connectedness with the cosmos. It was not the decoration that rendered the caves significant; rather, the significance of the chosen caves was the reason for their decoration.
... We also believe that the persistency of Paleolithic stone-tool production systems is part of a wider phenomenon: intimate and meaningful relationships between the hunter and the hunted that develop when human survival depends on the stability of their prey. Evidence of this can be found in the relationships of the Canadian Innu with the animals they hunt (Tanner, 2014), the relationships of the Nuu-chah-nulth of Vancouver Island with whales, whom they both hunt and consider to be their ancestor (Coté , 2010), and the relationships of Lower Paleolithic human groups with elephants (Barkai, 2019;Zutuvski and Barkai, 2015). ...
Prehistoric archaeology focuses on innovations, transformations, and turnovers. We focus instead on persistency, suggesting that technological persistency in prehistoric hunter-gatherers was triggered by the stability of prey. The technological persistency-faunal stability nexus was not only crucial to human prosperity but also provided safe ground for technological and behavioral innovations, facilitating further adaptation to changing conditions. This can be viewed in the framework of mosaic evolution. We present six cases of morphological stasis enabling trophic adaptations and five archaeological cases of technological persistency following faunal stability. This model could contribute to a better understanding of technological persistency and its evolutionary role.
... Such by-products are found in the non-functional items as exemplified, for example, in the refined symmetrical handaxes that suggest a proto-aesthetic leaning. Elephant bones were also shaped into symmetrical handaxes suggestive of ritual tendencies (Zutovski and Barkai 2016). In addition, the visual brain benefits from a prolific ability to see forms in ambiguous arrays that may derive from detecting and hunting animals in ambivalent environments (Vyshedskiy 2014), which was probably quite advanced during the late middle Acheulian. ...
Comment on R. Wilson “Eschewing bear tracks: fallacies, figure-stones and Fontmaure”
... Reshef and Barkai, 2015;Solodenko et al., 2015;Barkai, 2016). Bones are punctually or never used during the early Paleolithic except some evidence in particular the use of small bone fragments for retouchers or large fragments of Elephant bones for making bifaces, in particular from MIS 11-9 (Moigne et al., 2016;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016). Most of the early sites dated to 700-500 ka are often located along water areas and artefacts associated to remains of large herbivores. ...
Notarchirico is the earliest Acheulean Italian site. On account of the wide variety of artefacts (cores, flakes, pebble tools and bifaces for some levels) and raw materials, it is also a key site for analysing behavioural variability in the Acheulean record before 600 ka, and for investigating the significance of occupation levels with and without bifaces. In this paper, we focus on the upper part of the sequence, which was excavated by M. Piperno in the 1980s and recently securely dated between 610 and 670 ka by 40Ar/39Ar. The deposits of Notarchirico consist of a superimposition of sandy and silty sediments, with more or less intense occupation levels interspersed with sterile layers. Here we present the technological analysis of the lithic assemblages of three paleosurfaces, F, E/E1 and B. The lithic corpus from levels F and B yielded some bifaces, whereas no bifaces were found in levels E/E1, where artefacts are mainly on small flint nodules and small limestone pebbles. Technological strategies are described in the three levels, in particular previously unpublished core technologies, and compared to the rest of the site sequence and to comparable Southern European sites. We present the different hominin strategies, their modes of adaptation to diverse types and geometries of raw materials and the concomitant cultural shifts and discussed by this way the role of activities and traditions.
... The « bifaces » (handaxes) made on diaphysis of large mammals, found in Italian (Castel di Guido, Fontana Ranuccio, Polledrara, Malagrotta, Casal de' Pazzi), German (Bilzingsleben) or Hungarian (Vértesszőlős), are more widely accepted. Although in the sites the specimens are not numerous, the analogies of form and retouch between lithic and bone bifaces let little doubt about the bone ones (see in particular Zutovski and Barkai, 2016). Retouched bone tools have also been documented throughout the Middle Palaeolithic in very different environmental and anthropic contexts. ...
For a long time, the rich bone industries of the Upper Palaeolithic were opposed to the opportunistic Neandertal bone tools among which the bone retoucher was the most common type. The recent finding of a few shaped bone tools into Mousterian contexts has been taken as an emergence of a “modern behaviour”. However, this outlook is based on biased corpuses. On one side, the large number of unshaped bone tools recently discovered in Upper Palaeolithic assemblages leads us to reconsider what a bone industry can be. On the other side, the increasing discoveries of bone tools in more ancient contexts indicates that this type of production is not strictly linked to Homo sapiens. Chagyrskaya cave, located in the Siberian Altai, brings us the opportunity to discuss this question. Dated around 50,000 years BP, the site yielded a local facies of Mousterian lithic industry associated to several Neandertal remains. A technological and functional analysis of the faunal remains reveal more than one thousand bone tools. Most are retouchers, but a significant part belongs to other morpho-functional categories: intermediate tools, retouched tools and tools with a smoothed end. Even though these tools were mainly manufactured by direct percussion, their number and the recurrence of their morphological and traceological features lead us to consider them as a true bone industry. Far from the Homo sapiens standards, this industry has its own coherence that needs now to be understood.
... The first evidence of the use of bone elements as tools by human groups for the development of specific activities comes from Africa in the Early Pleistocene (Backwell and d'Errico, 2008;d'Errico and Backwell, 2009). However, the evidence is not continuous, nor does it appear throughout the archaeological record, since it is not found in Europe and the Middle East until the Middle Pleistocene (Patou-Mathis, 1999;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016) and in subsequent chronologies in East Asia (Doyon et al., 2018). First bone tools mostly do not present clear cultural characteristics, since they are modified either minimally or not at all (Shipman, 1988;Backwell and d'Errico, 2005). ...
