Posted: April 2nd, 2015

What Is Archaeology? & Lower Paleolithic

Archaeology = the study of human behaviour through material remains
Archaeological record = the material remains of the world’s past human behaviour
Culture = “the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning” (Bates and Plog)
Culture = “learned behaviour” (Colin D. Wren)
Archaeological culture = a set of material remains consistently found together in many sites (not necessarily a group of people)
Course concept map:
- Archaeological record (survey excavation to get it) à interpretation (lab work, quantitative, qualitative analyses to get it) à cultural processes (comparison theory to get it) à hypothesis (synthesis, predictions, testable to get it )à archaeological record
  - And the cycle continues
- Why study the past?
  1. (Pre)history repeats itself
  2. Appreciation for cultural diversity
  3. New perspective on the present
  4. Alternative trajectories of civilization
  5. How we have shaped our environment (for the past 2.6M years)
  6. Understand cultural origins
- What’s involved in doing archaeology?
  - The fieldwork:
    1. Survey (walking through the sand, looking for any trace of a bowl, or the remains of a fireplace, etc)
    2. Excavation
    3. Interpretation (the lab work – the majority of time is spent at this stage)
  - Archaeology is multi-disciplinary:
    - Natural science
    - Social science
    - Humanities
  - Exercise: what does your garbage say about you? Consider your collection of garbage leaving your apartment for one month?
    - What are the three most abundant artefact types?
      - Food
      - Kleenex
      - Paper
    - What can you interpret about:
      - Diet
        
        Prepackaged foods
      - Role in society
        
        We are consumers not producers
        
        There are roles; we do not dispose of garbage ourselves, other people do it
      - Values and beliefs
        
        We are not environmentally friendly
        
        We throw things out, we do not conserve
      - Diet, role in society, values and beliefs – this is the hierarchy, it becomes harder to make judgements as we move up the hierarchy
    - Biological vs. morphological species (archaeology uses morphological):
      - Biological species = a group of physically similar organisms that can produce fertile offspring
      - Morphological species = a group of physically similar fossils
        
        Says nothing about reproduction – this is a potential problems
        
        Morphology is shape
        
        We categorize male/female based on shape/dimensions (since we can’t do it based on reproduction) à we end up using ratios, since we measure every dimension imaginable)
        
        Potential problems:
        
        There are individual size differences (that’s why we use ratios)
        
        Age and specimen (especially with things like teeth and bones built together)
        
        But we can account for that
        
        Huge problem = if damage (if you have a tiny fraction of a femur, it’s hard to measure that) – this approach relies on whole specimens
        
        Methods are not standardized – different researchers have their own ideas about which measure is most important
        
        Researchers disagree on how to categorize specimens
        
        This makes for different estimates of a species’ prevalence in a certain area
        
        4M years ago, in Aramis, Ethiopia, you find “Ardi” (ardipithecus ramidus)
        
        The oldest known hominin (hominid includes the various other primates)
        
        Our ancestor
        
        The skeleton is almost complete!
        
        Quadrepedal in trees & bipedal on the ground (he can do both)
        
        He has the ankle shape that allows him to walk upright on the ground
        
        Divergent big toes (big toe is separate from the other toes, like our hands, not our feet)
        
        He’s a hominin bc he’s bipedal – or we wouldn’t have the confidence that he’s hominin
        
        Go forward a million years – 3.2mya, in Hadar, Ethiopia, you find “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis – so a new species and family from Ardi)
        
        Bipedal but still some arboreal features (features that allow her to be in trees still)
        
        2mya (or 3.3mya) in Dikka, Ethiopia, you find “Selam” aka Lucy’s baby
        
        A 3 year old female
        
        Afarensis
        
        She had a still-growing brain when she died at 3 years old – this is very human, and requires extra parental care
        
        Childhood, which required a complex social organization, therefore emerged over 3.3 mya!
        
        Brain growth after birth – this is a derived characteristic (something that emerged after we split from the apes)
        
        8mya in Laetoli, Ethiopia
        
        Footprints in ash
        
        Likely A. Afarensis
        
        Bipedal, soft tissue impression
        
        Directly dated ash (bc it’s volcanic ash)
        
        Therefore: bipedal existed, before Lucy and Selam
        
        6mya in Gona, Ethiopia:
        
        Oldest known stone tools (archaeology begins)
        
        Archaeology begins here – first tools, and archaeology deals with tools, not people!
        
        Core and flake tools
        
        Garhi vs. homo habilus – there’s a debate here
        
        Core tool: chunk of rock with a couple flakes taken off of it – it has a particular shape, you have to hold it at a particular angle
        
        You bang a rock against another rock so a couple flakes come off
        
        This process = “percussion”
        
        Purpose: so you have a sharp edge
        
        Also called a “chopper”
        
        Flake tools: the flakes are taken off of the core
        
        We don’t know which one was the end purpose (core or flake) – probably both were used. Choppers for working wood or breaking bones to get marrow; flakes for butchery
        
        The characteristic tool of the Oldowan is the chopper
        
        Likely efficient scavenging tools – marrow extraction
        
        This is the Oldowan industry
        
        Purpose is probably not hunting elements
        
        They are probably highly efficient scavenging tools
        
        If a gazelle has died by a lion
        
        A small chimp cannot take away the meat from the pack of lions
        
        They had to wait until the lions were finished
        
        Then they waited until the hyenas were finished
        
        Then they ate – so they probably did marrow extraction
        
        Marrow: not eaten by the lions, bc they couldn’t break the bones
        
        These tools were to bash open the long bones
        
        9mya in Olduvai, Tanzania:
        
        Habilus
        
        Significantly larger brain that A. afarensis (Lucy)
        
        That’s why we give him the family name “homo” – first homo
        
        Oldowan industry type site
        
        It’s industry, not culture – one small tool is not enough for the big word “culture”
        
        But forehead still not a modern forehead – not as big as ours
        
        This is bc our PFC has grown
        
        5mya in Nariokotome, Kenya
        
        Erectus
        
        Fully bipedal
        
        Not a successful species
        
        Stenson: he had a bad back, probably from a childhood injury, he had scoliosis
        
        So to have survived til when he did, he must have had females and younger family members look after him
        
        He died at age 12 when he was trapped in a swamp
        
        Body was very similar to our own
        
        Was on the threshold to becoming human
        
        modern physiology – bipedal, same running gait as our own, etc
        
        One adolescent boy skeleton (1.5mya in Nariokotome):
        
        He was tall and thin, typical of tropical populations among modern humans
        
        He lived on the rich grasslands by the Omo River
        
        Perhaps died of infection
        
        8 mya in Dmanisi, Georgia (another recently discovered skeleton)
        
        Another H. Erectus
        
        First hominin out-of-Africa
        
        He had lost all but one of his teeth – how did he survive? Did he rely on charity?
        
        He died at age 40
        
        Much older than any previously-found fossil out-of-Africa
        
        Same old oldowan stone tools – they were obviously used for a very long time
        
        New ecological niche – had to adapt to a new environmental condition
        
        He did so with not much new (since still using the same tools)
        
        Also made it to Java (1.6mya), and China
        
        First hominin dispersal:
        
        Erectus covered most of old world quickly
        
        They spread out of Africa and went everywhere
        
        Lots of new ecological niches
        
        No fire, simple tools
        
        How did they make it out?
        
        Theory: bigger brain size
        
        Behavioural flexibility
        
        Ability to adapt to a lot of new environments, using the same tools in innovative new ways
        
        Extended social networks à reduced risk (this is the second theory)
        
        The right turn out of Africa
        
        The left turn out of Africa (i.e. in Europe; Georgia is Eastern Europe, near Asia):
        
        800kya, Atapuerca, Spain
        
        Took longer to get to Europe
        
        Antecessor? New species name? Looked a little different
        
        Earliest site in Europe
        
        Oldowan tools
        
        27 hominins tossed into a natural crevice
        
        Special treatment of the dead?
        
        Implies that they placed some value on that individual
        
        They were all at the same time roughly
        
        Theory: if some infection killed many, they were all buried together
        
        500 kya, Boxgrove, England
        
        Heidelbergensis
        
        Some still call it erectus, very similar
        
        No boats
        
        Acheulean industry
        
        Finally they started making something new, in addition to Oldowan tools
        
        Huge “handaxes”
        
        Spread everywhere except China
        
        Larger, more deliberately shaped into this tear-drop shape (and symmetrical)
        
        More flakes taken off – bc it took more effort, used for longer (there’s a lot of curation at the ends of the tool – this means they used it for a while and then re-sharpened it)
        
        They made them this specific way (learned from their parents) for a non-functional purpose – it was just a style
        
        Woodworking? Butchering?
        
