Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology Back-Links, Set 4

From August 2007:

"Some sort of proto-human": comments on a paper on archaeological research at Misliya Cave, Israel, which indicates that early Middle Paleolithic foragers were fully competent large-game hunters.

Stone Age Atlantis!: a few thoughts on reports about the discovery of an underwater Mesolithic site.

Long distance raw material procurement in the Mousterian: summary and comments on a paper that reports on the transfer of stone over several hundred kms in the Mousterian of southeastern France.

Reporting archaeology in Harper's

Kris Hirst discusses a long essay by Gregory Jaynes in the latest issue of Harper's which focuses in part on the politics of an archaeological project, and she argues that the worst curse an archaeologist might have to endure is the presence of a journalist on site. While some might expect field archaeology to be similar to what's described in some dispatches from The Onion Hirst points that out that

"...most principal investigators (PI is what they call us) are frustrated, angry, worried people all the time during an excavation.

But for the rest of the people on the crew, and any tourists or journalists who happen by, archaeology is incredibly dull. The work is painfully slow, the climate and dirt inescapable, the people tired and cranky. Any real exciting finds these days are very rare indeed and can take place under a microscope months or even years after the excavation is done.

It's clear what happened to Jaynes. He came into an important excavation and hung around, bored out of his skull. He eavesdropped on the only exciting thing going on: the frustration of a PI being expressed to his superior."

I haven't read Jaynes' piece yet, though I'm now planning to stop by the newsstand on my way home and picking it up to see for myself. I'm of mixed mind after having read Hirst's post, though... While I agree with her that journalists will seize on the most dramatic aspects of archaeology to write about (in this case, field frustration), one has to wonder about whether it is ever a good idea to have a journalist on site for more than the time of a site tour and interview, and why? I assume that most archaeologists obviously want their project and research to gain as much public exposure as possible, and that often requires having journalists come visit a field site. However, it seems intuitive to me that having someone doing 'participant observation' on your project for a prolonged period of time will result in all aspects of your project getting more attention than they would have otherwise. On the other hand, many people say that any publicity is good publicity... mixed blessings, I guess.

Kids did the darndest things

Over at Afarensis, we find a brief discussion of a recent paper about the contribution of children to the Lower and Middle Paleolithic archaeological record (i.e., Stapert 2007 – available as a free pdf). Afarensis seems to agree with Stapert that there has been a generalized tendency to not think of children as important accumulators of artifacts – in this case stone implements – in periods prior to the Upper Paleolithic, which is a euphemism for “prior to the dominance of Homo sapiens in the fossil record.” Stapert’s paper is really quite thought-provoking and casts a new and in my view fairly convincing interpretive light on a wide range of published anecdotal remarks about ‘failed flints’ in Lower and Middle Paleolithic (as well as two Châtelperronian) assemblages.

I think that people are starting to come to grips with the idea of pre-Late Pleistocene kids contributing to the archaeological record (e.g., Shea 2006), even if this growing awareness has yet to translate into a systematic incorporation of children’s activities and learning in paleoanthropological interpretation. In spite of this, it’s worth wondering why archaeologists who have studied hominins that were the quintessential hunter-gatherers have taken so long to come to grips with the idea that their social structure and technological transmission mechanisms might parallel those of ethnographically-documented foragers. To take an example based on a prior post, if Neanderthals had life-histories comparable to those of modern humans, there is every reason to believe that the acquisition of essential skills for Upper and Middle Paleolithic foragers would have stretched over a significant period of time. The starting assumption should therefore be that children were important accumulators of likely often ‘odd looking’ archaeological remains.

Stapert highlights that researchers seem to have little problem invoking the activities of children to account for roughshod lithics in Upper Paleolithic assemblages but do not appear inclined to do so for Lower and Middle Paleolithic assemblages. As argued by Shea (2006:214):

“One possible reason for this is that for relatively simple knapping techniques there may be few differences between the byproducts of experienced adults and those of novice knappers. This argument is plausible for pebble-core components of Paleolithic industries, but seems less plausible for the prepared- core components (Acheulean bifaces, Levallois cores, prismatic blade cores, and foliate bifaces) that populate Paleolithic industries from 1.7 Myr onward.”

This being the case, Staper asks bluntly but rightly “is it harder to imagine children and their activities when one is dealing with species other than modern humans?” (2007:35).

I would argue that this is almost certainly one of the principal reasons since, to follow up on my earlier example, by not considering the role of Neanderthal children in interpretations of the Middle Paleolithic record, it becomes easier to cast those hominins as different. To a degree, this perspective is reflected by the following kind of circular reasoning: “Well, Neanderthal children surely didn’t play a significant role in the accumulation of that sub/species’ archaeological record. Therefore what we document archaeologically reflects adult, fully competent Neanderthal behavior. But that behavior departs in significant ways from how we expect fully competent, adult Homo sapiens knappers to structure their lithic production and lithotype management. Ergo, we have yet more evidence that Neanderthals were behaviorally distinct from Homo sapiens.”

And here, I think we get to at least some of the heart of the matter – paleoanthropologists as a whole have invested a great deal of time and energy in trying to show how pre-Homo sapiens hominins were distinct from Upper Paleolithic humans rather than attempting to understand them primarily as foraging hominins who were very successful at eking out a living in the Pleistocene Old World. While there are obviously good reasons to do so in certain regards, approaching Neanderthals and earlier hominins first and foremost as foragers independent of preconceptions of how different they must have been is often a very rewarding way of doing archaeology that opens up fruitful interpretive avenues. Of course, one must be careful to not swing the pendulum too far in that direction and become oblivious to the differences that do exist. However, at this stage of the game, I think that the advantages of a self-aware approach to Neanderthals that views them first and foremost as hunter-gatherers outweigh its disadvantages as far as reaching a thorough understanding of the lifeways of non-sapiens hominins – both adult and juvenile – is concerned.

References:

Shea, J. J. 2006. Child’s play: Reflections on the invisibility of children in the Paleolithic record. Evolutionary Anthropology 15: 212-216.

Stapert, D. 2007. Neanderthal children and their flints. Palarch’s Journal of Archaeology of Northwestern Europe 1(2): 16-39.

Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology Back-Links, Set 3

How modern are the hobbit's tools?: A discussion of how refined the technology reportedly associated with H. floresiensis truly is.

Shell-working and behavioral modernity: A critical assessment on whether working different raw materials in different ways necessarily implies 'behavioral modernity'.

Clean-toothed Neanderthals: on some of the implications of new evidence for dental hygiene in the Middle Paleolithic of Europe and the linguistic capacities of Neanderthals.

Of cave bear carnivory and istope studies

John Hawks offers some thoughtful remarks on the conclusions of a new isotope study that claims to establish that at least some cave bears (in this case, those found at Pestera cu Oase) were quite carnivorous. He cautions that there is at least one alternative explanation - fish consumption - that could equally account for the high ratios of nitrogen-15 in those cave bear remains, so that the case for substantial predation on land mammals might not be fully warranted. This is an interesting take on the issue, especially considering the conclusions of recent isotopic studies of Neanderthals and Gravettian Homo sapiens.

Update (Jan. 8, 07; 17:34): Read more about the discovery on Science Daily and in the press release from the University of Bristol.

Northern nuts

As Martin reports at Aardvarchaeology, it would appear that some Canadian creationists are not satisfied with advocating their nonsense within the bounds of their country alone. Sigh.

Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology Back-Links, Set 2

From October 2007:

The size of one's package: discussion about a report on the identification of 'modern human behavior' 160-170 kya in coastal South Africa.

Newsflash! Neanderrthals could build stuff!: some comments on new evidence for the construction of elaborate windbreak structures by Neanderthals in France.

New insights on raw material use: an overview of two recent papers (Eerkens et al. [2007], Wilson [2007]) on the procurement and management of lithic raw material by different groups of hunter-gatherers.

Another update on Lascaux Cave

Last month, I posted on some of the preservation problems at Lascaux that surfaced in some newspapers. Here's a new report that suggests that the intervention against the fungus is now in full swing:

The French government is taking emergency action to rescue the celebrated cave paintings of the Lascaux caverns from a fungus.

Archeological experts have begun applying a fungicide to halt the spread of grey and black mould in the caverns, dubbed the Sistine Chapel of prehistory.

There's still no agreement on what caused the 'outbreak' but the report suggests that the ventilation system may be the most likely culprit.

It's great action has been take so promptly. Unfortunately, there's also a scientific cost:

One of the projects to be halted by the emergency treatment is a survey that was to make a three-dimensional digital record of every painting in the caverns.

Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology Back-Links, Set 1

From November 2007:

Fighting the tyranny of the ethnographic record!: Some comments on a paper by R. L. Lyman.

Mammoth hunters of the Russian Far-East: Report of the discovery of a mammoth hunting camp in Russia.

The modern Stone Age family: Neanderthals and the sexual division of labor among H. sapiens hunter-gatherers.

2008

Well, I've dug myself from under 20+ cms of snow and managed to get to a working internet connection (booooooooh Cooptel!) and here's to starting off this new year on the good foot!

During the next few months, the contents of this blog will shift ever so slightly to include a broader range of hunter-gatherer archaeology than usual , since it'll be used (I hope) as a resource for the student in my ANTH 419B class, aptly named "Archaeology of Hunter-Gatherers". I'll gradually link back to prior posts dealing with H/G archaeology, and list new and relatively recent sources dealing with that topic. So, if you're a student, welcome and feel free to roam around the archives; if you're a regular reader, welcome back; and if you're just stumbling here by chance, look around and see if you like anything. However you got here, feel free to comment on the posts or contact me with questions. I'll be more diligent about getting to the comments this year (here's a resolution worth keeping).

Happy New Year to all!

2008 SAA preliminary program is up!

The preliminary program of the 2008 Society for American Archaeology annual meetings (to be held in Vancouver, Canada!) is now available online as a pdf. This one promises to be a good one for paleo-minded people. In addition to at least four general sessions devoted to the Paleolithic, the following symposia piqued my interest:

FROM THE PECOS TO THE PALEOLITHIC: PAPERS IN HONOR OF ARTHUR J. JELINEK (organized by Deb Olszewski and Harold Dibble)

SPECIALIZATION, INTENSIFICATION AND DIVERSIFICATION IN ANIMAL EXPLOITATION STRATEGIES DURING THE LATE PLEISTOCENE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN (organized by Natalie Munro and Levent Atici)

HOMININ BEHAVIORAL VARIATION DURING THE PLEISTOCENE AND EARLY HOLOCENE IN EAST ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA (organized by Christopher Norton, Yin-Man Lam and Jennie Jin)

NEW VIEWS ON ANCIENT AFRICA-PAPERS IN HONOR OF C. GARTH SAMPSON (organized by Tom Minichillo and Britt Bousman)

ANALYTICAL APPROACHES TO PALAEOLITHIC TECHNOLOGIES (organized by Stephen J. Lycett and Parth R. Chauhan)

And, in the interest of shameless self-promotion,

NICHE CONSTRUCTION THEORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY (organized by Julien Riel-Salvatore and Lydia Pyne). If you're interested, you can find out more information on our session here.

Of course, the SAAs this year coincide with the annual meetings of the Paleoanthropology Society, which should make it even more interesting to be in Vancouver the week of March 23-30! See you there

Four Stone Hearth.... belatedly!

Well, I'm a bit late to the party, but you most definitely should check out the 29th Four Stone Hearth hosted by Tim at Remote Central.

Hot off the presses!

If you're genuinely interested in human evolution, you should probably read a forthcoming paper in PNAS entitled "Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution" by John Hawks and colleagues.

I'm reading through it as I type, but until I post some comments on it, feel free to check out what Greg Laden and Gene Expression have to say about it.

New preservation issues at Lascaux

The NY Times has an informative piece on a new fungus threat to the parietal paintings of Lascaux Cave, France.

The new fungus can be seen in the black patches above the horns.

No consensus has emerged among experts over whether the invading patches of gray and black mold are the result of climate change, a defective temperature control system, the light used by researchers or the carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors.

This follows on the heels of the unprecedented proliferation of Fusarium solani on sections of the cave's wall in 2001, following the installation of a new ventilation system at the site.

The new problem at Lascaux, however, does not appear to be linked to the fusarium fungus. Described by experts as black stains, the blemishes are in fact both gray and black. “They vary from a few millimeters to 4 centimeters,” said Mr. Geneste, noting that most are found in the passages where the rocks are most porous and paintings had faded the most long before modern man entered. While only a few stains have affected the paintings, they have now been found in some 70 different spots.

I didn't really buy the link the author tries to draw between this problem and global warming, although I'm sure it's not helping in the least. The situation appears a bit more complex and multifaceted, though thankfully less alarming than in 2001. Nonetheless, these preservation problems constitute, in a way, an archaeological tragedy, and not only because of the public's awareness of the site, its paintings and its Paleolithic age. Rather, it drives home the point that such caves are extremely scarce resources that need the utmost care if they are to be preserved for future generations and renewed scientific study. It also highlights just how fragile rock art can be, thus underscoring just how much of this archaeological material must have been lost over time. I certainly hope the responsible authorities will be able to promptly get this latest 'outbreak' under control.

I say Acheulean, you say Acheulian

To quote one cartoon character… do you know what really grinds my gears? Seeing the word “Acheulean” written as “Acheulian”. There, I said it. The Acheulean, of course, refers to the Lower Paleolithic industry found throughout the Old World and defined by the presence of bifacially worked core-tools commonly labeled ‘handaxes’ (though see Monnier [2006] for a recent reevaluation of the term and its definition). It is one of the most investigated periods of prehistory, yet it is cursed by inconsistent spelling of its name. A search in Web of Knowledge for paper titles shows that, of paper published on that industry over the past 52 years, 90 (or 56%) contain the word ‘Acheulean’ while 71 (or 44%) use the label ‘Acheulian.’ While a majority of researchers thus appears to use what I see as the correct spelling, a non-negligible fraction nonetheless uses the alternate form.