Bone artefacts have been widely studied because they can be difficult to identify in ancient chronologies. Taphonomical and zooarchaeological studies have demonstrated problems of equifinality of biotic and/or abiotic agents that create pseudo-tools: marrow fracturing of green bone by hominins and carnivores, trampling, etc. In particular, minimally elaborated bone tools are especially subject to the problems of identification of bone artefacts, as the criteria for characterizing their patterns of elaboration are not clearly defined.
The aim of this study is to experimentally reconstruct the manufacture and use of minimally elaborated bone artefacts in order to evaluate their potential as tools involved in different activities, and to study the resulting use-wear traces. To achieve this goal, bovid long bones were experimentally broken via direct percussion on an anvil to extract the marrow and obtain blanks. Unmodified fragments were used in different tasks: scraping hide and wood, sawing wood, and cutting flesh. Another set of bone blanks were retouched to shape bone tools, which were then used in the same activities. This latter process was sequentially performed and recorded.
Thus, using techniques supported by experimentation and microscopy, this study presents the use-wear analysis on minimally elaborated bone tools. The operative chain of used bones and knapped bone tools and their effects on the formation of different traces is explored. Further technological and taphonomical studies will complete our understanding about these processes, proving new clues for the study of hominin subsistence strategies.
... Relative thickness has also been linked to raw material availability (Ashton and McNabb, 1994;White, 1998). For example, the production of handaxes from large stone flakes or bone, as opposed to stone nodules, has been suggested to aid the production of relatively thinner tools (Li et al., 2014;Moncel et al., 2015;Sharon, 2009;Zutovski and Barkai, 2016). Although Shipton (2018) highlights how raw material and relative thickness relationships can vary between individual sites. ...
The nature, extent and causes of shape variation within and between Acheulean handaxe assemblages represent one of the most heavily theorised aspects of Lower Palaeolithic archaeology. To date, however, handaxe shape variation has only ever been studied within an artefact-based comparative context. Here, the 2D and 3D shape of 698 Acheulean handaxes, selected from ten assemblages, is contextualised within a theoretically possible range of forms defined by two intentionally highly diverse modern replica biface sets. Results demonstrate that handaxe artefacts are highly diverse in their 2D plan-view shape, displaying near complete overlap with the shape space of the intentionally diverse replica tools, along with similar levels of variation. The 3D shape of handaxe artefacts, however, displays much stronger form limitations, occupying under 50% of the shape space created by the replica bifaces. Principally, flat and more ‘tabular’ handaxe forms that display low thickness to width ratios were revealed as absent from the archaeological record. It is argued that while there is considerable diversity and variability in the shape of Acheulean handaxe artefacts, their form is nonetheless restricted by strong material volume and ‘refinement’ limits.
... A recent discovery of a bone handaxe from Gele Mountain in Chongqing dated to ~170 ka ( Wei et al., 2017) and a bone pick from Renzidong Cave, Anhui ( Zhang et al., 2000), offer an intriguing possibility as to how eastern hominins may have adapted and maintained their knapping abilities across different raw materials. Bone handaxes are also known from European, African and Middle East contexts through the Lower Palaeolithic (see Zutovski and Barkai, 2016 and references therein) and although the Chinese examples may be relatively young, it seems likely that more J Quaternary Sci., 1-24 (2019) Table 1. Summary of the Long, Short, Modified Short and Punctuated Long Chronologies as originally proposed for the Palaeolithic occupation of Europe. ...
This paper reviews some of the main advances in our understanding of human evolution over the last 1 million years, presenting a holistic overview of a field defined by interdisciplinary approaches to studying the origins of our species. We begin by briefly summarizing the climatic context across the Old World for the last 1 million years before directly addressing the fossil and archaeological records. The main themes in this work explore (i) recent discoveries in the fossil record over the last 15 years, such as Homo naledi and Homo floresiensis; (ii) the implications of palaeogenetics for understanding the evolutionary history of, and relationships between, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens; (iii) the interplay between physiology and metabolic demand, landscape use, and behavioural adaptations in the evolution of morphological and behavioural innovation; and (iv) recent advances in archaeological understanding for the behavioural record, in particular that of the Neanderthals. This paper seeks to provide a broad‐scale, holistic perspective of our current understanding of human evolution for the last 1 Ma, providing a reference point for researchers that can be built upon as new discoveries continue to develop the landscapes of human evolution.
... One other observation reinforces the notion that handaxes were valued as aesthetic objects is the fact that some were made of impractical elephant bone that display considerable interest in symmetry (Zutovski & Barkai, 2016). As the authors state "Some of the bone bifaces exhibit as well extraordinary aesthetic aspects" (Zutovski & Barkai, 2016, p. 9) as illustrated in Figure 2. ...
The symmetry of Acheulean bifaces has been the focus of much controversy. This controversy has intensified with the discovery of increasing numbers of symmetrical handaxes from various archaeological horizons. Whether such discoveries can inform us about the cognitive profile of their makers is still a provocative question. Nevertheless, some progress has been achieved thanks to developments in neuroscience and associated disciplines. In this chapter, I present evidence that reinforces the importance of symmetry for understanding cognitive evolution but, more than this, I show how the ability to comprehend geometry is not just crucial for making handaxes but also led to the ability to produce the first non-functional marks. I contend that, in both scenarios, an aesthetic propensity was an essential prerequisite.