        Big animals (lions, bears, rhinos) present near this site of Boxgrove, England
        
        Unsure what was hunted – although probably horse, given the next finding:
        
        400kya; Schoningen, Germany
        
        8 wooden spears
        
        Fire hardened tips
        
        20 butchered wild horses
        
        Heidelbergensis not a scavenger – he was out there purposefully hunting
        
        Handaxes used to sharpen wooden spears here – so this was probably a use for the handaxes before as well
        
        What do the fossil and material remains tell us?
        
        Bipedal (a derived characteristic)
        
        Spatial/social organization (how artefacts are arranged in a site and across landscapes)
        
        To take down 20 wild horses, you need an established group + coordination (this suggests language)
        
        Tool function
        
        Hunting vs. scavenging
        
        Why tools at that time?
        
        Maybe because now we have free hands
        
        An old hypothesis: we learned to walk on two feet to be able to have free hands à this has been shown to be false
        
        Brain size/learning
        
        A larger brain doesn’t necessarily mean learning, but it does seem correlated with increasing complexity of tool manufacturing and the purposes we use the tools for
        
        Maybe environmental stress
        
        The environment was all great, lots of resources
        
        Then the climate shifted, and the ecological niche that we were inhabiting shrunk
        
        Scarcity, bc the forest started disappearing, and we ate a lot of fruit à so natural selection selected for something like a brain, which allowed us to make tools
        
        Climate niches
        
        Most of old world
        
        No other species are like this – inhabit lots of niches
        
        Our ancestors adapted and diversified – this is rare
        
        Why is this relevant today?
        
        Understand: why we look, think, and act the way we do
        
        Humility: in the interpretation of our ancestors scavenging meat for a few million years
        
        Impact: of the environment on shaping our physiology
        
        Appreciation: for the time depth of technology (2.6my) and its role in our lives

Textbook, Chapter 3

The early hominin record includes species belonging to 4 distinct genera:
1. Australopithecus (4mya – 2.5mya)
2. Homo habilis (2.5mya – 1.6mya)
3. Paranthropus (2.5mya – 1.4mya)
4. Homo erectus (1.9mya – 45,000 years ago)
3 major themes in the archaeology of early hominins:
- Tool use
  - A distinctive marker of the human lineage
- Adaptation
- Social organization
Sahelanthropus tchadensis:
- The oldest fossils thought to belong to the hominin lineage
- Fossils were discovered in Chad, that were 7 mya
Ardipithecus ramidus:
- Another early hominin
- Lived 4.5mya
- Known from fossils discovered in 1992 at the site of Aramis in Ethiopia
- More is known from the discovery of a complete skeleton – a female named Ardi
  - She had an opposable large toe – so can climb in trees
- Unlike apes in that she: lacks the features necessary for knuckle walking + lacks the pronounced canines they also have
The early hominin radiation: 4mya – 2mya
- = an explosion in the diversity of hominin species
- Included 3 distinct genera (all in Africa still):
  1. Kenyanthropus
    - 5mya
    - Similar to the australopithecines
  2. Australopithecus (“australopithecines”)
    - Mostly East and South Africa
    - A new one (Australopithecus bahrelghazali) lived 3.5mya in Chad
    - Lucy provided the evidence that they walked on two legs
      - The ash footprints provided graphic evidence of this
      - The footprints were dated 3.8mya, so they were likely a. afarensis (like Lucy)
    - Can also climb trees
  3. Paranthropus
    - Also called “robust Australopithecus”
    - Massive molars and muscles for chewing (nickname = Nutcracker man)
    - A diet that includes seeds or fruits with a hard outer coating

These three were distinct but similar in that they all:
- Bipedal (though some could climb trees still)
- Lacked the pronounced canines
- Mean brain size at 450-475 cubic centimeters (this is at the high end of brain size for living apes)
So: within the hominin lineage, bipedalism and loss of large canines preceded a significant increase in brain size

Homo habilis:
- Same time as Paranthropus
- East Africa
- Lacked the heavy chewing muscles and large teeth characteristic of Paranthropus; had a larger brain (500-800cc)
- The first “homo”
Homo erectus: brain size 750-1250cc (further increase); Africa, Asia, Europe
- Some researchers separate the earliest Homo Erectus fossils from sites in Africa into a distinct species called Homo Ergaster
The richest context for the recovery of early hominin archaeological sites = East African Rift Valley
It is a trough (so it’s filling up with sediments so it preserves the sites)
It is tectonically active (so there’s lots of erosion)
This à formation of badlands (gullies and ravines)
It is volcanically active (so levels of volcanic ash, “tuffs”, can be dated using the argon method)
- Of all the gullies and ravines, the most important location for the study of human evolution is: the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania
  - Bed I is the earliest unit, Bed IV the latest, and the Masek Beds overlying Bed IV
- Lower Paleolithic, in Africa, is called the Early Stone Age
  - Lower Paleolithic is the period during which early hominins began making stone tools
- Two main industries associated with the Lower Paleolithic: Oldowan + Acheulian
  - Oldowan: 1.9mya – 1.15mya
    - The least-effort solution
  - Acheulian: 1.7mya – 200,000 years ago
    - Sites found in Africa, Europe, Middle East, and India
    - Began at the same time as the first appearance of Homo Erectus and the extinction of Homo Habilis
    - The characteristic tool of the Acheulian is the biface
      - Earliest evidence of design
      - Can be handaxes (pointed end) or cleavers (wide working end)
    - The archaeological study of stone tools = lithic analysis
    - The manufacture of stone tools = knapping
      - Percussion (banging) techniques:
        
        Direct: it is delivered directly to the core
        
        Hard-hammer direct: a rock is used as a hammer
        
        Soft-hammer direct: an antler or piece of hardwood is used
        
        Using this allows the knapper to produce thin flakes with a less pronounced bulb of percussion
        
        Indirect: intermediary device (“punch”) is used btwn the hammer and the core
        
        For precise placement of the blow – controlled
        
        Pressure techniques:
        
        The force is applied by pressure vs. a blow (the knapper pushes off a flake using an antler)
        
        Involves a great deal of force
        
        Used in the very fine shaping of tools
        
        No blow is involved, so the bulb of percussion is very diffuse, and very thin flakes can be removed
        
        The careful secondary shaping of a core or flake = retouch
        
        Tool use is not uniquely human (even birds use tools)
        
        Chimpanzees in the Tai Forest use tools to break nuts, after observing parents doing it
        
        This tool use is not uniform across Africa; even when two populations in different African regions have the same nuts, only one uses tools
        
        This may mean that chimps have culture
        
        Only humans manufacture tools (chimps can be taught, but limitedly)
        
        3mya from Lokalalei, Kenya – the tools found there showed:
        
        Tool manufacturing was extremely complex, unlike any process known from studies of animal behaviour
        
        The main methods used to date early hominin sites:
        
        Paleomagnetic dating
        
        Determines when sediments were deposited
        
        Dates the soils in which artifacts are found, vs. the artifacts themselves
        
        So won’t be applicable if the artifact has been carried around by water and isn’t in its original location
        
        Based on switches of polarity (normal and reversed)
        
        So you can tell whether the artifact was from a period of normal or reversed polarity
        
        Argon dating
        
        Gives you a numerical age vs. assigning a deposit to an epoch or event
        
        Works by means of an accumulation clock, measures the ratio of K:Ar
        
        Needs volcanic activity
        
        Cosmogenic Burial Age dating
        
        A new method
        
        Beginning to have an impact, particularly on cave sites
        
        Chimpanzee sharing is at the spot of the kill; hunter-gatherer sharing is back at home base
        
        Home-base/food-sharing model (Isaac): the sharing of meat at base camps is fundamental to the lives of early hominins
        
        The ability to share and cooperate, vs. the ability to kill, is the driving force behind human evolution
        
        Palimpsest: an archaeological site produced by a series of distinct brief occupations
        
        Isaac’s theory is based off of a site filled with bones and tools – he thought it was a base camp, where they shared meat
        
        The site may actually be a palimpsest, and not a base camp where meat was shared
        
        So his theory may be wrong
        
        In the lower Paleolithic period: there is very little evidence for the controlled use of fire
        
        By 1.4mya, the radiation was over – only Homo erectus survived
        
        Then (1.8mya): dispersal: a single species disperses
        
        Archaeological evidence for the timing of the dispersal:
        
        Ubeidiya (in Israel)
        
        4mya, Homo Erectus
        
        Oldowan
        
        Dmanisi (in Georgia)
        