In any case, let me outline the reasoning behind my deeply held spelling intransigence. The names of most Paleolithic industries are derived from a series of localities in France thought, in the last years of the 19^th century, to typify those industries. These sites (e.g., Saint Acheul, Le Moustier, Aurignac, La Gravette, Le Solutré and La Madeleine) gave rise to the labels we use today as loose descriptors of the kinds of stone tools we find in archaeological deposits. Since the localities were in France and selected by French prehistorians (in this case G. de Mortillet [1873]), the names they gave rise to were originally in French. In the specific case of the Lower Paleolithic industry with bifaces identified at the locality of Saint-Acheul, the French name for that industry and de facto chronological phase became Acheuléen, although the name itself admittedly slightly postdates the selection of Saint-Acheul as the type locality. Later, other languages simply adapted the French terminology, as shown in this non-exhaustive table:

Locality	Industry – French	Industry – English	Industry – Italian
Abbeville	Abbévillien	Abbevillian	Abbevilliano
Le Moustier	Moustérien	Mousterian	Musteriano
Aurignac	Aurignacien	Aurignacian	Aurignaziano
La Gravette	Gravettien	Gravettian	Gravettiano
Le Solutré	Solutréen	Solutrean	Solutreano
La Madeleine	Magdalénien	Magdalenian	Maddaleniano
Saint-Acheul	Acheuléen	??	Acheuleano
Chelles	Chelléen	Chellean	Chelleano

What emerges from this overview that when an industry name ends in “ien” in French, it corresponds to an “ian” ending in English and “iano” in Italian. Likewise, the French “éen” turns into “eano” in Italian and “ean” in English, as demonstrated by the labels “Solutrean” and “Chellean.” Few if any specialists would spell ‘Solutrean’ as ‘Solutrian;’ in fact, a search for “Solutrian” in Web of Knowledge yields a single result, as opposed to 27 hits on 'Solutrean.' That being the case, why on earth should the French Acheuléen and the Italian Acheuleano be rendered into English as Acheulian as opposed to Acheulean? This is the only exception to the pattern of name conversion just highlighted, and also one that occurs only in the English language. I’m guessing it has to do with phonological drift in the early years of the discipline, but that’s just a hunch; to the best of my knowledge ‘Acheulian’ postdates ‘Acheulean’ in press by about a decade.

I’d like to stress that this is not an issue comparable to the spelling of ‘Neanderthal’ vs. ‘Neandertal,’ for both of which some historical justification can be found. This is an issue of bending the rules of terminological translation for no good reason. So let’s hear it for Acheulean!

But I don’t want to be despotic about this, so let me try an exercise in internet democracy: Dear readers, leave me a comment or vote below to let me know whether you spell it with an “i” or with an “e”… and if you have traditionally spelled it with an “i”, does this reasoning convince you to change your wayward practices?

more at twiigs.com...

References:

Monnier, G. 2006. The Lower/Middle Paleolithic periodization in Western Europe: An evaluation. Current Anthropology 47:709-744.

Mortillet, G. de. 1873. Classification des diverses périodes de l'Âge de la Pierre. In Congrès International d'Anthropologie et d'Archéologie Préhistoriques, 6ème session, 432–459.

Other papers of note

The new issue of Antiquity contains a suite of other really interesting papers, making it well worth checking out.

Here's a few of them:

Biancamaria Aranguren, Roberto Becattini, Marta Mariotti Lippi and Anna Revedin
Grinding flour in Upper Palaeolithic Europe (25000 years bp)

The authors have identified starch grains belonging to wild plants on the surface of a stone from the Gravettian hunter-gatherer campsite of Bilancino (Florence, Italy), dated to around 25000bp. The stone can be seen as a grindstone and the starch has been extracted from locally growing edible plants. This evidence can be claimed as implying the making of flour – and presumably some kind of bread – some 15 millennia before the local ‘agricultural revolution’.

Phillip C. Edwards
A 14000 year-old hunter-gatherer's toolkit

A sickle, 21 flint lunates for tipping spears and evidence of the hunted quarry – gazelle bones – lay together by the wall of a Natufian building. The author deduces that these objects were contained in a bag and constituted the versatile working equipment of a hunter-gatherer.

Josephine J. McDonald, Denise Donlon, Judith H. Field, Richard L.K. Fullagar, Joan Brenner Coltrain, Peter Mitchell and Mark Rawson
The first archaeological evidence for death by spearing in Australia

An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth century AD.

Judith Littleton
From the perspective of time: hunter-gatherer burials in south-eastern Australia

In this study of the Murray River basin in south-eastern Australia, the author shows that Aboriginal burials are persistently attracted to specific kinds of landscape feature intermittently over long periods of time. Some attributes of burial, like body position, vary from site to site and over much shorter periods; others, like orientation, are even more local, relating only to a specific group of graves. Burial rites are thus sets of variables which may be independent of each other and change at different rates. Far from reflecting cultural arrivals and departures, in south-eastern Australia burial grounds were never formally founded and continually abandoned.

There's also a brief report (available free of charge) by A.P. Derevianko, A.A. Anoykin, V.S. Slavinsky & M.A. Borisov on recent Paleolithic excavations in the Caucasus.

Farbstein and Svoboda in Antiquity

Having a sick day here at AVRPI, but between bowls of minestrone and listening to Six Parts Seven for restorative comfort, I was made aware of a new paper by Farbstein and Svoboda (2007) in the new issue of Antiquity. The paper is about new symbolic artifacts found at the Gravettian site of Predmostí, news of which had first circulated slightly over a year ago (see my comments here). Here's the summary (Antiquity doesn't do abstracts):

Two new examples of decorative art have turned up at the Gravettian site of Predmostí, dating to the twenty-sixth to twenty-fifth millennium BP: rectilinear grid patterns are executed on one side of flat bones, probably of reindeer. The authors speculate that the two pieces may have come from a single larger decorated object. The grids themselves join a growing repertoire of patterns known from Upper Palaeolithic society, but their role remains enigmatic: counting, calendars or ornament? Art or science?

Sounds like an interesting article, especially the section that discusses the potential function of these artifacts. At this point, I'd just like to mention that an artistic component in the artifact doesn't necessarily preclude a concurrent, more prosaic use. McGill unfortunately has a six month embargo on the online version of Antiquity, so if any readers have access to this paper, I'd very much appreciate if a copy could find its way to me.

References:

Farbstein, R., and J. Svoboda. 2007. New finds of Upper Palaeolithic decorative objects from Predmostí, Czech Republic. Antiquity 81: 856–864.

Four Stone Hearth #28

Run - don't walk - over to Hot Cup of Joe to partake in the bountiful goodness of the latest installment of the Four Stone Hearth, including a link to a post by yours truly.

Paleolithic papers in Near Eastern Archaeology

The June 2006 issue of Near Eastern Archeology contains four papers, all of which deal with the Paleolithic. Included in this fine lot is a paper by the team of Mike Bisson, one of my colleagues at McGill, about their recent work in Jordan. I'm providing the abstracts of all these papers here:

The Pleistocene Peopling of Anatolia: Evidence from Kaletepe Deresi
By Ludovic Slimak, Damase Mouralis, Nur Balkan-Atli, Didier Binder, and Steven L. Kuhn
Anatolia has been called the crossroads of Eurasia, forming as it does a land-bridge between Europe, the Levant, and central Asia. Historical documents and the region's rich archaeological record provide ample testimony to frequent movements of people, ideas, and goods across Anatolia over the last few millennia. A range of evidence, both circumstantial and direct, suggests that humans and human ancestors repeatedly traversed the region in even more remote times.