... The standard hypothesis is that the shortage of high-quality stone was the reason for the use of bone in biface production; however, this hypothesis has never been rigorously tested. Other hypotheses have also been proposed, in the spirit of the arguments suggested in Tanner (2014), focusing on ontological and cosmological conceptions expressed in human-proboscidean interactions, which led to the production of bifaces from elephant bones (Zutovski and Barkai, 2016;Barkai, 2019). ...
CT-scan analyses were carried out on limb bones of straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus)from the Middle Pleistocene site of Castel di Guido (Italy), where bifaces made of elephant bone were found in association with lithics and a large number of intentionally modified bone remains of elephants and other taxa. CT-scans show that marrow cavities are present within the limb bones of this taxon. Though rather small compared to the size of the bones, these cavities suggest that bone raw material procurement may not have been the unique goal of intentional elephant bone fracturing, and the marrow may also have been extracted for consumption.
In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transition, dedicated chapters examine evolutionary pressures, responses in changes in human emotional capacities and the archaeological evidence for human social behaviours. Starting from our earliest origins, in Part One, Professor Spikins explores how after two million years ago, movement of human ancestors into a new ecological niche drove new types of collaboration, including care for vulnerable members of the group. Emotional adaptations lead to cognitive changes, as new connections based on compassion, generosity, trust and inclusion also changed our relationship to material things. Part Two explores a later key transition in human emotional capacities occurring after 300,000 years ago. At this time changes in social tolerance allowed ancestors of our own species to further reach out beyond their local group and care about distant allies, making human communities resilient to environmental changes. An increasingly close relationship to animals, and even to cherished possessions, appeared at this time, and can be explained through new human vulnerabilities and ways of seeking comfort and belonging. Lastly, Part Three focuses on the contrasts in emotional dispositions arising between ourselves and our close cousins, the Neanderthals. Neanderthals are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today. This new narrative breaks away from traditional views of human evolution as exceptional or as a linear progression towards a more perfect form. Instead, our evolutionary history is situated within similar processes occurring in other mammals, and explained as one in which emotions, rather than ‘intellect’, were key to our evolutionary journey. Moreover, changes in emotional capacities and dispositions are seen as part of differing pathways each bringing strengths, weaknesses and compromises. These hidden depths provide an explanation for many of the emotional sensitivities and vulnerabilities which continue to influence our world today.
The period between 600 and 400 ka is a critical phase for human evolution in Europe. The south and northwest saw a dramatic increase in sites, the spread of handaxe technology alongside bone and wooden tool manufacture, efficient hunting techniques, and the use of fire. Lithic assemblages show considerable variation, including the presence/absence of handaxes and tool morphology. To explain this variation, we propose the Cultural Mosaic Model, which suggests that there is a range of expressions of the Acheulean, with local resources being instrumental in creating distinct material cultures with or without handaxes. We argue that if typologically and technologically distinct assemblage types are regionally distributed, chronologically separated, and persistent over time, then they are unlikely to be caused purely by raw material constraints or functional variation but rather reflect populations with different material cultures. We initially assess the model using British data. Britain was a northwestern peninsula of Europe, and oscillations in climate led to episodic occupation. The terraces of the pre-MIS 12 Bytham River provide a framework for dating occupation to MIS 13 and 15, while during MIS 11, archaeological sites with rich environmental records can be dated to substage level. We suggest there are six chronologically and typologically distinct assemblage types that reflect a series of population incursions into Britain. We review the broader European lithic record, which is consistent with the Cultural Mosaic Model. In developing the model, we suggest that during stable climate, localized cultures developed, while climatic change led to shifts in population, with increased knowledge exchange and gene flow. We suggest that group expression through material culture was an important stage in social development by promoting group cohesion, larger group size, better cooperation, improved knowledge transfer, and enabling populations to survive in larger foraging territories in northern Europe.
The Early and early Middle Pleistocene archaeological record in Britain from c. 900 to 500 ka marks a critical shift in human occupation of northwest Europe, from occasional pioneer populations with simple core and flake technology to more widespread occupation associated with the appearance of Acheulean technology. Key to understanding this record are the fluvial deposits of the extinct Bytham River in central East Anglia, where a series of Lower Palaeolithic sites lie on a 15 km stretch of the former river. In this paper we present the results of new fieldwork and a reanalysis of historical artefact collections of handaxes and scrapers to: 1) establish the chronostratigraphic context of the Bytham archaeological record; 2) examine variability in lithic artefact typology and technology through time; and 3) explore the implications for understanding variation in lithic technology in the European record. Six phases of occupation of Britain are identified from at least marine isotope stage (MIS) 21 to MIS 13, with the last three phases characterised by distinctive lithic technology. We argue that this relates to the discontinuous occupation of Britain, where each phase represents the arrival of new groups derived from different European populations with distinctive material culture.
This article presents a pilot experiment conducted to better understand how Middle Pleistocene hominins might have processed and exploited elephants using simple stone and bone tools. The experiment was conducted in three phases: (1) production of small, flake-based stone tools, (2) butchery of the lower hind-leg of an Indian elephant, and (3) manufacture of bone tools from the tibia. The experiment shows it is possible to cut through elephant skin in under four minutes using small chipped-stone flakes; disarticulating the astragalus from the tibia is relatively easy, whereas disarticulating the astragalus from the other tarsals is difficult; breaking open an elephant tibia is possible in two minutes; the tibia of the elephant used in the experiment lacked a hollow marrow cavity; extraction of the large fatty cushion encased in the metatarsals and phalanges required several hours; and elephant bone tools are useful for retouching lithic materials of differing quality.
