Did Homo naledi dispose of their dead in the Rising Star Cave system?

Significance: Human treatment of the dead is one of the most visible and important aspects of our behavioural evolution. Until recently, the deliberate movement of corpses to specific places in the landscape and their deposition there was thought to emerge very late in human evolution, perhaps with the advent of burial by Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals. The remains of Homo naledi in South Africa’s Rising Star Cave system potentially revolutionalises that belief: did a small-bodied, small-brained hominin drag parts of corpses into the depths of the cave, and if so, what does this reveal about their cognition? How convincing is the case

A freshwater diet-derived 14C reservoir effect at the Stone Age sites in the Iron Gates gorge

From the 17th International Radiocarbon Conference held in Jerusalem, Israel, June 18-23, 2000.Human bones from single inhumation burials and artifacts made from terrestrial mammal (ungulate) bone found in direct association with the skeletons were obtained from the Stone Age site of Schela Cladovei situated just below the Iron Gates Gorge of the River Danube. The results of stable isotope analyses of the human bone collagen are consistent with a heavy dependence on aquatic protein while radiocarbon dating of the samples reveals an offset of 300-500 years between the two sample types, indicating a freshwater reservoir effect in the human bone samples. Since protein consumption is by far the major source of nitrogen in the human diet we have assumed a linear relationship between delta-15N and the level of aquatic protein in each individual's diet and derived a calibration for 14C age offset versus delta-15N which has been applied to a series of results from the site at Lepenski Vir within the gorge. The corrected 14C ages (7310-6720 BP) are now consistent with the previous 14C age measurements made on charcoal from related contexts (7360-6560 BP). In addition, the data indicate a change from a primarily aquatic to a mixed terrestrial/aquatic diet around 7100 BP and this may be argued as supporting a shift from Mesolithic to Neolithic. This study also has wider implications for the accurate dating of human bone samples when the possibility exists of an aquatic component in the dietary protein and strongly implies that delta-15N analysis should be undertaken routinely when dating human bones.The Radiocarbon archives are made available by Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform February 202

The deep past in the virtual present: developing an interdisciplinary approach towards understanding the psychological foundations of palaeolithic cave art

Virtual Reality (VR) has vast potential for developing systematic, interdisciplinary studies to understand ephemeral behaviours in the archaeological record, such as the emergence and development of visual culture. Upper Palaeolithic cave art forms the most robust record for investigating this and the methods of its production, themes, and temporal and spatial changes have been researched extensively, but without consensus over its functions or meanings. More compelling arguments draw from visual psychology and posit that the immersive, dark conditions of caves elicited particular psychological responses, resulting in the perception—and depiction—of animals on suggestive features of cave walls. Our research developed and piloted a novel VR experiment that allowed participants to perceive 3D models of cave walls, with the Palaeolithic art digitally removed, from El Castillo cave (Cantabria, Spain). Results indicate that modern participants’ visual attention corresponded to the same topographic features of cave walls utilised by Palaeolithic artists, and that they perceived such features as resembling animals. Although preliminary, our results support the hypothesis that pareidolia—a product of our cognitive evolution—was a key mechanism in Palaeolithic art making, and demonstrates the potential of interdisciplinary VR research for understanding the evolution of art, and demonstrate the potential efficacy of the methodology

An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar

In at least 400 European caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens groups drew, painted and engraved non-figurative signs from at least ~42,000 BP and figurative images (notably animals) from at least 37,000 BP. Since their discovery ~150 years ago, the purpose or meaning of European Upper Palaeolithic non-figurative signs has eluded researchers. Despite this, specialists assume that they were notational in some way. Using a database of images spanning the European Upper Palaeolithic, we suggest how three of the most frequently occurring signs—the line , the dot , and the —functioned as units of communication. We demonstrate that when found in close association with images of animals the line and dot constitute numbers denoting months, and form constituent parts of a local phenological/meteorological calendar beginning in spring and recording time from this point in lunar months. We also demonstrate that the sign, one of the most frequently occurring signs in Palaeolithic non-figurative art, has the meaning . The position of the within a sequence of marks denotes month of parturition, an ordinal representation of number in contrast to the cardinal representation used in tallies. Our data indicate that the purpose of this system of associating animals with calendar information was to record and convey seasonal behavioural information about specific prey taxa in the geographical regions of concern. We suggest a specific way in which the pairing of numbers with animal subjects constituted a complete unit of meaning—a notational system combined with its subject—that provides us with a specific insight into what one set of notational marks means. It gives us our first specific reading of European Upper Palaeolithic communication, the first known writing in the history of Homo sapiens

AMS dating of a recently rediscovered juvenile human mandible from Solutré (Saône-et-Loire, France)

Nearly 150 years of excavation at the Upper Paleolithic type-site of Solutré has yielded substantial evidence for Late Pleistocene human occupation, food procurement, and tool manufacture in the Mâconnais. To date, however, no human skeletal material from the Solutrean phase of this eponymous site has been discovered. Among the finds curated by the Field Museum of Natural History resulting from a relatively obscure and poorly documented excavation conducted at the heart of the site in 1896 is, however, a human juvenile mandible which had, until quite recently, escaped both notice and study. While the scanty stratigraphic information available for the specimen indicates that it comes from a Solutrean level, recently conducted radiometric analysis (an AMS date of 1676 ± 36 BP, uncalibrated) suggests a much more recent origin

East meets west in the 6th millennium: Mesolithic osseous tools and art from Sise on the Latvian seaboard

A collection of 141 bone and antler tools and debitage pieces recovered from the River Užava at the village of Sise constitutes the largest Mesolithic osseous assemblage in western Latvia. Radiocarbon dating of 12 pieces suggests that most of this collection dates from the 6th millennium calBC. We present a general analysis, highlighting typical and unique tool forms, ornamented and sculpted pieces, and assess the corpus in a wider geographical context. Predominant in this rich and diverse collection are heavy duty antler tools: various forms of adzes, axes and hammers as well as sleeves, made either from shed antler or antler of hunted animals. They include two pieces classifiable as T-axes. Spear- and arrowheads as well as daggers are also present, Along with chisels, wedges, awls and other tools. Artistic representations include five sculpted and engraved objects. The heavy duty red deer antler tools have parallels in the region south of the Baltic Sea, whereas the bone projectile forms are familiar from Kunda and Narva Culture sites of the East Baltic; the closest similarity is with osseous assemblages from coastal western Ļithuania.“People in a dynamic landscape: tracing the biography of Latvia’s sandy coastal belt”, lzp-2018/1-0171; NERC/ ORADS grant NF/2017/1/4 Latvian Council of Science, lzp-2018/1-0171 NERC, NF/2017/1/