60,000 year old decorated ostrich eggshell canteens from Diepkloof, South Africa

Sometimes, it's what a paper doesn't emphasize that's the most thought-provoking and has the most far-ranging implications. A case in point is the recent paper by Texier et al. (2010) on decorated (i.e., engraved/incised) ostrich eggshell fragments from the Middle Stone Age site of Diepkloof in South Africa. The paper provides a lot of information about the sequence of deposits at the site, as well as on their archaeological contents. They emphasize specifically the layers attributed to the Howiesons Poort (HP), a prehistoric 'culture' associated with some of the earliest convincing evidence for symbolic behavior as well as sudden - and short-lived - technological innovation. Texier and collegaues refine our picture of the suite of original behaviors associated with the HP by presenting some fascinating data on the decorations they identified on fragments of ostrich eggshell found exclusively in those levels that date to between 58.1 +/- 1.9 and 63.3. +/- 2.2 thousand years ago (kya).

One of the real strengths of their analysis lies in the sample size they have at their disposal: to date, they've recovered fully 270 pieces of decorated ostrich eggshell, a number that dwarfs that of any contemporaneous sample of decorated objects, for instance those from the site of Blombos where only about 20 pieces of engraved ochre have been found distributed in deposits spanning about 25,000 years (Henshilwood 2009). To put this in perspective, this is less than one engraved piece per thousand years at Blombos, while the frequency of decorated objects at Diepkloof in more than an order of magnitude greater (i.e., ca. 27 pieces per thousand years), and likely much more than that in some cases, since most pieces appear to come from two stratigraphic units. What is more, as Texier et al. (2010: 1) argue, the engraved pieces from other MSA sites (including Blombos) "are characterized by a noticeable diversity of patterns, of raw materials selected for marking, and of chronocultural contexts." In contrast, at Diepkloof, "the large smaple size of EOES [engraved ostrich eggshell], its well-documented context, and the unequivocal ature of the markings offers a unique opportunity to study what constitutes the most reliable collection of an early graphic tradition" (ibid). The image below shows some of the decorated fragments in questions, as well as some of the range in engraved motifs:


Note that this is not the same figure as that illustrating the fragments in the actual paper, and they establish that the colors of the different fragments were caused by post-depositional exposure to heat and fire.

The analysis of the fragments themselves is quite interesting, and very well done. The authors document a shift over time in the predominant engraved pattern, from a 'hatched band motif' (as seen in the figure above) in the lower HP levels at Diepkloof to 'series of deeply engraved, straight, subparallel lines' in the upper levels (as seen in vignettes A and C in the figure below):

From: Texier et al. (2010): 2, Fig. 1.

The fact that Texier et al. (2010) manage to convincingly demonstrate the presence of diachronic trends in the patterns used to decorate pieces of ostrich eggshell is cool enough in and of itself (there are also two other, much more infrequent patterns that they identify). However, identifying this begs the question of why this material was being decorated in the first, and how it was used, since it clearly wasn't used as part of, say, ornaments. This is all the more intriguing given the abundance of fragments at Diepkloof, and given that the vast majority of them are very small (less than 20x20mm). An answer to this question is provided, at least partially, by the following figure comes in:

From Texier et al. (2010): 5, Fig. 5.

Texier et al. (2010: 5) indicate that the circular denting seen in both fragments above appears very similar in shape and position to the holes punctured through the top of ostrich eggs today to empty them out and subsequently use them as "a flask to store and transport various fluids, usually water" (which makes you wonder what other fluids people may have needed or wanted to carry around). In the ethnographic record, such canteens are often decorated in various ways to indicate either ownership or what was contained in it. If the analogy is appropriate, then, we have at least two potential interpretations for the meaning of the Diepkloof engravings. If one had to chose between those two, the diachronic trend described above, and the fact that there is some internal variability in both the hatched band and linear line motifs may suggest that it reflects individual 'signatures' of sorts within an accepted iconographic tradition. This is, of course, highly speculative and only one of potentially many interpretations, but no matter how you slice it, it gives us some very interesting insights in the social norms of the Howiesons Poort. Additionally, as alluded to in some of the press coverage of this report, it also provides some strong insights into how people might have dealt with climatic variability at the time to explore and exploit arid landscapes largely devoid of water. This is one of those far-ranging aspects I was referring to in my introductory sentence.