Approximately 400,000 years bp , novel technological behaviours appeared in the archaeological record, attested by evidence of the exploitation of previously unused resources and the production of new tools. I have reviewed such innovations, and I discuss them in the frame of the anthropological, palaeoneurological, genetic and behavioural changes that appeared in the Middle Pleistocene. I propose that at this chronology humans started to see the resources as ‘other-than-human’ sentient co-dwellers. The technological innovations expressed this novel cognitive complexity and the possible new things–things, human–things and environment–things relationships. Artefacts and technologies acquired multiple semiotic meanings that were strongly interconnected with the functional value. Ethnoarchaeological evidence suggested the possible symbolic acting beyond these innovations in material culture. This perspective has relevant implications in the archaeology of the ancient Palaeolithic. It suggests the need for a new view of material culture, one that goes beyond the classical list approach in the definition of modern symbolic mediated behaviour. Further, it allows one to overcome the traditional juxtaposition between ancient cultures and Homo sapiens in terms of complexity. The evidence discussed in this paper suggests that the ontological hypothesis could change our view of Middle Pleistocene hominids and the origin and definition of modern behaviour, and test the archaeological visibility of cognition in prehistory.
Indigenous hunter-gatherers view the world differently than do WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) societies. They depend—as in prehistoric times—on intimate relationships with elements such as animals, plants and stones for their successful adaptation and prosperity. The desire to maintain the perceived world-order and ensure the continued availability of whatever is necessary for human existence and well-being thus compelled equal efforts to please these other-than-human counterparts. Relationships of consumption and appreciation characterized human nature as early as the Lower Palaeolithic; the archaeological record reflects such ontological and cosmological conceptions to some extent. Central to my argument are elephants and handaxes, the two pre-eminent Lower Palaeolithic hallmarks of the Old World. I argue that proboscideans had a dual dietary and cosmological significance for early humans during Lower Paleolithic times. The persistent production and use of the ultimate megaherbivore processing tool, the handaxe, coupled with the conspicuous presence of handaxes made of elephant bones, serve as silent testimony for the elephant–handaxe ontological nexus. I will suggest that material culture is a product of people's relationships with the world. Early humans thus tailored their tool kits to the consumption and appreciation of specific animal taxa: in our case, the elephant in the handaxe.
In this paper we discuss the universal selection of exceptional materials for tool making in prehistory. The interpretation suggested in the literature for these non-standard materials is usually limited to a general statement, considering possible aesthetic values or a general, mostly unexplained, symbolic meaning. We discuss the implications of viewing these materials as active agents and living vital beings in Palaeolithic archaeology as attested in indigenous hunter-gatherer communities all around the world. We suggest that the use of specific materials in the Palaeolithic was meaningful, and beyond its possible 'symbolic' meaning, it reflects deep familiarity and complex relations of early humans with the world surrounding them-humans and other-than-human persons (animals, plants, water and stones)-on which they were dependent. We discuss the perception of tools and the materials from which they are made as reflecting relationships, respectful behaviour and functionality from an ontological point of view. In this spirit, we suggest reviewing materials as reflecting social, cosmological and ontological world-views of Palaeolithic humans, and looking beyond their economic, functional aspects, as did, perhaps, our ancestors themselves.
Reliable methods are needed to distinguish anthropogenic from non-anthropogenic causes of proboscidean limb bone breakage in fossil assemblages because of theoretical uncertainty about human-proboscidean relationships in the Pleistocene. This paper compares experimentally broken bones of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and mammoths (Mammuthus spp.) after establishing that limb bone fracture dynamics are the same for those proboscidean taxa. We show that features thought exclusively diagnostic of percussive fracturing of green proboscidean long bones such as notched fracture edges, smooth fracture surfaces, and curvilinear fracture outlines also can be created on non-green bones and on bones affected by non-anthropogenic processes. The information reported here can be applied in analyses or re-analyses of fossil proboscidean bone assemblages and may either support or potentially alter current interpretations of hominin behavior.
More and more contributions to the field of lithics are taking into consideration skill levels and learning processes in prehistory, with the aim of clarifying not only how individuals acted when they produced their tools but also of addressing the processes of change or continuity in the technocultural traditions of past societies and the participation of different social groups in the collective production. For this purpose, the demarcation of realistic categories of “experts” and “novices” in knapping, as well as a determination of what attributes differentiate each one, are essential. Nowadays, knapping experiments offer a more realistic approach for a comparative study in which skill technotypes can indicate the existence of different skill levels inside a particular assemblage. Through the typologies of these experimental technical entities and their comparison with the archeological record, we can deduce the presence of particular models of social production and learning processes during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic.
Early humans and elephants roamed the Pleistocene landscapes of Asia and shared habitats for hundreds of thousands of years. Many Paleolithic archaeological sites in Asia, and especially in the Middle East and China, contain abundant elephant remains that clearly demonstrate that early humans were capable of obtaining these mega herbivores. The significant role of elephants the Paleolithic is well demonstrated throughout the Old World and the dietary significance of proboscideans has also recently been explored. This chapter argues that, during Paleolithic times, proboscideans, when available, represented a constant and significant source of calories for early humans which were actually dependent on mega herbivores for their successful survival. Moreover, the central role of proboscideans as a food source, coupled with the social, behavioral and even physical resemblance between these animals and humans, were the reasons behind the cosmological conception of elephants by early humans. The archaeological evidence for such speculation lies in the use of elephant bones for the production of tools that resemble the characteristic Lower Paleolithic stone hand axes, as well as the later depictions of mammoths in cave “art” and the production of mammoth “sculptures” and engravings made from mammoth ivory and bone. Ethnographic studies support such a view too. Given that early humans in Asia were repeatedly preoccupied by the procurement, exploitation and appreciation of elephants, this chapter explores the nature of human-elephant relationships based on case studies from China and the Levant.