Late Acheulian Variability in the Southern Levant: A Contrast of the Western and Eastern Margins of the Levantine Corridor
by Gary O. Rollefson, Leslie A. Quintero, and Philip J. Wilke

One of the fascinating aspects of the archaeology of very ancient times is that it offers glimpses of extinct lifeways. We find this particularly true for the cultural behavior of hominids during the Lower Palaeolithic. Interestingly, relatively little is known about the daily habits of people during the fairly well-studied period of the Acheulian in the Levant, in spite of numerous site discoveries of considerable note. Much of this deficiency results from a lack of preserved perishable goods; these seldom survive time depths in the hundreds of thousands to well over a million years. But also lacking is clear understanding of the behavioral significance of those objects that do survive the wear and tear of time, specifically the numerous stone artifacts. This article presents new research that assists our quest for understanding of these ancient lives.


Human Evolutions at the Crossroads: An Archaeological Survey in Northwest Jordan
by Michael S. Bisson, April Nowell, Carlos Cardova, Regina Kalchgruber, and Maysoon al-Nahar
Human evolution can be traced back 7,000,000 years. Modern humans evolved in Africa 160,000 years ago and as recently as 26,000 years ago we shared parts of the world with at least one other species - the Neanderthals. Since the discover of the first Neanderthal in 1856 in Germany, this species has generated controversy; specifically, there are questions concerning their genetic relationship to modern humans, their capacity for language and artistic expression, or the reasons for their extinction. Resolving thse debates in the long term depends on an accumulation of evidence for how Neanderthals adapted to the physical and cultural environments around them. In other words, in order to understand why they died, we need to first understand how they lived.

Shelter or Hunting Camp? Accounting for the Presenceof a Deeply Sratified Cave Site in the Syrian Steppe
By Bruce Schroeder

No abstract available.

The latest issue also contains a paper on the Lower Paleolithic of Iran:

The Lower Paleolithic Occupation of Iran
By Fereidoun Bigalri and Sonia Shidrang

Iran is a natural bridge connecting Western Asia to South and Central Asia and therefore, we might expect it to have been a main route for hominin expansion eastwards. Despite its strategic location, however, it has so far produced little evidence for early hominin occupation. The authors present here the results of new investigations in the region that affirm the archaeological potential of this region for understanding Lower Paleolithic hominin adaptaton to their environment.

This should all help shed greater light on the Pleistocene record of the Near/Middle East, which is always good, especially in light of some of my current projects. I'm especially excited about the Schroeder paper, since there haven't been a whole lot of publications about his work at Jerf Al-Ajla, which contains an important Middle-Upper Paleolithic transitional sequence (as well as some late Acheulean material).

No good can come out of this...

"Rising pasta prices create panic in Italy"

This will end badly, mark my words... This report is actually a surprisingly lucid overview (for CNN anyway) of the situation caused by marked increases in the price of wheat (and other staple foodstuffs) worldwide. There are some interesting perspectives on both the prices consumers have been paying for staples over the past 20 years and on the implications of ethanol production for agricultural production.

Université de Montréal Lecture

If you 're around the greater Montréal metropolitan area and you want to learn more about Neanderthals, the Uluzzian and Paleolithic research in Italy, then by all means, come to my upcoming public lecture in the Université de Montréal department of anthropology.

When: Thursday, November 22, 11:30-13:00
Where: U de M., Room C-3061, 3150 Rue Jean-Brillant
What: "L’Uluzzien et la transition Paléolithique moyen-Paléolithique supérieur en Italie"

Archéologues québécois autour du monde / Québec archaeologists around the world

Here's some news about a conference entitled "Archéologues québécois autour du monde" (Québec archaeologists around the world) which will highlight the variety of archaeological research projects being undertaken by archaeologists residing in my fair province. It will be held in Montréal's Pointe-à-Callière Museum next weekend. You can check out a list of presenters and abstracts here (all in French, except for one). The topics are pretty far-ranging, but there's a couple of paleo-themed presentations that should be most interesting.

Fighting the tyranny of the ethnographic record!

In a short paper, R. Lee Lyman (U Missouri) shows how archaeological data can help flesh out ethnographic observations. I make a big deal about this because archaeologists dealing with prehistoric hunter-gatherers have often been accused of being interpretively 'railroaded' (not to say tyrannized) by the ethnographic record of extant hunter-gatherers (Wobst 1978).

What Lyman does in this paper is actually pretty straightforward, methodologically speaking. Briefly, having shown that the size of lower first molars can be used to distinguish males from female mink, he looks at the sex ratio seen in Mustela vison remains from the Cathlapote and Meier sites, both of which are late-prehistoric(ca. 1400-1800 AD) sites located in the Wapato Valley (in Oregon and Washington). Citing Buskirk and Lindstedt (1989), Lyman argues that "linear trap sets produce a more even sex ratio[i.e., between 1:1 and 2:1, for males], whereas traps placed in a grid catch more large-bodied individuals, typically males" (2007:92). This pattern is the result of sex-specific behavioral patterns. In his archaeological sample, the male:female ratio is at least 3.67:1 and at most 8.33:1, depending on how stringent one is with their sex-id stats. This suggests, then, that late-prehistoric foragers probably disposed traps in a grid rather than linear pattern.

This is where it gets especially neat. Since Franz Boas long ago wondered "How far can archaeological methods supplement ethnological information?" (1902:4), Lyman concludes:

Locations of traps used to take small mammals have, so far as I am aware, not been reported in the ethnographic literature for the Pacific Northwest. The archaeological data for mink recovered from sites in the Wapato Valley suggest that indeed archaeological data may supplement ethnographic data, because mink demography suggests traps were distributed in a grid-like pattern. (Lyman 2007:94)

In other words, rather than place them, say, only along waterways, late-prehistoric hunters of the Wapato Valley most likely set their traps all over the region's marshy lowlands. Given that the sites in question can be linked to the "Northwest Coast Culture Area" and given that ethnographic information available for groups derived from this culture area indicates that they trapped small mammals without specifying how that was done, this study provides a good instance of archaeological data (albeit informed by mammalogy) informing ethnographic observation. This is elegant corroboration of what Guenther (2007:374) terms "an ongoing, mutually strengthening partnership between the two disciplines [archaeology and ethnology], in their study of foraging societies."

References:

Buskirk, S. W., and S. L. Lindstedt. 1989. Sex ratio biases in trapped samples of mustelids. Journal of Mammalogy 70:88-97.

Guenther, M. 2007. Current issues and future directions in hunter-gatherer studies. Anthropos 102:371-388.

Lyman, R. L. 2007. Prehistoric mink (Mustela vison) trapping on the Northwest Coast. Journal of Field Archaeology 32:91-95.

Wobst, H. M. 1978. The archaeo-ethnology of hunter-gatherers or the tyranny of the ethnographic record in archaeology. American Antiquity 43:303-309.

McGill Journal of Education Helps Fight Creationism

I saw a few mentions of this online over the past two weeks, but only had time to check it out in detail today: The current issue (Vol. 42, no. 2) of the McGill Journal of Education is dedicated to the "Teaching and Learning of Evolution". It comprises an editorial, six research papers, two opinion pieces and a book review, all revolving around that central theme and all provided with English and French abstracts. Also, they are all available in pdf format free of charge, though you have the option of contributing a few dollars to keep the journal open access. There's some really thought-provoking and useful content in there if you have any link to the teaching of evolutionary biology, geology or any related discipline.

I'm especially glad that this is being published by a journal linked directly to McGill University, where I currently work, and to its Evolution Education Research Center, led by Brian Alters., who was one of the witnesses during the Dover trial. In related news, since I don't get PBS around these parts, I simply can't wait to check out PBS' "Judgment Day" available online in its entirety starting Nov. 16, 2007. 'Liveblogging' of the show from a number of trustworthy sources suggests it is quite a good program.