        8mya, Homo Erectus
        
        Earliest evidence of human occupation outside of Africa
        
        Oldowan
        
        Java (Indonesia, East Asia)
        
        Sites of Sangiran and Perning – 1.8mya
        
        Stone tools not found
        
        Homo Erectus
        
        Nihewan Basin (China, East Asia)
        
        6mya, Oldowan tools found
        
        The earliest evidence for walking upright was found in Australopithecus afarensis
        
        The earliest evidence for tool manufacture is found at the Gona site in Hadar, Ethiopia, 2.5mya

Why Is Dating Important? & Middle Paleolithic

Dating is important because:
- Links time over space
- Link different types of data (e.g. paleoclimate with artefacts)
- Context to interpretation
- Allows us to study change
Ways to categorize dating methods:
- Relative vs. absolute dating:
  - Relative = X is older than Y
    - Law of superposition = things that are lower down in strategraphy are older
    - But how much older? All we could do was know the order of things
  - Absolute dating allows us to say how much older
    - A newer development
    - X is 4500 +/- 50 cal yr BP
      - Cal = calibrated
      - BP = before present (the standard present is 1950)
    - Direct vs. indirect dating:
      - Direct = method dates the target itself (e.g. radiocarbon dating)
      - Indirect = date something associated with your target (less precise)
    - Dating methods:
      - Radiocarbon dating:
        
        Effective range = 400-40,000 years ago
        
        Target: anything organic
        
        Absolute & direct
        
        Also known as C14 dating
        
        Clock starts when target dies
        
        C14 decays, but regular C12 doesn’t; so the ratio of C14 to C12 changes, and it changes in a predictable way
      - Dendrochronology:
        
        Effective range = present-10,000 years ago
        
        Target: wood
        
        Absolute & direct
        
        Needs to be anchored to another tree
        
        Counting the rings on a tree trunk – but then when you cannot count anymore, you need to anchor to another tree
        
        Used to be used to calibrate radioactive carbon
      - U-series:
        
        Effective range = ~2-500 thousand years ago
        
        Target: bones and teeth
        
        Absolute & direct
        
        Best combined with other methods (ESR) bc it’s wobbly
      - K-Ar & Ar-Ar:
        
        Effective range = 1000-5mya
        
        Target: volcanic rock, ash
        
        Absolute & indirect
        
        Only in volcanic areas (e.g. volcanic)
      - Thermoluminecense:
        
        Effective range = present – 200 thousand years ago
        
        Target: burnt lithics (TL), buried sediment (OSL), teeth (ESR)
        
        Absolute & direct
        
        Recent techniques, highly specialized
      - Rodent teeth:
        
        Effective range = present – 500kya
        
        Target: rodent teeth
        
        Relative & indirect
        
        Gives wide age ranges (+/- 10,000 or 20,000 years), commonly used for MiddlePaleo European sites
      - How are dates represented in the published literature?
        
        If we don’t say “plus or minus however many years”, it can be very misrepresented
        
        If we don’t say that, it looks like we’re dealing with multiple strata / time periods – really when we are dealing with one strata
        
        So you need to give midpoints AND ranges
        
        We can represent dating as:
        
        Continuous vs. phased time
        
        Different types emphasize different things
        
        Continuous seems like change is continuous
        
        Phased time makes it seem like change goes in jumps
        
        Olduvai Gorge is a type site for Oldowan
        
        It was found first
        
        So if a new site is found, it’s compared to Olduvai Gorge, and if it’s similar, it’s lumped in with Oldowan

Middle Paleolithic

Also called Middle Stone Age, in Africa
Middle Paleolithic creatures:
- Neanderthals (Nean): appears in Europe and the Middle East
- Erectus: covers Eurasia and Africa (the whole old world)
Theories:
- - Allopatric speciation; the boundary is just different continents, creates separation = out-of-Africa model
  - H. Antecessor is found only in spain; this theory is not given much credit
  - Gene flow maintained Nean and AMH (anatomically modern humans) as one species, with enough separation to form “ethnic groups” = multi-regional model
    - We evolved in multiple regions, with enough gene flow to keep us together
  - To determine which ones are falsified, need to look for hybrids! Haven’t found yet
- Neanderthals have the biggest brain EVER; their range of brain size is smaller than AMH, but their average brain size is much bigger
  - But their skull is different, and it shows that they have less frontal lobe
    - Also thicker brow ridge
    - Bigger occipital bun
    - Their brains are bigger than ours, and they are organized differently
  - Neanderthals also have a hyoid bone in the throat – it’s in the voicebox
    - Other than Selam, neanderthals’ hyoid bone looks identical to ours
    - So that suggests that they could talk just like us; they could make the same sounds as us (whether or not they had language is unknown, bc that’s a learned thing)
  - Different brains maybe means that they think differently than us
    - If they think differently they may behave differently
    - What was the interaction with modern humans? Did they interbreed? What was the nature of their relationship?
  - Neanderthals’ post-cranial (body) morphology:
    - Stocky and robust body
      - Shorter + huger muscles
    - They were stocky and robust because they are “cold adapted” (debated)
      - Lived through two complete glacial cycles
      - They were in Europe, not Africa in the sun
      - They are more similar to people who live in cold environments today
    - Bow-legged: hips and legs
      - Not as much as Lower Paleo creatures, but more than AMH
    - Lots of trauma to their bones, just through their life
      - This is almost ubiquitous, in almost every skeleton discovered
      - They have also been healed
    - Nean diet:
      - Take the stable-isotope analysis (N15) of Neanderthal bone, and compare to other animals, lions, etc – from that we can determine their diet
        
        They ate meat, just meat (97%)
        
        This means they are skilled hunters using a variety of techniques
        
        They ran 20+ mammoths off a cliff
        
        Seasonal bison hunt à shows an understanding of how the world/environment works, they could clearly keep time
        
        Thrown spears, javelin-style
        
        The Neanderthal genome has been sequenced!
        
        This can be used to determine the relationship between the Neans and the AMHs
        
        Neans are more similar to European and Chinese modern humans, than they are to African modern humans
        
        So they mixed in Europe, and Europeans brought that when they moved to China
        
        So now, non-African humans have that Nean component
        
        Nean geneticsà
        
        Divergence (the divergence between Neans and AMH)= 800kya
        
        But there has been significant interbreeding
        
        5-9% Nean DNA in today’s people
        
        Characteristics: not a lot of genetic variation – this means that they had a small population size
        
        They have some genetic traits that are the same as ours
        
        The only one we’ve figured out that we have the same = red hair
        
        Tools: Mousterian industry (300-30kya)
        
        Levallois method: they take a nodule of rock and they spend a lot of time precisely shaping a core
        
        Not to use the core, but bc the last thing they do = to pop off one flake that is exactly the shape they want
        
        The end purpose was the flake, not the core – the core becomes garbage
        
        “Levallois flakes”, “prepared core techniques” à points, scrapers
        
        Spatial variability in look and in technique (the sequence of how they shape that original core)
        
        What do regional differences represent? Regional variations in style like we have today à means they had culture
        
        Dating is important here; without dates, we couldn’t tell if it were spatial variation in design, or simply change through time
        
        Neanderthal sites:
        
        Umm el Tlel, Syria (5o+kya):
        
        Wild ass with embedded levallois pointà means thrown spear
        
        If it were jabbed in, the point wouldn’t have broken off
        
        Shanidar Cave, Israel (70kya):
        
        One individual: Shanidar 1:
        
        40-50 years old
        
        Broken cheekbone, blind in one eye
        
        Broken arm resulted in unusable hand
        
        Joint disease on right leg
        
        Yet he was 40-50 years old! Somebody had to be taking care h
        
        Shanidar 3: sustained penetrating wound to a rib
        
        These cases show that these guys cared for each other
        
        Their social group was tight enough that they cared for each other for a prolonged period of time
        
        Flower pollen on buried adult male – this had been a symbolic burial
        
        This has been questioned: ritual or rodents (carried the pollen)?
        
        Amud cave, Isreal (60kya):
        
        Child burial; upper jaw of a red deer on pelvis
        
        The deer seems to have been buried with him, but only the jaw was found
        
        This has been interpreted also as a ritual
        
        With Shanidar 1, maybe he was older so he’d built up status, and that’s why he was cared for
        
        With this child, no time to build up status; so maybe he inherited status
        
        Moula-Guercy, France (100kya):
        
        Totally average butchery – of a Neanderthal
        
        This is cannibalism!
        