Identification of cultural groups is rare in the early Palaeolithic due to site formation processes including taphonomy and the effect of raw material and site function. This paper reviews a critical period in Europe at about 400 ka (MIS 11) when we may be able to identify such groups. This period, sees more sustained occupation and evidence of new technologies, including bone and wooden tools, hunting and fire-use. Importantly, brain size had begun to approach modern capacity. The fine-tuned record from Britain enables correlation of sites and new models of human behaviour to be developed. Millennial-scale changes in material culture can now be recognised, which can be interpreted as brief incursions by different cultural groups into Britain from mainland Europe. We suggest that population movement was primarily driven by changes in climate and environment. We further propose that variation in material culture is a reflection of local resources and landscape and that during stable environment localised expressions of culture emerge. This can be applied to Europe, where it is suggested that a complex mosaic of small-scale cultural groupings can be identified, some with and some without handaxes, but underpinned by a common set of technologies and behaviours.
The presence of fast-moving small game in the Paleolithic archaeological faunal record has long been considered a key variable to assess fundamental aspects of human behavior and subsistence. Birds occupy a prominent place in this debate not only due to their small size and to the difficulties in capturing them (essentially due to their ability to fly and their elusiveness), but also due to their possible role in the symbolic array in regard to non-nutritional elements (feathers, talons, etc.) and as reflectors of complex humaneworld relationships. In this study, we attempt to contribute to this topic by presenting taphonomical data of bird specimens from Qesem Cave (Israel), dated between 420 and 200 ka. Human-induced damage, including cut marks, peeling and human gnawing, has been identified on wing bones of Cygnus sp., Columba sp., Corvus ruficollis and Sturnus sp. Our evidence suggests that avian exploitation was not limited to food onlydeither to complement the human diet or as occasional food itemdbut also presumably for the use of feathers. While the consumption of birds as a dietary source seems to be evident as early as the Early Pleistocene, the non-alimentary use of inedible elements, such as feathers and talons, appears to be a practice from the Middle Paleolithic onwards. We argue that the combined nutritional and symbolic use of birds is one characteristic of the new mode of adaptation practiced already by the late Lower Paleolithic Acheulo-Yabrudian hominins in the Levant starting 400 ka. The Qesem findings point to the possible emergence of new cognitive and behavioral skills, which are followed in later periods in the Old World. Finally, we discuss the possible ontological and cosmological significance of humanebird interactions to illuminate our hypothesis regarding the emergence of a new perception of human relationships with the world as an integral part of the new Acheulo-Yabrudian mode of adaptation.
In essence, information retrieval is a cognitive process, which is the matching process between the reader's or user's cognition and the system's pre-set cognition. At present, cognitive view has become a research hotspot in the field of information retrieval. The research of information retrieval cognitive model has laid a theoretical foundation for the development of information retrieval system. Based on scarcity theory, this paper analyses the dynamic change of user's cognitive ability and constructs a cognitive model of information retrieval based on scarcity theory. After analysis, this paper evaluates the effect of information retrieval cognitive model based on scarcity theory, and clarifies the specific problems that the model can solve.
A new hypothesis is proposed to explain a primary function of Acheulian bifaces and related tools. Evidence suggests their use as emplaced trap blades intentionally deployed with edge perpendicular to the ground surface to damage the feet and legs of prey animals so that they could be killed and used as a resource. Analogous modern use of game stakes as animal damaging traps explains the typical deposits of these bifaces in large numbers and often in like-new condition. Though very few Acheulian bifaces have been found on edge, those that have been found on edge may have been preserved as users originally placed them in the ground. Classic almond-shaped Acheulian bifaces with semi-circular bases are speculated to have been deployed with the point hidden in the ground and the base exposed to act as an activator, rotating the point by the force of the animal's foot step, putting it into position to injure the foot of animal prey. Practical observations confirm this function as a possibility. Other shapes in the family of devices related to the Acheulian biface are similarly explained as having the same foot damaging function. Opportunities for further research are identified.
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 local, regional, and continental levels of variation that exist within the Acheulian, discuss alterations in life history strategies that characterize the Middle Pleistocene, and explore relationships between the two.
Human and elephants shared habitats and interacted from Paleolithic times to the present day. It appears that pre-historic hunter–gatherers were wise enough to understand that elephants are cohabiters of the human race and not a product to be exploited in an uncontrolled way. The understanding of the long tradition of human and elephant relationship and kinship may change the mind-set of modern humans to lead to carry on the important relationship between man and elephant in particular, and man and nature in general, and prevent future extinctions of all species involved.