Mammoth hunters of the Russian Far East

They found one of their camps, apparently.

The site, found during a 2007 archaeological expedition to Lake Evoron, is the largest of four Stone Age sites, discovered near the Amur River so far, and was most likely established by mammoth hunters.

"We came to this conclusion after studying flint pikes, arrowheads and a stone scraper," Malyavin said, adding that a comprehensive archaeological excavation could take a couple of years.

Wait, what? Where the hell are the mammoth bones?! There better be some serious use-wear/blood residue analysis being undertaken if they want to make the case that people were hunting mammoths based on stone tools alone.

The modern Stone Age family

The Boston Globe has a feature entitled 'Stone Age Feminism?' (I have to wonder if they had a contest with CNN for the lamest spin on Stone Age news) which talks about how recent discoveries about Neanderthals (FOXP2, 'red hair', extension of their range to Siberia, etc.) may articulate with the argument put forth last year by Kuhn & Stiner (2006) that sexual division of labor was largely absent among Neanderthals. Some people have blogged about this (here and here), just as other have offered more thoughts about the 'spin' or 'framing' put on some of the recent genetic papers (here for FOXP2, here for MC1R). I'm not an anthropological geneticist, so I won't talk about those studies any more than I already have.

In contrast, although the Kuhn & Stiner paper has been discussed at length on some other blogs (including by John Hawks who was fairly critical of their argument), this renewed interest in it a year after its original publication prompted me to finally pitch in my two cents.

I suspect that there's two main ways in which the main conclusion of the paper was greeted by researchers. On one side, people who still think of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in terms of a list of features that distinguish the UP from the MP (and by extension, modern humans from Neanderthals) probably clapped their hands excitedly before chiseling "sexual division of labor" into the stone tablet that bears the other commandments of modern human behavior. Nothing new under the sun here. On the other side, you have people who largely dismissed Kuhn and Stiner's argument by saying that it just doesn't jive with the paleoanthropological record, ethnographic analogy and/or common sense. Again, nothing too earth-shattering.

My own view doesn't really fall on a simple continuum between those two extremes. If someone held a pistol to my head and asked me to pick sides right there and then, I suppose I'd probably say I lean more towards this second pole (though if this situation really were to happen, I'd probably just say whatever the hell they wanted to hear!). However, if the same paleoanthropologically-inclined gun-toting individual was armed with, say, a musket (or any other weapon that would give yours truly a bit more time to talk), I would promptly qualify this statement by adding that, while it may not be congruent with all of the data we now have available, Kuhn and Stiner's paper is nonetheless quite an important contribution to studies of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition for two main reasons:

1) It bring together a wide range of archaeological data whose joint patterns previous synthetic treatments have been unable to account for convincingly. Admittedly, this is done at the expense of some of the finer details of the archaeological record (I think there's evidence Neanderthals exploited small game and plants, and that there's little evidences that modern humans engaged in substantially less close-range hunting), although this is perhaps unavoidable in any synthetic treatment of the evidence. However, it does propose a novel idea to account for some general patterns, although as John Hawks has pointed it is difficult to test empirically. The important thing here is to look at this as a new avenue of research, and not a paleoanthropological received truth to be accepted and repeated uncritically, a point unfortunately lost on the popular media.

2) Most importantly (and I think that's what Kuhn and Stiner were really going for), it forces researchers to come to grips with the idea that the Late Pleistocene archaeological record is now sufficiently well-known that we can and should be focusing on other questions than simply what techniques of tool manufacture hominins used, what their chronology was, what the oldest evidence for "behavior X" is, how hominins moved around and managed their resources, and what critters hominins were eating. These are all obviously critical questions (some that I tackle in my own work), but is there more to Paleolithic archaeology than this? According to that paper, yes. That Kuhn & Stiner tried to roll this specifically into the modern human origins debate, to which they have spent their whole career contributing, is perhaps best seen as secondary. On the other hand, it likely accounts for why the news outfits all latched on the "Stone Age feminism" angle - it's just too easy and speaks to contemporary issues almost more than it does about prehistoric life.

I was (and remain) a little surprised by the gusto with which some people reacted to this paper stressing that we might want to consider addressing social issues from a paleoanthropological standpoint (although I can understand that such reactions were mainly driven by empirical concerns). That idea is not exactly new, having been frequently presented and repackaged by researchers like Gamble (esp. Gamble 1999), sometimes on empirical bases much weaker than those invoked by Kuhn and Stiner (2006). Obviously, we must be careful not to get carried away in that direction and make sure that we can strongly link inference to hard data derived from archaeological research. However, given that we're dealing not only with prehistoric lifeways but with prehistoric people, I think there is a case to be made for looking at a new set of issues in contemporary paleoanthropology, although it is critically important that this work be as solidly anchored in the empirical record as possible. That peculiar vein of research may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it can be worth investigating, especially if we are to make Paleolithic research relevant to the broader world of hunter-gatherer anthropology.

References:

Gamble, C. 1999. The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Kuhn, S. L., and M. C. Stiner. 2006. What's a Mother to Do? The Division of Labor among Neandertals and Modern Humans in Eurasia. Current Anthropology 47:953-980.

Four Stone Hearth #27

It's that time again... gather one, gather all around the latest installment of Four Stone Hearth, the blog carnival. This time around it's being hosted by Sam over at Sorting Out Science. It's really a pleasure to read and reflect about, so make sure you do yourself the favor of visiting that corner of the information superhighway.

The caveman in the mirror?

Meredith Small presents a humorous essay on "the scariest thing about Neanderthals."

The gist of her argument is that, despite their rough facades,

...these ancient fellow Europeans were also culturally sophisticated. They buried their dead, built shelters, made tools, used fire and hunted. The may have had language (DNA sequencing has also revealed they carried the FOXP2 gene which is linked to language ability). And they had brains 100 cubic centimeters larger than people today.

And so why have these interesting people been relegated to second-class citizen status?

Because they threaten us.

Neanderthals are chronologically the closest, and the most familiar, example that we have of our kind disappearing off the face of the Earth, and that means we can go too.

Of course, not everybody thinks of Neanderthals as second-class citizens. But, given that many people do, Small's essay is an interesting spin on the long-standing idea that Neanderthals can be argued to embody the us-vs-them perspective in paleoanthropology.

More on the "Red Lady"

Hot on the heels of the news that the Red Lady is older than previously thought, Greg Laden offers some additional thoughts on why he also thinks it might be tricky to infer that burial originated in Western Europe based on a new date from this burial.

Asking a "lady" her age

The 'Red Lady of Paviland' is a Gravettian burial originally found in 1823 Goat's Hole Cave at Paviland (UK), and which was recently returned to the National Museum of Wales from Oxford University where it had been kept since its discovery. The body is actually that of a young male and was found covered in red ochre as well as "with a number of artefacts including ivory wands, bracelets and periwinkle shells."

It was originally thought to date to about 18 kya, before more recent assays established it was 25-26 kya. Well, it turns out that Tom Higham and his team have determined it is, in fact, some 4000 years older, or "just over 29 kya".

Beyond the general 'older is better' paleoanthropological cachet of this new report, there are some interesting implications drawn from this new age:

"It would mean The Red Lady lived in an age when the climate was much warmer than it would have been 4,000 years later.

Dr Higham added: "The data that we have got now is making a lot more sense."