        Cannibalism also at Krapina, Croatia
        
        Is this ritual consumption of ancestors or enemies? Or simply a “this guy died, he has meat, let’s eat it”
        
        Vanguard and Gorham’s Caves, Spain (42kya):
        
        Dolphins and seals with cut marks
        
        Also mollusks, fish
        
        Water’s edge hunting inferred (rather than boats)
        
        But catching a dolphin is not as easy as catching a grazing wild ass
        
        Shows what they are capable of
        
        Preveli, Crete (190-130kya):
        
        Chunky quartz handaxes
        
        Dated indirectly using known geological strata and sea rise models
        
        Why is this significant?
        
        This location is far off the coast; you would have had to sail and paddle there
        
        So Neanderthals built boats once in a while; they were capable of it
        
        Kebara Cave, Israel (50kya):
        
        Tools:
        
        60-70% regular flakes, various shapes
        
        Half of the triangular ones show use-wear
        
        20% Levallois
        
        lots of points and scrapers
        
        Not much retouch (resharpening)
        
        Spatial organization:
        
        3-15cm thick, 20-80 cm diameter ash & charcoal deposits, no rocks
        
        These are fire pits!! “Hearths”
        
        And there were a lot of them, pretty close together
        
        We don’t actually know if these were burning at the same time
        
        That would suggest that a) they came back, and b) they didn’t care where they burned it – no fireplace
        
        Ash was spread out, purposefully – maybe sleeping area??
        
        That was the excavator’s explanation, but why would you want to sleep in ash???
        
        Bones and garbage around sides of cave, especially the north wall, middle clear à they clean the place out!
        
        Flora and Fauna:
        
        Gazelle and deer bones
        
        Cut marks on 10%
        
        Burning on 4% – which is weird, given that they cooked most of their meat (bc we saw fireplaces)
        
        Plant materials around ash deposits
        
        Oak charcoal and charred wild peas
        
        Oak charcoal à they are therefore burning wood!
        
        Charred peas à dried out peas last longer, so that’s why they were charred, it was purposeful
        
        Nean skeletons:
        
        Mostly teeth, many of children (kids lose teeth!)
        
        This means they were spending lots of time in this cave, families were here as well, wasn’t just hunter men
        
        KMH 1: infant 7-9 months
        
        KMH 2: mostly complete adult male, missing skull, most of legs
        
        Dug out pit, in the north wall garbage pile
        
        KMH 9 & 10: foot bones
        
        KMH 17: clavicle
        
        KMH 20: Parietal bone
        
        Summary:
        
        Family living space above a hunting grounds
        
        That they visited frequently, maybe seasonally, or maybe different groups used it
        
        Control of fire
        
        Purposeful burials (but why?)
        
        Hunting tools and prey animals
        
        Plant processing
        
        Very little difference from the contemporary AMH
        
        “In sum, the commonly Eurocentric summaries which attempt to show major archaeological differences between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons [AMH] are not supported by the evidence exposed in Kebara Cave” (Bar-Yosef et al. 1992)
        
        Neanderthals were not stupid, grunting knuckle-draggers
        
        Neanderthal summary:
        
        Seriously rough lives
        
        Highly successful, intelllifent species (sub-species? Maybe they are homo sapiens neanderthalis; we are homo sapiens sapiens)
        
        If they were interbreeding, they were not a separate biological species
        
        Morphological species? Not sure
        
        Cared for the sick, wounded and dead
        
        Conservative in Mousterian stone tool technology
        
        Top of food chain, specialists in grazing animals
        
        Fairly similar in behaviour to contemporary AMH
        
        Even though their brains lad a different morphology

Textbook, Chapter 4

The evolution of Neanderthals took place within the context of the geological period known as the Pleistocene, or the Ice Age
- The Pleistocene is characterised by glacial eras (significant buildup of ice sheets) and interglacial eras (periods during which the ice sheet subsequently retreated)
- A record of Pleistocene climate change can be measured by looking at shifts in this ratio:
  - Colder climate à more ice on land à less water in ocean à high ratio ¹⁸O : ¹⁶O
  - Warmer climate à less ice on land à more water in ocean à low ratio ¹⁸O : ¹⁶O
  - This is the oxygen isotope curve
- Glacial and interglacial events are given numbers, from the most recent to the oldest
  - We now live in Oxygen Isotope Stage 1
- In the last chapter we examined evidence for the initial dispersal of H. Erectus. To understand the evolution of Neanderthals, we need to know more about what happened after this initial dispersal, when hominins first spread into Western Europe. We also need to know about the Lower Paleo cultures of Europe and Asia.
  - Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, Spain:
    - Stone tools (flakes and cores) and hominin remains dated to 800,000 years ago
    - The oldest reliable evidence of human occupation of Western Europe
    - Homo antecessor
  - Bose, China:
    - The earliest date for an Acheulian industry anywhere outside of Africa
  - Gesher Benot Ya’akov, Israel:
    - Other than Bose, the earliest well-dated Acheulian site outside of Africa
    - In the northern extension of the East African Rift Valley
    - Dated to 780,000 years ago
  - Only beginning 500,000 years ago, Acheulian sites became common in Eurasia
    - There is regional variation in the Eurasian Acheulian, but as a whole, these industries show significant contrast with the African Acheulian
      - Cleavers are almost completely absent from the Eurasian Acheulian, and handaxes are the major type of biface
      - Eurasian Acheulian also included retouched flakes, e.g. sidescrapers
    - Boxgrove, England:
      - Among the earliest known Acheulian sites in Europe, dated to 500,000 years ago
    - Not all sites in Europe after 500,000 years ago have produced handaxes
      - The Clactonian is an industry in England of simple flake tools contemporary with the Acheulian
      - One would expect that all groups would rapidly adopt the Acheulian technology, but this is not the case – handaxe manufacture never became widespread in East Asia, and it only became widespread in Europe (and Western Asia) 500,000 years ago, hundreds of thousands of years after the first arrival of hominins
        
        Then, even after the widespread appearance of handaxes in Europe and Western Asia, there were industries such as the Clactonian that did not involve handaxe manufacture
      - Ecological factors might account for this as well as for the differences between the African and Eurasian Acheulian
        
        Another possibility is that different industries are evidence of distinct groups / waves of migration
        
        The initial dispersal might have been of the Oldowan people pushed out of Africa by more successful Acheulian groups
        
        Another possibility is that it reflects social factors such as group size, since elaborate stone tool manufacture involves learning
        
        Maybe the far less elaborate Clactonian industries were produced by small groups living in an interglacial wooded environment with a low risk from predators and an evenly distributed availability of food resources
        
        Zhoukoudian: a massive series of caves in China, where the remains of more than 40 H. erectus individuals and 100,000 stone choppers and flakes were recovered
        
        Might be as old as 750,000 years old
        
        Provides the earliest evidence for the use of fire
        
        The use of fire during Lower Paleo was rare – the most compelling evidence for the use of fire in the Lower Paleo comes from the Beeches Pit in England, dated 400,000 years ago
        
        There is very little evidence of either artwork or ritual behaviour in Lower Paleo; exceptions:
        
        Signs of artwork in Berekhat Ram, Golan Heights
        
        Special treatment of the dead in Sima de los Huesos (a cave in Atapuerca, Spain), 300,000 years ago
        
        The earliest evidence of human occupation of Western Europe was at TD-6 level of the Gran Dolina site at Atapuerca – dated 800,000 years ago
        
        With the exception of Bose, there is little evidence of Acheulian sites east of India
      - Neanderthals:
        
        175,000 – 30,000 years ago
        
        Oldest fossil found in Biache-Saint-Vaast (France), dated to 175,000 years ago
        
        Most recent fossil found in Mezmaiskaya Cave, dated to 30,000 years ago
        
        Neanderthals lived through two complete glacial cycles
        
        Brain size: 1200 – 1700cc
        
        Europe and the Middle East
        
        No Neanderthal fossils have been found in Africa or East Asia
        
        Neanderthals only rarely made handaxes; after having been central, they disappeared 200,000 years ago
        
        Unlike Lower Paleo (where tools were uniform across time and space), there is variation
        
        The Binford-Bordes debate on tool variation:
        
        Bordes à it means different ethnic groups existed
        
        Binford à they didn’t have ethnicity, rather different tools were for different purposes, and variation reflected the activities that took place in one area vs. another
        
        Mellars said neither were correct: the different tools were across time, which also makes Binford wrong, since a “hide working period” wouldn’t be followed by a “butchery period”, etc
        
        Dibble also critiqued Bordes’ typology by pointing out: Frison effect:
        
        Due to re-sharpening, the process through which the shape of stone tools changes during their use-life
        
        g. a simple sidescraper (one edge of the flake retouched) could become a double sidescraper (two edges retouched), and it could then become a convergent sidescraper (two edges that meet are retouched)
        