Describes the pebble tool industry of the Colle Marina site, the lithic and bone industry of the Ranuccio lower Palaeolithic site, and the two recovered fossil faunas, the Villafranchian layers and the Ranuccio site fauna. Four leucite separates were analysed for K and Ar and were dated at between 528 000 yr and 366 000 yr. - aftern Author
Current archaeological evidence supports the claim that symbolic behavior, including palaeoart, first emerged in human evolution around 1 million years ago. The purpose of this article is to review archaeological studies that might support the hypothesis that the earliest palaeoart actually is evident around 2 million years ago. This review identifies nine Oldowan artifacts that have been proposed as possible non-utilitarian and possibly symbolic behavior. Among seven stone tools, the three strongest candidates are the Olduvai Gorge, the FLK North grooved and pecked cobble, ~1.80 million years ago, and MNK Main subspheroid with hexagon shape framing an apparent natural dot-and-undulating-line motif, ~1.5–1.6 million years ago, both initially reported and described by Mary Leakey; and the curated Koobi Fora FxJj1 “broken core with inner rhomboid shape, ~1.87 million years ago. All six stone tools from Olduvai Gorge need scientific re-examination to determine their chaîne opératoire and assess non-utilitarian features. If even one of the Olduvai Gorge artifacts were validated as symbolic behavior this would indicate the emergence of palaeoart one million years earlier than current proposals. It would also suggest that Homo habilis/rudolfensis or a very early Homo erectus had substantially more advanced cognitive, design and symbolic competencies than inferred in current theories. It would constitute a challenge to develop more advanced cognitive semiotic and art-theoretic analytical tools for illuminating the role of such palaeoart in hominin cultural evolution.
The archaeological record indicates that elephants must have played a significant role in early human diet and culture during Palaeolithic times in the Old World. However, the nature of interactions between early humans and elephants is still under discussion. Elephant remains are found in Palaeolithic sites, both open-air and cave sites, in Europe, Asia, the Le-vant, and Africa. In some cases elephant and mammoth remains indicate evidence for butchering and marrow extraction performed by humans. Revadim Quarry (Israel) is a Late Acheulian site where elephant remains were found in association with characteristic Lower Palaeolithic flint tools. In this paper we present results regarding the use of Palaeolithic tools in processing animal carcasses and rare identification of fat residue preserved on Lower Palaeolithic tools. Our results shed new light on the use of Palaeolithic stone tools and provide, for the first time, direct evidence (residue) of animal exploitation through the use of an Acheulian biface and a scraper. The association of an elephant rib bearing cut marks with these tools may reinforce the view suggesting the use of Palaeolithic stone tools in the consumption of large game.
The paper reports the discovery of an extraordinary flint implement - a large biface - and discusses its significance in the context of Qesem Cave in particular and the late Lower Palaeolithic Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex of the Levant in general. We contend that this unusually large biface was discarded in an unfinished and unused state, most probably due to a collapse event that took place at the cave some 280,000 years ago. © Friends of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University 2013.
A proposed model of Structured Placement of bifaces is presented as the use of tools designed to randomly wound an animal that can later be tracked and processed. The targeting of the cushioned feet of proboscideans is examined and the design of these tools is discussed from the point of view of size, shape, material, geological setting (grounding) and scale of production. A tool that fits these engineering specifications is the Achuelean biface and the archaeological record is examined to test this hypothesis. It is noted that there is a close parallel, both geographical and in time-line, between the spread of Acheulean lithic technology, the dispersal of the Paleoloxodon faunal assemblage and elephas butchery sites. The model is shown to lead to a behavior of structured placement that is reflected in the archaeological record in terms of abundance, apparent discard, geological setting and biface-rich and biface-poor strata and sites.
Lower Paleolithic faunal and lithic assemblages serve as a major source of information on the behavior and capabilities of Early- and Middle Pleistocene hominins. The multi-layered Late Acheulian site of Revadim Quarry provides a rare opportunity to study hominin–elephant interactions during the Late Lower Paleolithic period in the Levant. A large proportion of this open-air site was excavated (ca. 250 m2) and yielded a wealth of lithic and faunal remains. In this paper the proboscideans from Revadim are presented for the first time within the broader geomorphological, stratigraphic and archaeological context in order to allow a better understanding of elephants within the Acheulian in the southern Levant. The unprecedented quantity of elephant remains at the site is accompanied by large and rich lithic assemblages. Of special interest are several elephant bones with cut marks, and the earliest appearance in the southern Levant of bones that seem to have been shaped to resemble tools. The site bears testimony to complex exploitation of proboscideans.
The multi-layered Lower Paleolithic Acheulian site of Revadim Quarry provides a rare opportunity to study patterns of continuity and change within the lithic assemblages of the Late Lower Paleolithic period in the Levant. This open-air site was excavated to a large extent (∼250 m2) and yielded a wealth of lithic and faunal remains. The rich lithic assemblages are typical of the Late Acheulian in the Levant, including handaxes, but mostly dominated by flake production and flake tools. In this paper, we present the results of a technological study recently conducted in order to establish the character and scale of lithic recycling directed towards the production of small flakes (<2 cm). Our results shed new light on the character and extent of Lower Paleolithic production of small flakes by means of lithic recycling, providing an opportunity for comparison with similar phenomena during contemporaneous as well as later cultural complexes in the Levant and beyond.
There has been intense debate over the ‘meaning’ of Lower Palaeolithic handaxe form. Handaxes date from about 1.7 million years onwards, and many show attention to elements of form such as symmetry and a conformity to the ‘golden ratio’ which go beyond immediate function. Our challenge in interpreting such patterning is that we cannot assume a ‘modern’ cognition to the makers of Acheulian handaxes nor capacities to negotiate concepts such as status or symbolism. Existing interpretations of handaxe form have been dominated by the seminal ‘sexy handaxe theory’ (Kohn and Mithen, Antiquity, 1999, 73: 518–26), which envisaged the production of handaxes as driven by sexual selection processes common to all mammal species. By contrast, it is argued here that an emerging concern with reputation building seen amongst higher primates developed within highly collaborative Acheulian societies into a concern with ‘trustworthiness’ and the expression of ‘gestures of goodwill’ to others via handaxe form.
Cutmarked and broken mammoth bones figure prominently in assertions that Homo sapiens dispersed
into North America before the appearance of Clovis archeological culture, which is dated about 13 ka.
