How did hominins adapt to Ice Age Europe without fire?

Analyses of archaeological material recovered from several Middle Paleolithic sites in southwest France have provided strong corroborating data on Neanderthal use of fire. Both direct and indirect data show that Neanderthals in this region were frequently and/or intensively using fire during warmer periods, but such evidence declines significantly in occupations that took place during colder periods. One possible explanation for this pattern is that it reflects the inability of Western European Neanderthals to make fire, simply because natural sources of fire occur much more frequently during warmer climatic periods. Regardless of the explanation, the long periods of diminished evidence of fire shows that, unlike modern humans, these hominins were not obligate fire users, and this fact in itself raises important questions of how they adapted, physiologically and/or technologically, to the generally harsh glacial conditions of the middle latitude of Europe and to reduced energy returns typical of raw food. As a corollary, it also raises questions regarding their need for and use of fire during the warmer periods.National Science FoundationLeakey FoundationConseil General de la DordogneMax Planck SocietyService Regional de l'Archeologie (Agquitaine)University of Pennsylvania Research FoundationUniversity of Pennsylvania MuseumWenner-Gren Foundationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reconstructing Late Pleistocene paleoclimate at the scale of human behavior: an example from the Neandertal occupation of La Ferrassie (France)

Exploring the role of changing climates in human evolution is currently impeded by a scarcity of climatic information at the same temporal scale as the human behaviors documented in archaeological sites. This is mainly caused by high uncertainties in the chronometric dates used to correlate long-term climatic records with archaeological deposits. One solution is to generate climatic data directly from archaeological materials representing human behavior. Here we use oxygen isotope measurements of Bos/Bison tooth enamel to reconstruct summer and winter temperatures in the Late Pleistocene when Neandertals were using the site of La Ferrassie. Our results indicate that, despite the generally cold conditions of the broader period and despite direct evidence for cold features in certain sediments at the site, Neandertals used the site predominantly when climatic conditions were mild, similar to conditions in modern day France. We suggest that due to millennial scale climate variability, the periods of human activity and their climatic characteristics may not be representative of average conditions inferred from chronological correlations with long-term climatic records. These results highlight the importance of using direct routes, such as the high-resolution archives in tooth enamel from anthropogenically accumulated faunal assemblages, to establish climatic conditions at a human scale.Projekt DEALinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Experimental Design and Experimental Inference in Stone Artifact Archaeology

Lithic researchers rely heavily on experimentation to infer past behaviors and activities based on stone artifacts. This paper explores the analogical nature of archaeological inference and the relationship between experimental design and inference validity in stone artifact experimentation. We show that actualistic flintknapping lacks vital aspects of scientific experimentation, and thus has inherent inferential issues of analogical adequacy and confidence. It is argued that a greater emphasis on hypothesis construction and variable control is needed in order to establish sound referential linkages upon which constructive analogic inferences about the past can be built

The Role of Controlled Experiments in Understanding Variation in Flake Production

Understanding chipped-stone technology essentially comes down to understanding how a single flake is made. Even though a knapper may remove many flakes to prepare a core or shape a piece, thin it, or modify its edges, each and every one of these removals requires a certain degree of control so that particular effects are achieved. While there is currently an emphasis in lithic analysis on reconstructing the totality of various reduction sequences (e.g., see Olszewski, chapter 4, this volume; Rollefson, chapter 10, this volume), we still have much to learn about how individual flakes are formed. In order to quantify the various mechanical aspects of flake production, a number of researchers have designed experiments under highly controlled conditions, often using shaped cores and mechanical strikers. These types of experiments allow control over several aspects of flaking, from the angle and force of the blow and type of hammer used to various core surface and platform morphologies. In this way, it is possible to study in a very detailed fashion the effects of particular independent variables on flake morphology. Such experiments are called controlled experiments because their goal is to control as many as possible of the variables involved with knapping in order to isolate the effects of a single variable. Because of the design of these kinds of experiments, such controls are much tighter than is generally possible with replicative flint-knapping experiments, and the results are clearly more amenable to quantification. On the other hand, the downside of many controlled experiments is that the processes and products do not always accurately simulate archaeological ones. This artificial nature inherent to many controlled experiments has often made it difficult to apply the results directly to archaeological materials

Establishing statistical confidence in Cortex Ratios within and among lithic assemblages: a case study of the Middle Paleolithic of southwestern France

Recent studies have demonstrated the usefulness of the Cortex Ratio for quantifying the cortex composition in lithic assemblages and as a viable index of prehistoric artifact transport. Yet, the lack of means for assigning statistical confidence to archaeologically observed Cortex Ratios inhibits the approach\u27s utility for objective comparisons and interpretation. Here, we derive statistical confidence for archaeological Cortex Ratios through Monte Carlo and resampling techniques. Experimental data with known geometric properties and measured cortex values were employed as a reference for attaching a probability to an archaeological assemblage\u27s Cortex Ratio. The method is demonstrated on assemblages from the Middle Paleolithic sites of Roc de Marsal, Pech de l\u27Azé IV, and Combe-Capelle Bas in southwestern France