        Variation due to different accesses to raw materials – if less, more retouching
        
        Boeda à now we know that there is ethnicity, but not in the way Bordes thought; different groups had different ways of getting to the flake
        
        La Cotte de St. Brelade: the location on the Jersey islands where evidence of Neanderthals hunting mammoths by stampeding them off a cliff was found
        
        Neanderthal base camps: central living areas with hearths and peripheral areas used as dumps
        
        complications bc caves were shared (though not at the same time) by Neanderthals, hyenas, cave bears
        
        There is no evidence of Neanderthal artwork
        
        Though many Nean sites are very small, they show intensive activity
        
        Possible that this is because they were inhabited continuously; i.e. Neans were much more sedentary than the more recent human hunter-gatherers
        
        Other researchers say that they are highly mobile hunter-gatherers – there is evidence to support this position as well

How Do We Recognize Modern Thought? & Modern Humans in Africa

What categories of thinking define us as modern? How do we define modern thought?
Which hominins were capable of having modern thought?
- AMH (logic is circular, but we’re going to go with it)
AMH:
- Morphologically within modern human’s range
- Dimensions of skeletal features same as ours
- Characteristics of the skull:
  - Globular skull
  - Big brain (average smaller than Nean)
  - Vertical forehead – larger PFC
  - Smaller brow ridges
  - They have a chin – chins only exist in modern humans
- Characteristics of post-cranial body:
  - Gracile body (less robust, more delicate a frame)
  - Narrower rib cage
  - New pelvis shapeà no longer bow-legged (knees are straight)
    - A new pelvis is related to different skull – a baby’s skull has to fit through the pelvis of the mom
  - DNA:
    - Little genetic diversity (and all the diversity is found in Africa)
      - So little, that we’re comparable to a sub-species (homo sapiens sapiens)
      - This is bc recent common origin (200kya) of a small-ish population
    - One of the earliest AMH (or almost):
      - Herto, Ethipia, 160kya
      - Three partial skulls
      - sapiens idaltu
      - Retains some H. Erectus features
    - Klasies River and Border Cave, South Africa (120-70kya) – the first homo sapiens sapiens
      - Cranial and post-cranial remains found
      - Within modern human size range
      - Neans were definitely still around
    - How do we recognize thought at all, in archaeology?
      - Need to make assumptions about behaviour
      - If they act modern, they must think modern
      - But what exactly is modern behaviour
        
        It’s the behaviour of only AMH
        
        Behaviours in which we only see in AMH
        
        This logic is circular – bc we’re looking for what distinguishes AMH from Nean, so what happens if we see symbolism as modern, but then find it in Neans? Do we say Neans are capable of modern thought, or do we say symbolism is no longer characterised as modern thought?
      - What is AMH behaviour?
        
        Middle stone age: the tool industry of AMH
        
        Very similar to Nean’s MP (middle Paleo)
        
        Lots of Levallois prepared cores
        
        But more variations in end product shape
        
        250kya – 50kya
        
        The homo sapiens sapiens start well within the middle stone age
      - Mugurk, Kenya – Sangoan/Lupemban industry:
        
        A variant of middle stone age industry
        
        East and central African regional industry
        
        Unreliable dates, could be as old as 200kya
        
        Heavy tools and light lead shaped points
        
        Lots of crappy flake tools
        
        Specialized functions
      - Mugharet el Aliya, Morocco (60-35 kya):
        
        Aterian industry (40-20kya)
        
        Another regional industry, northern African
        
        Points with a tang (probably for an atlatl dart)
        
        Small figurines
        
        Katanda, Congo (75+ kya):
        
        Barbed bone spear points
        
        Klasies River, South Africa (110-70kya):
        
        Howiesons Poort industry
        
        Microliths or exotic material
        
        Part of compound tools
        
        Ochre “pencils” (like red paint) (Neans had black)
        
        Significant spatial organization
        
        Hearths, organized middens (not in the sides, like Kebara; outside, organized garbage areas)
        
        Pinnacle Point, South Africa (160kya):
        
        Marine adaptation (shellfish)
        
        Not like Neans, where we found in once; sea creatures were their dominant food source
        
        This was possibly a response to a harsh climatic period (OIS 6) – land animals started to disappear
        
        Glacial cycles:
        
        Core of ocean floor
        
        Glacial: cold, even numbers
        
        So OIS 6 is a cold period
        
        Interglacials: warm, odd numbers
        
        We count back from the present, so 1 (an odd number) is warm
        
        Blombos Cave, South Africa (77kya)
        
        8000 pieces of red ochre
        
        Carved ochre pencil; not just a pencil, but carved design into it
        
        This is one of the first evidences of artwork
        
        So red point is now a very important part of their daily life
        
        Ostrich egg and shell beads – jewellery or maybe these beads were tied into clothes
        
        No beadwork like this in Nean sites
        
        MSA (the middle stone age) – has greater regional diversity (of styles, even materials used for the tools)
        
        Neans had diversity in method, but not like this; the end products were the same
        
        What is modern about the MSA? What does the MSA say about AMH cognition?
        
        In what new ways were they able to think?
        
        Artwork – shows symbolism, they are representing an idea or a concept onto a canvas or stone
        
        Exotic materials – needs they had to trade
        
        Modern thought (McBrearty and Brooks 2000):
        
        Abstract thinking: abstract concepts not limited in time or space
        
        Planning depth: strategies based on past experience in a group context
        
        Behaviour, economic and technological innovativeness
        
        Economy = the sharing and distributing of products
        
        Here, it’s about food – so it’s about hunting styles, etc – that’s what they are talking about
        
        Symbolic behaviour: represent objects, people, and abstract concepts with reified symbols
        
        Material evidence of modern thought:
        
        Ecological: colonizing new environments (innovation and planning depth)
        
        Technological features (inventiveness and capacity for logical thinking)
        
        Economic & Social: develop systematic plans, formalized relationships among individuals and groups
        
        Symbolic: communicate abstract concepts, manipulate symbols as a part of everyday life (an example of this would be regionally specific tool shapes, to show that you are part of a certain group – represents this abstract idea of belongingness)
        
        Neans show some colonizing new environments – Crete, they had to built boats for that
        
        They seem halfway there
        
        Neans existed in Europe when AMHs were in Africa – contemporary
        
        Upper Paleo revolution (Europe) – these innovations (blades, beads, etc) all happened at the same time
        
        In Africa, they happened gradually

The Middle à Late Stone Age Transition

Europe:
- Distinct transition from Middle to Upper Paleo; called a revolution
Africa:
- MSA-LSA transition
- Most research in Africa was re early hominins; Europe was thought to be the exciting place to study middle-upper Paleo
- It used to be thought of as a revolution as well – it was just assumed, since Europe was
- What used to be thought:
  - MSA = MP
    - Made by pre-modern homo (archaic homo sapiens)
    - Cognitive equal to Neanderthals
  - LSA = UP
    - Symbolism, microliths, broad spectrum foraging
    - Both made by modern humans
    - Both start roughly 40kya
  - But then – they found the earliest AMH, dated to almost 200kya
    - When the MSA was happening – challenged the above view
    - So you have AMHs who aren’t behaving modernly – so was there a lag btwn the development of modern anatomy and modern cognition?
      - Theory: there was a rewiring of the brain that didn’t leave any anatomical trace
    - Then they found these weird things: a shell used as a palette, an engraved ochre fragment….. again challenged the assumption that Africa had a revolution
      - Early symbolism
      - Also they had broad spectrum foraging in the MSA
    - LSA periods:
      - Early LSA:
        
        18-40kya
        
        More microliths, and you see ostrich eggshell beads
        
        Poorly understood
      - Robberg (12-18kya, microlithic)
      - Oakhurst (non-microlithic)
      - Wilton
      - Ceramics
    - The MSA-LSA transition: what’s going on:
      - Changes in demographic pressure
        
        And the more people you have in one area, the more rules you need to have, in order for people to get along
        
        In the MSA, you have periods of intense demographic pressure, and then periods of less – ebb and flow
        
        This is related to cultural change
        
        Changes in social structures and networks
        
        Cultural change
      - This transition is different from the early-middle stone age transition – bc you have only one species (vs. also having Neanderthals, etc)
      - If people in the MSA were behaviourally and cognitively modern, then when did modern complex cognition originate?
        
        Is complex cognition limited to modern humans only?
        
        What constitutes complex cognition?
        