As with most reports of 'extraordinary' finds in HP levels, however, this paper also indicates that this remarkable behavioral innovation appears to have been a short-lived one (by Paleolithic standards, anyway!), and that after about 55kya, traces of such behaviors largely disappear from the record. Sooner or later, people are going to have to propose a coherent explanation for this apparently generalized pattern of discontinuous behavioral innovation. Either that, or new finds are needed to 'fill in' the long stretches of the Middle Stone Age that apparently lack the conspicuous evidence that has recently been coming to light in HP assemblages. In that light, I was pretty surprised to see Richard Klein as a coauthor on this paper, given his long-held position that convincing evidence for 'modern' behavior doesn't exist before ca. 50kya... could we be witnessing a change in perspective? I'll be curious to see how he discusses the Diepkloof material in upcoming papers...

Lastly, I have to give a Colbert-like' wag of the finger' to PNAS for its timing in publishing this paper... seriously, 60,000 year old decorated eggs! Had you waited a few more weeks, this paper could have been published in the weeks running up to Easter! I jest, of course; there's no sense in delaying the publication of a good paper, but still... I just can't help thinking about how an angle like that would have worked in the popular press!

References

Henshilwood, C., d'Errico, F., & Watts, I. (2009). Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa Journal of Human Evolution, 57 (1), 27-47 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.01.005

Texier, P., Porraz, G., Parkington, J., Rigaud, J., Poggenpoel, C., Miller, C., Tribolo, C., Cartwright, C., Coudenneau, A., Klein, R., Steele, T., & Verna, C. (2010). A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0913047107

Early modern human parietal art at Fumane Cave

The last three issues of the 2009 volume of L'Anthropologie are dedicated to prehistoric art, and one the papers contained in that special volume concerns five vault fragments from Fumane Cave (Veneto region, Italy) that were recovered during excavation and that bear designs made in red ochre. The art itself is already well known and has been published in great detail as part of a monograph a few years ago (Broglio and Dalmieri 2005), but this study presents some new data on the likely age of the fragments, as well as on the composition of the pigments from which they're made.

View of the inside of Fumane Cave.

http://www.grottadifumane.it/FOTOGALLERY-DELLA-GROTTA.html

The issue with these fragment has been to precisely determine how old they are, since they are in secondary position, that is to say, they were not found where they were painted. It seems that during a cold snap following the moment on which the designs were painted on the cave, the vault surface spalled off and the fragments fell on deposits that were, logically, more recent than the paintings themselves. The oldest fragment (Fragment I in the figure below) bears a representation of some kind of quadruped was recovered in Unit A2, which is the base of the Aurignacian deposits at the site, whereas Fragment II ("the shaman", so called because the anthropomorphic figure it bears also shows some horn-like features) was recovered from the a pile mound of stones located at the cave's mouth, while the other decorated blocks were recovered in later (i.e., more recent) Aurignacian and Gravettian layers. In Italy, the Gravettian is securely attributed to modern humans, who are also widely thought to be the makers of the Aurignacian, and its earliest expression, the Protoaurignacian.

The five decorated vault fragments from Grotta di Fumane.
From: Broglio et al. (2009:756, Plate 2).

The main issue, chronologically speaking, has been to determine when the figures were painted on the cave vault, since the layers in which they were recovered only provide a terminus ante quem for their age, in other words, an upper limit for their age. So, at first glance, there is no evidence for the age of these paintings beyond that of the layers in which they were recovered. However, in this study, Broglio et al. (2009) make the case that all the paintings date to the earliest Aurignacian at the site, that is to level A2. Historically, the dating of the earliest Aurignacian at Fumane has been hotly debated, but the authors present new dates for previously dated charcoal samples that have undergone, for the new dates, a new, more thorough pretreatment (i.e., ABOx SC). This has provided two statistically equivalent age determinations of 35,640 +/- 220 and 35,180 +/- 220 BP for level A2. Interestingly, and fittingly in light of my recent post on the presentation of calibrated and uncalibrated radiocarbon dates, they conclude that, by reference to the calibration curve based on the Cariaco Basin data and the GISP2 Greenland ice core, that "the chronological data show that Protoaurignacian Unit A2 dates to between 43,250 to 40,500 BPGISP2, with an age of 41,000BPGISP2 being statistically more likely" (Broglio et al. 2009:760; my translation, emphasis added).