He said it was important for "our understanding of the presence and behaviour of humans in this part of the world at this time".

He also said it "might" suggest that the custom of burying people with artefacts originated in western Europe rather than eastern Europe as had previously been thought.

"This raises new questions about the way in which these people spread and lived on the continent," he added."

I don't know what else they're basing the claim for a Western European origin of burials, but a single burial is not much to go on for such an interpretation. I'm sure there'll be more about this in the write-up of the analysis, which should be published in the Journal of Human Evolution early in 2008 (the corrected proof wasn't available when I checked today).

An artist's rendition of the burial ceremony in the Gravettian
( http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/flint/archrit.html).

The size of one's package...

I’ve been struggling to find time to string together my first set of thoughts about the Marean et al. (2007) paper that came out about 10 days ago, and this since even before CNN was harping on about “Stone Age clambakes” (such a lame spin). So I figured I'd better do it now, while they were still fresh-ish…

A few things, as a preamble. First, if you want a “public” rendering of the study, you’re much better off checking out the official ASU press release than any of the media coverage that was heaped on the piece. Second, for a tongue-in-cheek spin on what the findings reported by Marean et al. (2007) might mean, check out this post on Hot Cup of Joe. Third, in the interest of full disclosure, Marean was one of my PhD committee members and I consider a number of the paper’s coauthors pretty good friends.

Moving on to the paper itself, the chrono-stratigraphy of the study seems beyond reproach to me. In other words, there’s no question we’re dealing here with an MSA coastal occupation beginning at least ca. 167 kya. Also, the GIS modeling of the paleo-shoreline (available as a [very large – 64 megs!] supplementary video) is very enlightening and the authors put it to very good use in inferring the most likely time of occupation of the site during the LC-MSA. As far as I know, it’s the first time this kind of video information is presented alongside a paleoanthropology piece in Nature, and I hope this is a trend that will stick for archaeological contributions, insofar as they are useful, of course.

By and large, what most strikes me about the paper is the discussion of a “behavioral package” that comprises coastal living, shellfish exploitation, ochre use and bladelet production. These elements are unquestionably all there at PP13B, but their varying representation across the LC-MSA stratigraphy strongly suggests that they were far from indissociable in evolutionary time, and this even at a single locale. Interestingly, this very fact emphasizes how dynamic the MSA appears to have been as a form of behavioral adaptation, even in its comparatively early phases. This contrasts with some views of the MSA as a single ‘thing’ across space and time. That said, it also raises the issue of whether we are, in fact dealing with a discrete “package” and of what elements are its essential features, for lack of a better term. I think that we still have some way to go in highlighting what the advantages provided by each of these different behaviors was, especially in different situational contexts, but it is very intriguing to first find them in association when the coast first appears to become more or less permanently occupied.

This discussion about a modern “behavioral package” (which is what they’re getting at, really), I feel, is the cornerstone of this piece. It also strikes at the beating heart of a long-standing and still unresolved question in paleoanthropology, namely what makes modern humans, well, “modern” in behavioral terms and what of these elements are the fundamental ones. The data put forth by Marean et al. suggest that the expansion of the diet breadth might be key, although it's clearly not sufficient on its own (hence the "package"). Regardless, this paper is important in fleshing out our understanding of the MSA in an otherwise poorly-known segment of its chronology and in reiterating how internally variable this industry can be.

As I implied at the beginning of this post, I mainly to get out what thoughts I’ve had time to formulate about this paper before it had been too long. I just might return with some more a little while later.

Reference:

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.

Ugg 4 Prez!

Finally, a clear paleoanthropological voice among the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination, courtesy of This Modern World:



Hat tip to Tom Minichillo.

Four Stone Hearth #26

The 26th installment of the Four Stone Hearth anthropology blog carnival is up at the Primate Diaries. There are, among other things, a thought-provoking essay on the origins of melody by Victor Grauer and a great discussion by Chris O'Brien of how ID - not satisfied in misrepresenting biological evolution - also misrepresents archaeology. Lots of good stuff there, so check it out, people.
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Against Creationism in Canada

Scott Rowed writes a very good op-ed piece in the Calgary Herald criticizing the growth of creationism in Canada, and the age-old attempts of creationists to portray evolution as "just another theory". He also justly criticizes politicians like John Tory (Conservative Party Leader of Ontario) who are trying to derive political capital by pushing creationism in Canadian public schools.

I can only agree with Rowed when he argues that:

"Science and technology are the engines of our economy. If we indoctrinate our children with pseudo-science like creationism or intelligent design, or dumb down the curriculum to avoid "offending religious sensibilities," we are robbing them of exciting careers and harming Canada's future scientific and economic power.

The science curriculum need to be strengthened, not gutted. It needs to inspire young children with the wonders of distant galaxies and nebulas, with the vastness of geological time, and with the incredible diversity of life on Earth and how evolution shaped it."

Thanks to Greg Laden for making me aware of this one.

McGill Lecture

For you readers in the greater Montreal area, it might interest you to know that I'll be giving a public lecture entitled "New Insights on the Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition in Italy" in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University this coming Monday (Oct. 22). I'll be presenting a summary of my latest research on the archaeology of the last Neanderthals and the first modern humans in Italy, as well as outline some new research projects I've undertaken of late. The event will take place in the Stephen Leacock Building, Room 738, from 12:30-2:00PM. It's open to everyone, so come one, come all!

Newsflash: Neanderthals had modern FOXP2

So, as revealed in a study by Krause et al. (2007) currently in press in Current Biology, it turns out that:

"...Neandertals carried a FOXP2 protein that was identical to that
of present-day humans in the only two positions that differ
between human and chimpanzee. Leaving out the
unlikely scenario of gene flow, this establishes that
these changes were present in the common ancestor
of modern humans and Neandertals." (Krause et al. 2007: 4).

You can also read a press release here. In other words, despite some recent claims that 'modern' FOXP2 proteins would be shown to distinguish modern humans from Neanderthals (e.g., Klein 2003, Mellars 2006), it turns out that this is not the case after all. Since FOXP2 has been considered by those and other researchers as the basis for the capacity for modern language, should we now stop arguing about whether Neanderthals had the capacity (and therefore likely used) fully modern speech? Not to toot my own horn or anything, but this is exactly the issue that had been discussed in my post on Neanderthal tooth-picking and its implications for their linguistic abilities (check out the comments, especially). Obviously, FOXP2 is not the only gene involved in language, so the question isn't truly resolved, but it's the one that's most often and most vociferously brought up in debates about Neanderthal linguistic ability, so this is pretty big news indeed for paleoanthropologists.

In any case, here's the abstract of the Krause et al. piece:

"Although many animals communicate vocally, no extant
creature rivals modern humans in language ability.
Therefore, knowing when and under what evolutionary
pressures our capacity for language evolved is of great
interest. Here, we find that our closest extinct relatives,
the Neandertals, share with modern humans two
evolutionary changes in FOXP2, a gene that has been
implicated in the development of speech and language.
We furthermore find that in Neandertals, these changes
lie on the common modern human haplotype, which
previously was shown to have been subject to a selective
sweep. These results suggest that these genetic
changes and the selective sweep predate the common
ancestor (which existed about 300,000–400,000 years
ago) of modern human and Neandertal populations.
This is in contrast to more recent age estimates of the
selective sweep based on extant human diversity data.
Thus, these results illustrate the usefulness of retrieving
direct genetic information from ancient remains for
understanding recent human evolution."