        How can this be identified from the archaeological record?
        
        g. compound tools (multi-component tools)
        
        Also traps and snares are a good indicator of complex cognition
        
        Compound tools have also been found at Nean sites

Textbook, Chapter 5 (5.1 – 5.3)

Modern humans first appeared in Africa btwn 200,000 and 100,000 years ago
The Acheulian industries in Africa were replaced between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago by a group of industries known as the middle stone age (which ended 40,000 years ago)
The MSA is the archaeological context for the earliest modern humans
Tool manufacture in MSA (Africa) is similar to Middle Paleo (Europe), but with greater diversity and some a couple extra tool types
Distinct MSA industries:
- Aterian (North Africa)
  - Points with a tang + fine bifacial tools serving as knives or hunting points
- Sangoan/Lupemban (Central and East Africa)
  - Crude, heavy-duty tools; may be an adaptation to heavily wooded environment
- Howiesons Poort (South Africa)
  - Microliths
- MSA in Africa (modern humans) vs. Middle Paleo in Europe (Neans)
  - Similarities:
    - Stone tools made mostly by prepared core technology
    - Variability btwn stone tool industries
    - Evidence supports both hunting and intensive use of fire
  - Differences:
    - MSA more variability
    - MSA had elaborate bone tools, and clear evidence of fishing and collecting shellfish
    - Modest evidence of artwork in MSA
  - The Middle East connects Africa, Asia and Europe – so it is where AMH Africans and Nean Europeans may have interacted
    - In Middle East sites, you find AMH skeletons in Middle Paleo earth (weird – you would think Neans in Middle Paleo) – and also, their caves were the same as Neans’ caves in Europe (no artwork, etc)
    - When Neans expanded out of Eurasia (into the Middle East), you find Nean skeletons
    - When AMH expanded out of Africa (into the Middle East), you find AMH skeletons
      - Not one is older than the other – they overlap and criss cross
    - AMH expanded into Europe no earlier than 60,000 years ago
      - Around 40,000 years ago, Neans became extinct in the Middle East as part of a process that swept modern humans into Europe
    - Radiocarbon dating is not useful for the Middle Paleolithic

Identifying Cultural Process & Modern Humans in Europe

Cultural Process

Culture = learned behaviour
Cultural trait = some element of culture; a particular artifact (e.g. stone tool), or behaviour (e.g. manufacturing method) would be an element
Cultural change = change in the frequency of a cultural trait (e.g. an increase in amount of ochre)
Cultural evolutionary theory = an archeological approach which interprets cultural change as the result of systematic (social) processes (e.g. natural selection)
Cultural process = the underlying historical processes which are at the root of change
- Primary cultural processes:
  1. Innovation (an individual comes up with an innovation)
  2. Cultural diffusion (the passing of that idea btwn individuals)
  3. Migration (the movement of people)

These 3 processes explain most of the change we see in the archaeological record

But what is driving these particular (culture) changes? There are drivers, culture change is systematic
- OR if culture doesn’t change systematically, historical contingency (random chance, no systematic way to understand it, series of unpredictable events)
- These are the two views
Drivers (for the systematic-change view):
- External drivers: environmental constraints (e.g. limited food resources keeps population size down; carrying capacity)
- Internal drivers: innovation, drift, inter-group sharing, humility (e.g. value on humility maintains egalitarian social structure)
  - Drift: accounts for historical contingencies within a predictable framework (things happen, like broken telephone)
- Synchronic vs. diachronic change:
  - Synchronic: variability in cultural traits over space at one time
  - Diachronic: variability in cultural traits over time within one space (could be through space as well)

AMH in the Middle East

When AMH arrives, Nean still there
- Means that this place is a key location for understanding transitional processes, the nature of the interaction btwn the two species, the role of environmental constraints on both species, etc
We can explain that transition using cultural processes
Tools:
- Nean:
  - Standard
  - Mousterian
  - Middle
  - Paleolithic
- AMH:
  - Generic Middle (Nean-style stuff, not the regional styles)
  - Stone Age
- Toolkits essentially the same
Skhul and Qafzeh Caves (120 and 80 kya, respectively):
- AMH fossils, MP tools
- Incised flint (we didn’t see those in Nean sites)
- Shell pendants with pigments (we didn’t see those in Nean sites)
- Like Amud (the Nean burial that had the upper jaw of the deer), deer antler in AMH burial at Qafzeh, boar jaw at Skhul
- Regional cultural continuity between Nean and AMH behaviour
Nean and AMH: they weren’t occupying it at exactly the same time – oscillations of occupations in Middle East (like this oscilated with climate/glacial cycles)
- Morphology different, behaviour the same – except for art
  - AMH have art

AMH Dispersal into Europe

AMH enter Europe 40kya
Nean gone by 30kya
What happened?
- What cultural processes could have caused this transition?
- Most controversial and divisive period in Paleolithic archaeology
3 basic models from the AMH perspective:
- Out of Africa Model:
  - AMH evolved in Africa, moved into Europe as Nean went extinct
  - Early DNA results showed Africa to be the recent origin of AMH (100kya)
  - Lots of processes proposed: niche competition, warfare, coincidence
    - Coincidence: due to climate, Neans were diminishing; AMH just happened to walk in at that time
  - The archaeological transition occurred directly bc AMH moved into Europe and replaced Nean
- Multiregional Model:
  - Gene flow between Africa and Europe maintained Nean and AMH as one species
    - How much gene flow do you need to maintain a species?
    - How do we test that?
    - Should expect transitional fossils, mixes of Nean and AMH features – and we don’t have that
    - Implied a very old divergence btwn the modern day world’s ethnicities
      - Implies a greater difference between races – racists ran with that, and it tainted the model
    - Hybridization
      - Mix of the two
      - Gene flow, and then we replaced them a bit
      - Tiny bit of gene flow, but not enough and they were starting to diverge as species
        
        But then they interbred
        
        Bc AMH had greater population numbers, AMH kind of absorbed the Neans (they absorbed Nean’s DNA – our DNA has some Nean in it!)
      - Paabo: this hybridization probably happened in the Middle East
      - Most popular model today
      - The archaeological transition occurred bc of interactions btwn AMH and Nean
    - “Revolution” in material culture around the time that AMH entered Europe
      - This is diachronic change – change through time
    - In Africa, they gradually developed beads, images, blades, etc
      - Then they moved to Africa in 40kya, after they’d already invented all of it! Makes sense that change was abrupt in Europe!
    - General Upper Paleo toolkit:
      - Blade based industry
      - Use of bone, antler, and ivory for tools
        
        Split-based bone points
      - Ornaments of bone and teeth
    - Our exit to Europe lines up with mtDNA
      - In Africa, there was lineage “L” mtDNA
      - Then, you see a quick change to lineages “M” and “N”, at the same time as they go to Europe! So you have lineage “L” only in Africa, and then lineages “M” and “N” are found all over the world! There seems to be some sort of connection
        
        60,000 years ago the lineage explodes
        
        40,000 years ago they expand into Europe
      - Mellars lines this up with climate change:
        
        Rapid climatic change at OIS 5 (warm) to OIS 4 (cold) = the cause
        
        Resources started to shrink
        
        It’s not until people are stressed that they are forced to change
        
        This is a cultural process: an external driver for cultural change
      - There is an overlap of 10,000 years when both Nean and AMH are there
        
        Transitional industries:
        
        Chatelperronian knives (made on blades) and ivory tools
        
        This is important, bc Neans didn’t make blades that much
        
        Blades are an Upper Paleo / AMH thing
        
        Found with otherwise Mousterian tool technology
        
        Worked bone and teeth as ornaments
        
        Nean teeth and temporal bone found in Chatelperronian layer
        
        This means that this wasn’t an AMH site; it was Nean!
        
        Before this was found, it was just assumed that it was an AMH site; since they had blades, etc – Neans weren’t supposed to be able to do this!
        
        Chatelperronian Industry (40-35 kya):
        
        Read “Paleolithic whodunit” (ca/2010/08/paleolithic-whodunnit-who-made.html”>http://averyremoteperiodindeed.blogspot.ca/2010/08/paleolithic-whodunnit-who-made.html)
        
        If these sites are Nean, could be:
        
        Acculturation: they mimic what the AMHs are doing, “aping”
        
        Innovation (on their own)
        
        Or these sites could be AMH, according to this article
        
        If it were AMH, Neans are claiming their territory, and that’s why we find their bones in the sites – territory marking is an internal cultural process
        
        Diachronic: change through time: a later occupation changes the strata layers
        
        How can we resolve this debate?
        