Beside pre-dating Clovis, the bonesites differ from Clovis in that most lack lithic tools. Taphonomic
studies, experimental replications, and arguments of plausibility have not perfectly supported or wholly
disproved the assertions that the bonesites were created by human actions. Taphonomic and actualistic
research in southern Africa reveals a wide range of noncultural and human-generated patterns in breaks,
flakes, and cutmarks on modern elephant bones. These studies suggest that many (if not all) of the early
modified mammoth remains do not indicate a pre-Clovis human presence.
Analysis of the sea woman in Inuit shamanism and arts
This thesis presents the results of an investigation into the Clactonian assemblages of Middle Pleistocene souther Britain. By exploring other non-biface assemblages (NBAs) reported from elsewhere in Europe it seeks to illuminate our understanding of the British assemblages by viewing them in a wider context. It sets out how the historical and geopolitical context of Palaeolithic research has influenced what is investigated and how, as well as interpretations of assemblages without handaxes. A comparative study of the assemblages themselves based upon primary data gathered specifically for that purpose concludes that while there are a number of non-biface assemblages elsewhere in Europe the Clactonian assemblages do appear to be a phenomenon unique to the Thames Valley in early MIS 11. However, traditional explanations for this phenomenon, such as cultural variation, cultural migration and pioneer populations are challenged and a new interpretation centred on the concept of a default flaking pattern is proposed.
This book provides the first analysis and synthesis of the evidence of the earliest inhabitants of Asia before the appearance of modern humans 100,000 years ago. Asia has received far less attention than Africa and Europe in the search for human origins, but is no longer considered of marginal importance. Indeed, a global understanding of human origins cannot be properly understood without a detailed consideration of the largest continent. In this study, Robin Dennell examines a variety of sources, including the archaeological evidence, the fossil hominin record, and the environmental and climatic background from Southwest, Central, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as China. He presents an authoritative and comprehensive framework for investigations of Asia's oldest societies, challenges many long-standing assumptions about its earliest inhabitants, and places Asia centrally in the discussions of human evolution in the past two million years.
Why were handaxes made and why was their shape symmetrical and regular? These and many other questions are considered here, in a paper tackling hominid social behaviour and sexual selection.
Among the Tukano Indians of the Colombian Northwest Amazon, carrying capacity is defined mainly in terms of the conservation of protein resources such as game, fish and certain wild fruits. In order to maintain an equilibrium and to avoid frequent relocation of settlements, the Indians have developed a set of highly adaptive behavioural rules which control population growth, the exploitation of the natural environment, and interpersonal aggression. The belief that the spirits of game animals cause illness restricts overhunting and, similarly, a large body of beliefs that regulate sex and food habits try to adjust the birth-rate and to counterbalance socially disruptive behaviour. Shamanism thus becomes a powerful force in the control and management of natural resources, and hallucinatory visions induced by native narcotic drugs become an important tool of shamanistic power. In many aspects Tukano concepts of cosmology represent a blueprint for ecological adaptation and the Indians' acute awareness of the need for adaptive norms can be compared with modern systems analysis.
“Animism” is projected in the literature as simple religion and a failed epistemology, to a large extent because it has hitherto been viewed from modernist perspectives. In this paper previous theories, from classical to recent, are critiqued. An ethnographic example of a hunter‐gatherer people is given to explore how animistic ideas operate within the context of social practices, with attention to local constructions of a relational personhood and to its relationship with ecological perceptions of the environment. A reformulation of their animism as a relational epistemology is offered.
In this paper we present our interpretation about the circumstances leading towards an evolutionary replacement of the earliest populations of the Levant, most probably Homo erectus (senso lato), by a new hominin lineage during the Middle Pleistocene, some 400,000 years ago. Our model suggests that dietary stress caused by the disappearance of elephants triggered the replacement of Homo erectus , a hominin highly dependent on consuming large animals, by a new hominin lineage that was better adapted to hunting larger numbers of smaller and faster animals in order to provide suffi cient caloric intake to compensate for the loss of the elephants. The biological replacement took place in tandem with signifi cant cultural changes embodied in a new, unique and innovative, local cultural complex in the Levant. It is our contention that the appearance of a new creative set of behaviors in the Levant some 400,000 years ago must have been accompanied by innovative cultural trans-mission mechanisms of a different nature than those practiced during earlier Lower Paleolithic times. These new learning behaviors must have played a signifi cant role in the adoption and assimilation of new hunting methods, meat sharing, fl int procurement and fl int production strategies, as well as in the earliest habitual use of fi re. The new cultural traits characterized humans in the Levant for a long period of over 200,000 years, to be replaced by the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian Cultural Complex created by both Modern humans and Neanderthals .
Castel di Guido is a typical Middle Pleistocene elephant site where intentionally fragmented bones of elephant and of other large mammals were found together with Acheulean biface-like industry, including bifaces made of various stone types and of elephant bone, associated with flint tools on pebbles and flakes. Following a first interpretation of the evidence, the site represented a single and short phase of use, and elephants, horses, aurochs and few other species were killed and butchered on site, or partly brought to the site to be butchered after having been killed elsewhere. The bones were intentionally fractured for marrow extraction and left to “season” before being used as raw material for artefact production. Further evidence deriving from more recent studies suggests that the site lasted for much longer time and is in fact an intricate palimpsest of several phases of human use and partial reworking.