What allows them to tie the paintings to that age determination is the study of ochre found in Unit A2. The base and top of that layer include conspicuous concentrations of red ochre, and some ochre crayons were also recovered from A2. The clincher is that these crayons are made of the same ochre as that which was used for the parietal art. This is demonstrated by a brief compositional analysis of the pigments using various methods, that also indicates that these ochres are circum-local in provenience, being found in the Lessini Mountains, at the southern edge of which Fumane sits.

In sum, while the decorated pieces themselves were not dated directly, this study provides some strong circumstancial evidence for their being of early Aurignacian age. If this attribution is correct, it provides us with some solid data about some of the iconographic canons and artistic techniques used by early Aurignacian foragers in northern Italy and some insights into the variability in artistic behavior within this cultural tradition at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.

update (01/18/2009: 12:20PM): Image of the paintings is now fixed.

References

Broglio, A., and G. Dalmieri (eds.). 2005. Pitture paleolitiche nelle Prealpi venete: Grotta di Fumane e Riparo Dalmieri. Memorie del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Verona, 2 serie. Sezione Scienze dell'Uomo. Verona, Italy.

Broglio, A., De Stefani, M., Gurioli, F., Pallecchi, P., Giachi, G., Higham, T., & Brock, F. (2009). L’art aurignacien dans la décoration de la Grotte de Fumane L'Anthropologie, 113 (5), 753-761 DOI: 10.1016/j.anthro.2009.09.016

New pierced shells from Grotte des Pigeons

From: http://www.minculture.gov.ma/Images/Taforalt1.jpg

It appears, that they have found yet more pierced Nassarius gibbosulus shells in Grotte des Pigeons (near Taforalt, Morocco) during excavation conducted in March and April 2008. That would be 20 more shells, to be precise, which may be as old as 85,000 years BP, or slightly older than the ones Bouzouggar et al. (2007) published last year.

From: http://www.minculture.gov.ma/Images/Taforalt02.jpg

From the news report:

In 2007, Bouzouggar and Barton discovered 14 perforated shells in the same cave.

"This discovery shows that the making and use of objects of finery is very anchored in the traditions of Morocco's prehistoric people," said Bouzouggar, in whose opinion the country is the original centre of artistic and symbolic creation.

Objects of finery discovered in Morocco are "now considered to be even more ancient than those discovered in Algeria, South Africa and in Palestine", said the culture ministry.

Well, I don't know that these new finds do anything to establish that the practice of piercing and wearing shells is older in Morocco than it is at Skhul (ca. 100-135kya), but we can't say without seeing more information on the finds. From what I gather from a press release by the Moroccan Ministry of Culture (in French), this claim may be based on an assessment that the two shells from Skuhl cave (which I talked about here) "are difficult to date due to uncertainties about the context in which they were found," in part because they were recovered so long ago, in the 1930's. If you buy this, then the earliest shell beads would, in fact, be from Morocco.

The burials of five children dated to at least 12kya were also apparently found during the same field season. The children's remains were covered in ochre, buried under stone blocks with animal bones. Can't wait to hear more about these finds!

Neanderthals, Now in Color!

Debates over the symbolic behavior of Neanderthals have always been hampered by the unreliability of much of the evidence invoked in support of it. That is to say two things: 1) there are not very many artifacts that are suggestive of symbolic behavior; and 2) those that do exist are often plagued by ambiguity as to whether they are the result of purposeful Neanderthal action or the result of non-human factors.

Over the past few years, pigment use has been claimed to differentiate the symbolic capacity of Homo sapiens from those of Neanderthals, and as one of the defining elements of ‘modern behavior.’ This is partly why the discovery of pigment use – presumably by early Homo sapiens – dating back to 167 kya in South Africa was such big news this past fall (Marean et al. 2007). The basic idea here is that the purposeful collecting and shaping of blocks of coloring material is indicative of behavior in which colors were used to transmit socially-mediated information.