        The site is gone, and we only have photos, etc – but that’s precisely what’s being called into question
        
        So (remember the concept map) we make a testable hypothesis
        
        The attribution of the Chatelperronian is keyà(an interpretative fault line)
        
        If Nean: means AMH and Nean co-existed in Western Europe for thousands of years
        
        If AMH: Nean was gone before AMH got there
        
        There are very few Nean sites for the overlap period:
        
        Zafarraya Cave, Spain & Vindija Cave, Croatia:
        
        33-27 kya & 29 kya Nean remains
        
        Classic Mousterian industry, very late Nean
        
        Cultural process summary:
        
        Occam’s Razor
        
        The hypothesis which requires the fewest assumptions
        
        You go with the simplest one unless good reason to do otherwise
        
        The article’s idea about territory marking makes many assumptions – it is not the simplest explanation
        
        Predictions
        
        Falsifications

Upper Paleolithic

Starting 40kya, we have blade-based toolkit, faunal tools (tools made out of fauna/animals), art
Aurignacian Industry (40-26kya):
- Dufour bladelets (tiny blades)
  - These things are part of compound tools; they attach them to spears, etc
- Split-based bone points
- Very widespread; covered all of Western Europe and into Western Asia a bit
Gravettian Industry (26-23kya):
- Small hunting points
- Atlatl spear thrower
- A relatively abrupt shift in material culture
- Italy and Greece
Solutrean Industry (23-20kya):
- Leaf-shaped bifacial points
- Shouldered points
- Solutrean Hypothesis for the north American expansion = Europeans were the first to go to the New World, not the natives
- Solutrean vs. Gravettian:
  - They are change through time, but they are also regionally specific
- Magdalenian Industry (20-11kya):
  - Bone harpoons with elaborate bars – even more stylized
  - Cultural process:
    - Maybe need to fish now, find new niche
    - Acculturation – cultural diffusion between neighbours
      - Could be movement of people (one group takes over another’s space) or just this sort of movement of ideas
    - Historical contingency: one guy just comes up with an idea
    - Pretty widespread
  - Upper Paleolithic sites:
    - Hohlenstein, Germany (40-36kya):
      - Lion-human hybrid – the earliest art object
      - Shows considerable complexity (imagination)
    - Hohle Fels, Germany (40-35kya):
      - The earliest Venus figurine; made of mammoth tusk
        
        Interpreted as a fertility symbol
        
        Aurignacian
        
        Lacks head and feet
        
        May have been pendant
      - The earliest musical instrument ever found in archaeological records
        
        Vulture bone flute
      - Dolni Vestonice, Czech Republic (29-25kya):
        
        Gravettian Venus figurine – they are still making them in the Gravettian period!
        
        Ceramic still no feet 10,000 years later – consistent over a lot of time! And space, since this is now Czech Republic
        
        But she has a head
      - Chauvet, France (38-33kya):
        
        Cave art (and this sort of cave art is very widespread across many sites)
        
        Elaborate animal scenes
        
        Why did they paint this?
        
        Hunting magic (for pre-hunt good luck)
        
        Fertility magic (some of the animals depicted are pregnant)
        
        Shamans and trances (shamans lived here, and they got high and hallucinated, and drew them)
        
        Mythogram of paleolithic worldview (it’s a depicted image of their worldview; e.g. the opposition of men vs. women, some animals represent men, some represent women)
        
        Mezherich, Ukraine (15kya):
        
        Open air site
        
        Made of mammoth bones
        
        Only 2-3 structures occupied at once
        
        Small group size, under 10 people
        
        There are a lot of these at this site, though only 2-3 were occupied at the same time
        
        This tells us about the organization – only two family units would live together, maybe cousins
        
        New hunting targets:
        
        Carbon:nitrogen isotope analysis can tell us where their protein comes from
        
        It can tell you even what type of meat
        
        Nean: ate large herbivores only
        
        AMH: ate terrestrial and aquatic, and plants
        
        They were eating a broader mix of foods
        
        Pestera cu Oase, Romania (40.5 kya):
        
        Earliest AMH in Europe, contemporary with Nean
        
        Highest N-15 of any human or animal in the study
        
        This guy was occupying a completely different ecological niche (from Neans and later AMHs who came to Europe) for majority of food – likely freshwater fish
        
        So maybe people were travelling along the river systems
        
        Maybe that was their motivation for expanding into Europe

Cultural Processes of the Transition

What drove the transition from Nean to AMH?
Nean replacement for sure, but in what way?
What data could help confirm or refute these models?

Direct conflict over resources

Data required to evaluate this: look at both their diets

Absorbed with demographics

Demographics = population
Neans absorbed bc more AMHs; they were assimilated
Data necessary to evaluate: genetics to see hybrids, since we can’t find transitional in the skeletons

Nean couldn’t handle climate change

Neans died out before AMH got there, bc their ecological niche shrunk to nothing
They survived through two glacial cycles though! Maybe this one was different, bc they had become more sedentary?

Diet breadth gave AMH an advantage
Rich and diverse material culture of AMH
Symbolic representation sign of language & social networks

Textbook, Chapter 5 (5.4 – 5.6)

In Eastern Europe, the transitional industry is known as the Szeletian (bifacial points)
In Italy, the transitional industry was the Ulluzian (arched-backed knives and bone points)
The Chatelperronian is in France and northern Spain
Debate over the chronological position of the Chatelperronian in relation to the earliest UP industry, known as the Aurignacian
- In all but two sites, the Aurignacian is stratigraphically above the Chatelperronian
- In two exceptions, a Chatelperronian level is sandwiched between Aurignacian levels
  - This interstratifications of Chatelperronian and Aurignacian levels suggests that these two cultures lived at the same time in this area à possibility of interaction
- In some areas, Neans and AMHs coexisted together for a while; in other areas, there was no evidence of interaction or replacement for a while – these are “refugia” (isolated areas)
  - Two refugia are: Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) + Ebro River, Croatia
  - Zafarraya Cave (Spain):
    - Nean remains dated btwn 33,000 and 27,000 years ago
    - This suggests that in this area, Neans survived long after the arrival of modern humans in Europe
  - Vindija Cave (Croatia): Nean remains 29,000 years old
- The multiregional model is the least likely:
  - Absence of any trend toward modern human morphology among late Neans
  - The genetic evidence based on both mtDNA and Y chromosome DNA argue against a local evolution of Neans into modern humans
- The out of Africa model has the most support:
  - It’s clear that AMH evolved in Africa long before they came to Europe
- Fossil and genetic evidence support the Out of Africa Model
- The archaeological evidence supports the hybridization model (transitional industries, refugia – they all point toward interactions btwn AMH and Nean)
- The first modern human hunter-gatherer societies that lived in Europe are known collectively as the Upper Paleolithic
- UP industries include microliths and bone tools, unknown in the Middle Paleolithic
  - Interesting that both of these tool types are known from the Middle Stone Age of Africa (bone tools, Katanda and Blombos; microliths, Howiesons Poort)
- Human burials are absent from the Anrignacian
  - Beginning in the Gravettian, burials of indivs or groups are found with rich ornamentation
- You can’t say that there is something inherently within modern humans that allowed them to suddenly have cave art and mobile art in the Upper Paleolithic – since modern humans lived in Middle Paleolithic for 100,000 years! With less advanced things
- Hypothesis (Klein): a mutation occurred in modern humans 50,000 years ago – it didn’t change body morphology or size of the brain; it changed the organization of the brain, and gave us the cognitive capacity for language
  - This capacity for language led to the replacement of the Neanderthals, and the use of symbolism
  - Strength of this idea:
    - UP as part of a global transformation of human culture
    - UP linked with the African Later Stone Age, which also saw an increase in symbolism, and linked also with the colonization of Australia and the Americas
  - But difficult to test

Why Can’t We See Movement? & Anatomically Modern Human Dispersal

Dispersal

Dispersal as a cultural process: migration
In the material layers:
- Innovation looks like a new tool
- Cultural diffusion also looks like that – new tools
- Migration: you could see migration when new stuff shows up in a site, where there previously wasn’t anything
- So all three of these look the same, if we are looking at one site, one column! How to tell the difference?!
Migration = geographic expansion of populations as they increase in numbers
- Demic diffusion
- This is over generations
- Not heroic colonizers
- We’ve already covered a few dispersals:
  - AMH into Europe (OoA II)
  - Erectus into Europe and Asia (OoA I)
- But what is the process through which dispersal happens?
  - Why can’t we see movement?
    - Archaeology sees the end product of an occupawtion
      - The longer the occupation, the more likely we are to find the site
      - Of those, we see a biased sample
      - Chance of seeing first regional occupation is zero
    - Migration is primary cultural process, no evidence for it (almost)
  - What does dispersal look like archaeology and genetically?
- Who the first colonizers would be into an area?
  - Given the demic diffusion model (not heroic colonizers), the speculative characteristics of colonizers would be:
    - Juvenile males
    - Very low population
    - Minimal impact on landscape
    - Not in predictable locations
      - After you know a region, you know the landscape, you know the best spots – but the first colonizers would just camp in the first spot they find
    - Dispersal = a single species dramatically expands its geographic range and the range of ecological niches
    - Why do they expand out into new areas?
      - Population increase
      - Climate change
    - Climate change expands niche or makes original niche unstable
      - Difficult to correlate climate to specific sites
      - Especially if it’s not actually the first occupation
      - But happened during an interglacial (OIS 3)
    - Mellars’ mtDNA lineage “L”
      - Supports the demic diffusion model