And note that last bit about the age estimates - in the long run, I think this may turn out to be one of the more important implications of this study, as it emphasizes the need to look at what the paleoanthropological record itself tells us about these issues, as opposed to genetic studies on modern populations alone.

References:

Klein, R. 2003. Whither the Neanderthals? Science 299:1525-1527.

Krause, J., C. Lalueza-Fox, L. Orlando, W. Enard, R. E. Green, . H. A. Burbano, J.-J. Hublin, C. Hänni, J. Fortea, M. de la Rasilla, J. Bertranpetit, A. Rosas, and S. Pääbo. 2007. The Derived FOXP2 Variant of Modern Humans Was Shared with Neandertals. Current Biology: DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.10.008.

Mellars, P. 2006. Why did modern human populations disperse from Africa ca. 60,000 years ago? A new model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:9381-9386.

Pirate Arrrrrr...chaeology Update

It appears they want to bring up one of the canons from the ship that might be Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge. I had talked about this project a bit earlier this year. Keep posted for more on this.

Newsflash: Neanderthals could build stuff

The Mousterian site of La Folie, which is located just north of Poitiers (France), is the subject of an extremely well-done website (in French, unfortunately with no English translation). The site is dated by TL to about 57.7 +/- 2.4 kya and had thus far been the subject of a few preliminary reports that emphasized its contextual integrity and the identification of activity areas within it (Bourguignon et al. 2002, 2006). One of the key aspects of the site is that a number of approaches were combined to confidently establish the existence of regularly spaced postholes around its periphery (indicating the existence of a relatively large man-made structure) and discrete activity areas within the area circumscribed by this structure (slightly under 250 squared meters, over a thickness of about 10 cm). The absence of evidence for a central or transversal posts that would have been needed to support a roof suggests that the structure was a large (i.e., ca. 10m in diameter) windbreak rather than a tent or hut. The postholes were surrounded by limestone blocks used to anchor the wooden posts used in the structure, traces of which have clearly been identified through micromorphological analysis in at least one of the holes. Likewise, micromorphology identified a large area along one side of the structure that was devoid of archaeological remains, save for decomposed plant materials, which suggest that it represents a bedding area.

Use-wear and technological analyses show that the lithic industry used at the site is characteristic of the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition, and that it included a Levallois production strategy aimed at producing sharp flakes used to work a variety of materials (e.g., wood, skin, soft plant material). A few of these blanks were retouched to produce, among other things, retouched backed knives, but most of the lithics appear to have been produced and used relatively expediently. The investigators argue that the site served as a task site likely used in food procurement, although there are only scant details about this interpretation provided on the website.

All in all, this is a very eloquent presentation of the results of this excavation and it demonstrates how relatively dry archaeological data can be presented in an engaging way to the public at large. On a more technical level, as had already been documented at the Middle Paleolithic site of Tor Faraj in Jordan (Henry et al. 2004), this confirms that Neanderthals were able to partition and clearly organize their living space, in contrast to claims that "well organized sites" only appear in the Upper Paleolithic.

References:

Bourguignon, L., Sellami, F., Deloze, V., Sellier-Segard, N., Beyries, S., Emery-Barbier, E. 2002. L’habitat moustérien de « La Folie » (Poitiers, Vienne) : synthèse des premiers résultats. Paléo 14:29-48.

Bourguignon, L., Vieillevigne, E., Guibert, P., Bechtel, F., Beyries, S., Émery-Bariber, A., Deloze, V., Delahaye, C., Sellami, F., Sellier-Segard, N. 2006. Compléments d’informations chronologiques sur le campement moustérien de tradition acheuléenne du gisement de la Folie (Poitiers, Vienne). Paléo 18:37-44.

Henry, D. O., H. J. Hietala, A. M. Rosen, Y. E. Demidenko, V. I. Usik and T. L. Armagan. 2004. Human Behavioral Organization in the Middle Paleolithic: Were Neanderthals Different? American Anthropologist 106:17-31.

Kudos

My friend and former ASU postdoc Chris Fisher - a geoarchaeologist at Colorado State University who works mainly in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (Michoacán, Mexico) - was recently awarded the 2007 Gordon R. Willey Prize by the Archaeology Division of the AAA. This was for a paper based on his doctoral research research published in American Anthropologist in 2005 in which he looked at human-environment interactions in his study area. Fisher argues that contact led to a precipitous decline in indigenous population meaning that the land management system they had developed could not be maintained, thus leading to widespread landscape degradation. It's a very good paper, and you can read it as a pdf here. Congrats Chris!

New insights on raw material use

At the moment, I'm wrapping my head around two papers about patterns of raw material procurement and use in archaeological assemblages.

In the first, Jelmer Eerkens et al. (2007 - available as a pdf on Eerkens' web page) use obsidian characterization to demonstrate how different components of a lithic assemblage (i.e., small flakes vs. large flakes vs. formal tools) can yield different and complementary patterns of raw material use and how focusing on small flakes can inform us of broader behavioral patterns of the people responsible for depositing the assemblage, even if larger pieces are missing, either through curation or looting. I'll have a bit more to post on this paper soon, but it's a very demonstration of why archaeologists need to pay attention to all the pieces in their assemblage if they wish to accurately depict prehistoric life.

The second paper, by Lucy Wilson, I've just started reading, so I'll have to post more about it later, but its starting point is quite thought-provoking and, in spite of its conceptual simplicity, has not previously been used before in lithic analysis, to the best of my knowledge. Wilson uses 'gravity modeling' (similar to that used in economics and other social sciences) to predict how attractive given sources of raw material would have been to foragers in their vicinity and to extrapolate from this a baseline of how prevalent they should theoretically be in lithic assemblages found at a given point on the landscape. This, in turn, allows us to tease apart the influence of the natural abundance and flaking properties of given materials from that of 'other' factors leading to raw material source selection, thus potentially paving the way for a discussion of 'social' factors linked to the use of various lithotypes. This one sounds quite good, so check again soon for a more detailed post on this one.

References:

Eerkens, Jelmer W., J.R. Ferguson, M.D. Glascock, C.E. Skinner, and S.A. Waechter. 2007. Reduction strategies and geochemical characterization of lithic assemblages: a comparison of three case studies from western North America. American Antiquity 72:585-597.

Wilson, L. 2007 (in press). Understanding Prehistoric Lithic Raw Material Selection: Application of a Gravity Model. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14. DOI: 10.1007/s10816-007-9042-4.

Fuel and mining magnate backed UK challenge to An Inconvenient Truth

Wish I could say I was surprised, but by now I've grown too cynical or jaded (or both) by the frequency at which such revelations percolate in the media following the release of allegedly "neutral" challenges to scientific consensus.

Check out the full story here.

Wine!

Not much time to post this week since my "free time" has been coopted by the family unit to help in crushing crates and crates of grapes in preparation of this year's supply of Castello Salvatore... I just got home now, and I'm exhausted; we crushed about 40 cases of grapes tonight: Cabernet Sauvignon (yeah!), Pinot Noir (hm), Zinfandel (not my call). Should make for a good range this year, though.


Now, to make this relevant to archaeology, I should mention that the fantastic (and very well-written) book Ancient Wine by Patrick McGovern was brought up in conversation a number of times this evening. The first instance, between me and my father, concluded thusly:

Me: "... as McGovern claims in that book Ancient Wine that I gave you a copy of last Christmas."