The relative effects of core surface morphology on flake shape and other attributes

It is long been thought that many flake attributes, including both size and shape, are largely due to the morphology of a core\u27s flaking surface, yet this has never been tested under strictly controlled conditions. Using molded glass cores with surface morphologies that highly resemble prehistoric ones, this experiment demonstrates that while core surface morphology does exhibit some influence on flake size and shape, a high degree of variation in flakes produced with the same core surface morphology shows that the effects of other independent variables, such as exterior platform angle and platform depth, have an even stronger effect. A major implication of these results is that current approaches to reconstruct prehistoric knapping strategies are overlooking significant sources of variation

Deciphering site formation processes through soil micromorphology at Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco

Contrebandiers Cave preserves a Late Pleistocene sequence containing Middle Stone Age (MSA) so-called Maghrebian Mousterian and Aterian occupations, spanning from ∼126 to 95 ka (thousands of years ago), followed by spatially restricted Iberomaurusian industries. Micromorphological analyses, complemented by instrumental mineralogical identification and fabric orientation, allowed for the reconstruction of the main site formation processes at the site. Initial deposition is characterized by local reworking of marine shelly sands dating to Marine Isotopic Stage 5e (MIS5e). The subsequent stratification reveals sedimentary dynamics predominantly associated with gravity-driven inputs and contributions from weathering of the encasing bedrock, at the same time that anthropogenic sediments were being accumulated. The allochthonous components reflect soil degradation and vegetation changes around the cave during the last interglacial. Human occupations seems to be somewhat ephemeral in nature, with some stratigraphic units apparently lacking archaeological components, while in others the human-associated deposits (e.g., burned bones, charcoal, and ashes) can be substantial. Ephemeral breaks in sedimentation and/or erosion followed by stabilization are mainly discernible microscopically by the presence of phosphatic-rich laminae interpreted as short-lived surfaces, peaks of increased humidity and colonization by plants. More substantial erosion affects the uppermost Aterian layers, presumably due to localized reconfigurations of the cave\u27s roof. The subsequent Iberomaurusian deposits are not in their primary position and are associated with well-sorted silts of aeolian origin. While the effects of chemical diagenesis are limited throughout the whole stratigraphic sequence, physical bioturbation (e.g., by wasps, rodents, and earthworms) is more pervasive and leads to localized movement of the original sedimentary particles

The age of three Middle Palaeolithic sites: single-grain optically stimulated luminescence chronologies for Pech de l\u27Azé I, II and IV in France

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurements were made on individual, sand-sized grains of quartz from Middle Palaeolithic deposits at three sites (Pech de l\u27Azé I, II and IV) located close to one another in the Dordogne region of southwest France. We were able to calculate OSL ages for 69 samples collected from these three sites. These ages reveal periods of occupation between about 180 and 50 thousand years ago. Our single-grain OSL chronologies largely support previous age estimates obtained by thermoluminescence dating of burnt flints at Pech IV, electron spin resonance dating of tooth enamel at Pech I, II and IV and radiocarbon dating of bone at Pech I and IV, but provide a more complete picture due to the ubiquitous presence of sand-sized quartz grains used in OSL dating. These complete chronologies for the three sites have allowed us to compare the single-grain ages for similar lithic assemblages among the three sites, to test the correlations among them previously proposed by Bordes in the 1970s, and to construct our own correlative chronological framework for the three sites. This shows that similar lithic assemblages occur at around the same time, and that where a lithic assemblage is unique to one or found at two of the Pech sites, there are no deposits of chronologically equivalent age at the other Pech site(s). We interpret this to mean that, at least for these Pech de l\u27Azé sites, the Mousterian variants show temporal ordering. Whether or not this conclusion applies to the wider region and beyond, the hypothesis that Mousterian industrial variation is temporally ordered cannot be refuted at this time

The Roc de Marsal Neandertal child: a reassessment of its status as a deliberate burial

Whether Neandertals buried their dead has considerable bearing on the debate concerning the nature of their cultural behavior. Among the claims for intentional Neandertal burial in Europe, the child from Roc de Marsal has long been one of the less contentious examples because its articulated skeleton was found in what has become widely accepted as an intentionally excavated pit. However, what is known about the context of the Roc de Marsal remains from the original descriptions, coupled with new stratigraphic, sedimentological, and archaeological data on the site from recent excavations, cast serious doubt on this interpretation