Konso area provided several localities 1.9 to 1.4 My aged. These sites provide important data on African lower Pleistocene: the oldest Acheulean assemblage in the world and the coexistence of Australopithecus boisei and Homo erectus, as fossils of both have been found in the same site. On the other hand, the zooarchaeological analysis showed that Konso hominids used to process animal resources with a sharp knowledge of butchery techniques. The great new data actually is the presence of bones that seem to have been shaped in order to be used as tools.
The site of La Polledrara di Cecanibbio (Latium, Italy) is related to deposits of the PG6 Sequence (Middle Pleistocene, Aurelia Formation, MIS 10 and 9). The sediments are mainly volcaniclastic in composition, and constitute the filling of incised valleys, mainly characterized by fluvial deposits at the base, passing upward to fluvio-lacustrine and palustrine deposits containing abundant fossil mammal remains and artifacts. The arrangement of the specimens and taphonomic observations suggest that most of the transport of the bones occurred during flooding events, followed by progressive swampy phases, resulting in the formation of areas with stagnant and muddy waters where some elephants became trapped, as indicated by remains in partial anatomical articulation. Recent excavations carried out at the site permit a better definition of the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, already partially outlined in previous publications. In particular, an area showing a close correlation between the skeleton of an elephant and human activity, allows documentation and better understanding of some aspects of human eelephant interaction, probably mainly represented by scavenging activity.
The Lower Palaeolithic, epitomized by the Acheulean biface technology, is characterized by a degree of temporal and geographical stasis that is unparalleled in the lithic record. The reasons for this phenomenon have provoked considerable debate. However, whilst it is important to understand the overall stability of this techno complex, it is also important to address the considerable degree of variability evident at the level of individual locales. Why, for instance, do bifaces show a range of shapes and degrees of refinement? Why do some show high degrees of symmetry whilst others do not? Whilst it is widely acknowledged that such variability is the result of a number of factors, to date proposed theories tend to stress one factor as being of paramount importance. These have encompassed, amongst others, the influence of raw material, subsistence function, cognitive ability and the social context of manufacture upon biface form. This article, informed by recent empirical, experimental and theoretical work, attempts to move away from these largely single-factor models to present a multi-factorial model for biface variability. This model envisages that variability is caused by the differing motivations and constraints — ecological, physiological, biological, cognitive and social — which act upon the individual agent at any given point in time.
Field investigations at Castel di Guido revealed a Middle Pleistocene open-air site containing macrofaunal remains associated with Acheulean industry. The large majority of the remains lay at the bottom of a depressed area, which probably evolved into a low energy freshwater basin after the deposition of the assemblage.To quantify the importance of the natural processes compared to the anthropogenic ones in the formation of the site, a full taphonomic analysis of the macromammal assemblage was carried out. A geoarchaelogical study, together with a taphonomic analysis of the lithic and bone implements, is ongoing.This paper discusses the results of the study of elephant bones. The taphonomic analysis has documented traces of different modifying agents on the specimens, indicating the important role of syn- and post-depositional factors in the accumulation and modification of bones. Nevertheless, evidence of utilization of carcasses for subsistence and for tool production was detected. The study provides new data for the exploitation of elephants by hominins during the Lower Palaeolithic.
a b s t r a c t Áridos 1 and Áridos 2 (Madrid, Spain) are two Middle Pleistocene sites belonging to the isotopic stages 9e11. Both places contain partial carcasses of Elephas (Paleoxodon) antiquus associated to Acheulian stone tools. In this work, the taphonomic study of the elephant remains of Áridos 2 is presented. This study has documented several cut marks on different bones, which indicate bulk flesh and viscerae extraction by Middle Pleistocene hominins. Several arguments are provided to support that at least some of the cut marks were made with handaxes, further suggesting that some of these artifacts were butchering tools in this stage of human evolution. Although cut marks on elephant carcasses have been documented at some Middle Pleistocene sites, very few have been published in detail to allow consideration of their status as hominin-imparted marks. By doing so, the present study provides more evidence of large carcass exploitation by hominins during this period.
The Anagni intra-apennine basin is especially rich in palaeontological and archaeological sites, spanning between middle Villafranchian and upper Pleistocene. The Italian Institute of Human Palaeontology has carried out researches in this region in the last 30 years. At Costa San Giacomo, middle Villafranchian yellow sands contain Mastodon arvernensis and Elephas meridionalis. At Colle Marino, a travertine layer and lime-clay contains mode 1 lithic industry, below any volcanic layers whose lower limit is 700 Ky old. Excavations have been restarted at Fontana Ranuccio, a 458 Ky Acheulian site with rich mammalian fauna (Elephas antiquus, Ursus deningeri, Bos primigenius, Dama clactoniana, Equus mosbachensis), a remarkable bone industry and four human teeth. Drillings, for about 40 m, have identified Matuyama-Brunhes limit 23 m under the main volcanic pyroclastite, in a thick limnic clay layer.
This article examines the development and implementation of a grass-roots elephant conservation program based upon the Samburu people's perceptions and knowledge of elephants in the areas surrounding the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in northern Kenya. Ethnographic methods were used to understand these perceptions and demonstrated that strong customs and traditions for conserving wildlife, particularly elephants, exist among the Samburu people. It became evident that these customs are changing, given various factors inuencing Samburu culture and younger generations. The use of economic incentives is a widely accepted method to foster positive attitudes and behavior toward wildlife. The value of using ethnographic methods to reinforce positive indigenous knowledge about wildlife, however, is underestimated. This case study highlights the signi®cance of using ethnographic methods in community conservation program design. The article demonstrates that in local contexts where cultural perceptions and traditions toward elephants are largely positive, this is a viable approach for community-based wildlife management that is complementary to economic incentives programs.