Him: "Oh yeah, yeah..."

Me: "So you'll remember winemaking is first documented in the Neolithic, at the site of Hajji Furz Tepe, in Iran..."

Him: "..."

Me: "You never read the book, did you?"

Him: "Well... no... but it was a very thoughtful gift!"

Anyway, all of that to say that, here at A Very Remote Period Indeed, we're all about actualistic studies, be they in flintknapping or winemaking. I like to think of it as a form of ethnoarchaeology (yeah, that's the ticket!). The really fun part of all this, of course, is when we finally taste the end product to test the rather lengthy list of hypotheses I have about just how people might have used this stuff in the past... salute!

How modern are the hobbits' tools?

There is one passage in the Tocheri et al. (2007) paper that hasn't gotten all that much attention in the media frenzy about the fact that this study 'proves' the hobbits were a different species:

"Our analyses support hypotheses that LB1
is descended from a hominin ancestor that
migrated out of Africa before the evolution of
the shared, derived wrist morphology that is
characteristic of modern humans, Neandertals,
and their last common ancestor. The association
of LB1 with direct evidence of stone
flaking technology comparable to that found at
Oldowan or other Lower Paleolithic sites
throughout the Old World provides
additional support for the hypothesis that the
earliest hominins to use and make stone tools
retained primitive hominin wrist morphology.
The structurally modified
wrist of modern humans and Neandertals
probably evolved sometime between 1.8 and
0.8 Ma. These structural modifications
form a morphological complex that may
represent an adaptation for better distribution
of forces radio-ulnarly across the wrist to
facilitate the full commitment to tool-related
manipulative behaviors that arose in the
hominin lineage leading to modern humans
and Neandertals." (Tocheri et al. 2007: 1745; references excised).

In my view, this passage is of capital importance because it narrows the range of interpretation of the stone tool assemblage associated with the H. floresiensis remains. Here's what they look like in the original Morwood et al. (2004) pub:

(From Pharyngula)

To recap, there are those who think that these tools are basically "Upper Paleolithic", which has been taken to mean either that 1) small-brained hominids can manufacture such things (Morwood et al. 2004) or 2) that such tools can only be manufactured by modern humans, which means that LB1 is most likely a microcephalic H. sapiens that lived about 18 kya (Martin et al. 2006). Some scholars (e.g., Brumm et al. 2006) have argued that there are strong continuities between Lower Paleolithic industries found elsewhere on Flores, and recently the 'modern' features of the lithic assemblage associated with LB1 have been downplayed significantly, suggesting it is relatively simple and part of a technological sequence that involved the production of both 'core tools' and flakes (Moore and Brumm 2007).

Personally, I have never been especially convinced by the claims for systematic blade technology associated with LB1. The two 'macroblades' (a, b) and two 'microblades' (e, f) illustrated by Morwood et al. (2004: Fig. 5) aren't very regular (the central dorsal ridges are not straight in any of them) and none of their platforms (from what can be seen) are truly 'lipped', unlike the platforms usually generated by soft-hammer production (which is largely employed in true blade production). Furthermore, the illustrated "burin core" really looks to me like a flake core from which a series of small flakes with subparallel edges were knocked off, not a bladelet core. None of this really conforms to the "narrow blades removed sequentially from blade cores" alluded to by some detractors (in Culotta 2007:741) who considers they can only be produced by H. sapiens (a misleading assertion anyway [Bar-Yosef and Kuhn 1999]). Rather, M. Moore and T. Sutkina , who have studied the tools, argue that they represent fairly "simple stone artifacts" (in Culotta 2007:741), which happen to include a few flakes that are twice as long as they are wide - the traditional, if slightly outdated, definition of a blade.

Also keep in mind this "trade secret" of archaeologists: the pieces selected for illustration in published papers are usually the "best looking" ones. In other words, if people want to show they have blades in their assemblage, they tend to illustrate the best examples, even if they don't necessarily accurately reflect the range of products they're actually dealing with. If they had regular, textbook blades in their assemblage, I'd be very surprised that Morwood et al. (2004) had chosen not to illustrate them instead of the ones presented in Fig. 5.

In any case, this is where the Tocheri et al. (2007) paper comes in: Blade technology and prepared core technology, which Neanderthals and modern humans are known to have been able to produce, requires a substantial degree of skill and manual dexterity. The tools at Liang Bua do not reflect this kind of manual dexterity and indeed appear to be very close to Lower Paleolithic freehand flake production strategies. This is the kind of technology which could be expected to be associated with pre-modern wrist morphology, which Tocheri et al. (2007) make a strong case for. For me, this is an instance of two sets of paleoanthropological evidence potentially coming together rather nicely and coherently to support one another, and it would lend credence to the hypothesis that the wrist morphology of LB1 was typical of the hominins who produced the stone tools found at the site. While this study obviously doesn't resolve the issue of whether LB1 represents a distinct species and while it is possible for modern humans to produce more rudimentary lithics, the various evidential threads do seem to be starting to come together as an integrated whole.

This discussion and the new paper nonetheless raise a few more issues for me: looking at the scans of various kinds of wrist bones presented in the paper, it looks like the LB1 bones are most similar to those of chimps, not those of early Homo or Australopithecus. What gives? Granted, there aren't very many bones of fossil hominins that we can compare the LB1 wrist to, but what might be the implications of this for the taxonomic designation of LB1 and, especially, for the necessary morphological and neurological preconditions for systematic, purposeful tool production?

References:

Bar-Yosef, O., and S. L. Kuhn. 1999. The big deal about blades: laminar technologies and human evolution. American Anthropologist 101:322-338

Brumm, A., F. Aziz, G. D. van den Bergh, M. J. Morwood, M. W. Moore,I. Kurniawan, D. R. Hobbs, and R. Fullagar. 2006. Early stone technology on Flores and its implications for Homo floresiensis. Nature 441:624-628.

Culotta, E. 2007. The Fellowship of the Hobbit. Science 317:740-742.

Martin, R. D., A. M. MacLarnon, J. L. Philips, and W. B. Dobyn. 2006. Flores Hominid: New Species or Microcephalic Dwarf? The Anatomical Record A 288A:1123-1145.

Moore, M., and A. Brumm. 2007. Stone artifacts and hominins in island Southeast Asia: New insights from Flores, eastern Indonesia. Journal of Human Evolution 52:85-102

Morwood, M. J., et al. 2004. Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia. Nature 431:1087-1091.

Tocheri, M. W., C. M. Orr, S. G. Larson, T. Sutikna, Jatmiko, E. W. Saptomo, R. Awe Due, T.Djubiantono, M. J. Morwood, W. L. Jungers. 2007. The Primitive Wrist of Homo floresiensis and Its Implications for Hominin Evolution. Science 317:1743-1745.

Of wrists and hobbits

There's a short feature in Nature News that reports the publication of a paper by Matt Tocheri (Smithsonian) and colleagues in tomorrow's issue Science. This is the published version of the paper Tocheri presented at the Paleo meetings this year, in which they presented an analysis of the wrist morphology of LB1 (H. floresiensis), which they show is very different from that of modern humans. If LB1 was microcephalic, this would be somewhat unexpected, so this paper overall lends support to the "hobbit as separate species" camp.

The Nature News feature also includes some comments by Dan Lieberman and Robert Martin about the discovery. Check out also this interview with Tocheri about the paper.