There is some convincing evidence that Neanderthals demonstrated symbolic behavior, especially in the latter moments of their evolutionary history (e.g., d’Errico 2003, d’Errico et al. 2003), but so far there has been little in the way of published work about their use of pigments prior to the Châtelperronian. A paper by Marie Soressi and Francesco d’Errico (2007 – available as a freely accessible pdf), however, presents very convincing evidence for that behavior at least by 60 kya (see also d’Errico and Soressi 2006). That study reviews the evidence for Neanderthal symbolic behavior as a whole, but it contains one section specifically dedicated to the question of identifying pigment use in European Middle Paleolithic assemblages, at least 70 of which have yielded blocks of coloring materials (mainly black-colored manganese dioxide) and/or tools involved in the processing of pigments such as grindstones and mortars (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:303).

The reason why this ongoing study is so convincing is that the authors used replicative referents that objectively establish the microscopic and rugosimetric features of blocks of coloring materials worked in different manners and with different tools. This provides an objective baseline against which to compare the characteristics of objects found in assemblages attributed to Neanderthals and to determine whether they bear evidence of having been purposefully manufactured by human action.

In the case of the specific study conducted by the authors – on the French Mousterian sites of Pech de l’Azé I and Pech de l’Azé IV, located about 80 meters apart – they created a series of experimental referents obtained through 13 kinds of modifications/uses, including scraping for powder with a flint object, abrading against various kinds of stone, coloring leather, and drawing body paintings (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:304). The preliminary results of their analysis show that 250+ blocks from Pech I and 20+ blocks from Pech IV appear to have been modified by Neanderthals:

“… of the Pech de l’Azé I blocks, over half were abraded on sandstone before being used on soft materials such as dried skin, or human skin. Neanderthals seem to have abraded the pigments on sandstone slabs that were also recovered during excavation so as to create elongated facets with strong coloring properties that could be used in the manner of a charcoal pencil to mark various materials, including human skin in the case of body painting. The blocks from Pech IV appear to have been used in largely similar manners. However, some pieces bear grooves resulting from scraping their surface with flakes or retouched tools. This indicates that, beyond using [manganese dioxide] in pencil form, Neanderthals also manufactured coloring powder used either as is, or more likely mixed to some binding agent. (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:306; my translation)

Since environmental condition and local manganese abundance appear to be comparable for the two sites, the authors interpret the disparity in the number of manganese pieces between Pech I and IV as resulting from contextual factors, suggesting that coloring was not equally important in all contexts or site-occupation modalities. Also, I especially like this section about what the use of coloring material might mean in terms of Neanderthal symbolic capacity:

“It would be hard to confirm a purely functional use [of coloring materials]; in fact, such a use would be nearly impossible to demonstrate if we consider the omnipresent nature of symbols in human societies. If the model provided by known foragers is extended to Neanderthals, the systematic use of pigments in a strong argument in favor of their capacity to develop symbolic cultural practices.” (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:306; my translation)

References:

d’Errico, F . 2003. The invisible frontier: A multiple-species model for the origin of behavioral modernity. Evolutionary Anthropology 12:188–202.

d’Errico, F., C. Henshilwood, G. Lawson, M. Vanhaeren, A.-M. Tillier, M. Soressi, F . Bresson, B. Maureille, A. Nowell, J. Lakarra, L. Backwell, and M. Julien. 2003. Archaeological evidence for the emergence of language, symbolism, and music: an alternative multidisciplinary perspective. Journal of World Prehistory 17:1–70.

d’Errico F., and M. Soressi, 2006 Des hommes en couleurs. Les Dossiers de la Recherche 24: 84-87.

Marean, C. W., M. Bar-Matthews, J. Bernatchez, E. Fisher, P. Goldberg, A. I. R. Herries, Z. Jacobs, A. Jerardino, P. Karkanas, T. Minichillo, P. J. Nilssen, E. Thompson, I. Watts, and H. M. Williams. 2007. Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene. Nature 449:905-908.

Soressi, M., and F. d’Errico. 2007. Pigments, gravures, parures: Les comportements symboliques controversées des Néandertaliens. In Les Néandertaliens. Biologie et cultures (B. Vandermeersch and B. Maureille, eds.), pp. 297-309. Editions du CTHS, Paris.