AMH Dispersal Out of Africa

AMH leave Africa and their first stop is the Middle East
- Middle East as early as 120kya; they are they to stay by 60,000
An alternative route is a crossing – southern route through Arabia
- Open during early OIS 5 – interglacial
- Authors assume this is AMH
- Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates (125 kya)
  - But at this time, the AMH tool kit was the same as Nean’s – more variation, but still pretty much the same – so hard to attribute this to one species
- AMH in East Asia: their modern behaviour had some new categories necessary for East Asia:
  - Adaptation to high altitudes; you need a broader tool kit and more behavioural flexibility
  - Water craft
- Earliest AMH in East Asia
  - Liliang, China (68+ kya; earlier than 68 kya)
  - Sketchy biostratigraphic dating – indirect, used other animals
- An early modern human
  - Tianyuandong, China (42-39kya)
  - Lacks some AMH traits, has others
  - This implies that a simple spread of modern humans from Africa is unlikely
    - Suggests multiple waves of migration to East Asia
    - This is why this is an early modern human, not an AMH
  - China: continuous occupation beginning 70 kya (Levallois flake)
    - It’s only around 40kya that we see true AMH stuff: bone tools, perforated animal teeth
    - Wu sees continuity btwn H. sapiens erectus and H. sapiens sapiens
    - Continuity with hybridization; suggests they weren’t replacing, but they were interbreeding
  - Zhoukoudian Locality 1, China (750 – 290 kya):
    - Long term occupation of H. Erectus
  - Zhoukoudian Upper Cave, China (30 – 12 kya):
    - AMH
    - Polished deer mandible and antler
    - Bone needle
    - Certain morphological characteristics in common with H. Erectus
      - Some argue support for multiregional model
    - No fossils from 290-30kya
      - That’s a long hiatus
      - Suggests erectus died out and AMH moved in long after they were gone
    - Wu: continuity with hybridization:
      - Morphological mosaic btwn typical erectus and sapiens
      - Oldowan persisted from 1.15 mya to 40 kya
      - At 40 kya, Oldowan still dominant, but others added
      - Sees incoming populations from Africa interbreeding with local populations (not replacing, not walking in on an empty landscape; merging cultures, etc)
    - A big nail is thrown into this with this discover: Ngandong, Indonesia (46-27kya):
      - Erectus survived here much later (classic Erectus, not hybrids)
        
        Comtemporary with AMH in China
      - Refutes multiregional model if accepted
        
        Bc H. Erectus is still Erectus when AMH present (two separate lineages)
      - We have Neanderthal AND Denisovan DNA in our ancestry
        
        The hybrid babies had to have ended up with modern human populations – bc otherwise they would have become extinct
        
        Denisova cave is this new third species was discovered – and modern Denisovan genetics were found in people in two islands off of Australia
        
        The route btwn Denisova Cave and Australia – nothing was found there yet
        
        This route is all: China!
        
        But they haven’t found anything there (yet)
        
        Unequal mixing: we have more Nean than Denisovan
        
        The more outward you go into Oceania’s islands, the more Denisovan DNA you find
        
        This disparity: due to migration
        
        Siberia (where Denisova Cave is) and tropical islands both held Denisovans! So they must have been widespread at some point
        
        These Oceania islands farther along (coming from Asia) – this is a funnel shape
        
        And if there were Denisovans living here when AMH arrived, this funnel had an effect on interbreeding
        
        As they travelled far into Denisovan territory, there was more and more interbreeding
        
        Longlin Cave and Maludong, China (14.3-11.5 kya):
        
        Species debated
        
        Mix of archaic and AMH features
        
        Rounded skulls with prominent brow ridges
        
        Short, very broad and flat faces
        
        Broad noses
        
        Jutting jaw, no chin
        
        Brains moderate in size
        
        Large molar teeth
        
        Living while the rest of China was farming – this was an isolated area
        
        Hybrid of Denisovan and AMH? No DNA
        
        Hobbits! – Flores, Indonesia (38-18kya):
        
        Tiny, tiny hominins descendent from H. Erectus
        
        They are only found on this one little island
        
        Contemporary with AMH, though they were there for a long time before this, from other sites
        
        Some argue new species, H. Floresiensis (some argue it’s the same species, just tiny)
        
        1 meter tall
        
        Tiny 380 cc brain (AMH: 1200 – 1400)
        
        Like a grapefruit
        
        Small even considering their shrunken size
        
        Huge feet (like hobbits) – almost the same size as AMH
        
        Possibilities:
        
        AMH with microcephaly (disease that causes brains to not grow very large; and then their bodies don’t grow as much as a compensation)
        
        Unlikely: morphology suggests that it’s a much older hominin
        
        Island isolation caused size reduction
        
        Sea level used to be a lot lower such that all these islands used to be one peninsula of land – this is the Wallacea line
        
        But Flores was just outside this line – it was always an island, and then it became even more distantly separated when the sea level rose
        
        So fewer resources there, isolated alone
        
        So natural selection favored small creatures, bc they needed less resources
        
        Support for this: elephants on this island also decreased in size
        
        And rats actually increased in size
        
        Strong pressure of natural selection on this isolated island
        
        Flores, Indonesia – tools (95 – 17kya):
        
        Crude but impressive given brain size reduction
        
        Moore et al (2009) argue simple tools hide complexity in manufacture
        
        Elaborated step up from H. Erectus technology
        
        When AMH finally arrives they replace the hobbits
        
        But some continuity in the new manufacture techniques
        
        Whether this represents interbreeding or learning is unsure
        
        Summary:
        
        Dispersal happens over generations
        
        Interesting things happen when dispersing into occupied regions
        
        Replacement
        
        Interbreeding
        
        Learning
        
        Chronological control is key and East Asia doesn’t have it
        
        Denisovan and Nean: maybe just weird great-great grandparents (1-9%), but they’re still family!

Context Is Everything & Oceania and New World

Context

Context is much more important than the artifacts themselves
Artifacts in isolation tell us almost nothing about the archaeological record
Context = the relationship of an artifact or site to its special, temporal and environmental surroundings
- Soil matrix (the soil around it)
- Spatial relationships to other artifacts and fossils in the strata
- Spatial relationships to physical landscape
- Temporal relationships to pattern of cultural change
- Climate and ecological reconstructions
- What’s not found is equally important – negative evidence
Survey to test hypothesis
Cultural Resource Management (CRM): 85% of more of archaeological data today
- Archaeologists need to be involved when building, to make sure cultural remains are kept intact
Biased spatial sample
- We dig where hydro companies want to build, to make sure nothing’s there
- But hydro only builds inland – so we don’t look much at the coast
The purpose of excavation is not to retrieve artifacts but to preserve context
- Provenience: the location of an artifact, feature or site in 3D space
  - This is recorded in a number of ways:
    - Hand mapping: string, measuring tapes, plumb bobs for feature-level maps and profiles
    - Total station: surveyors machine for precise mapping
    - Geographic information systems: GPS, GIS, spatial analysis for site or regional level
  - Sampling rules:
    - Never dig it all: because future archaeologists will have better methods, and we don’t want to lose all that potential information – it’s for the anticipated improvement
    - Control statistical significance for extrapolation (we just take what we think will be interesting – need to control for that):
      - Random sampling: most basic one; you take the area where you think people where living in, and you get grid coordinates and estimates using machines
      - Stratified random: divides site into different areas you think will be interesting, then you take random samples within those
      - Systematic : every 10 meters in a grid, for example
      - Bc we don’t have time/resources to excavate an entire site
    - Horizontal vs. vertical excavation:
      - Horizontal: uncover a broad spatial area but only at one strata
      - Vertical: excavate a deeper unit through several strata, smaller spatial area
    - Taphonomy and bias:
      - Taphonomy: the study of how organic remains decay; what happens to those material remains at point of deposition (once the people who made them, left them behind)
        
        g. did all the wooden tools decompose? Acheulian handaxes in East Asia may have been made of bamboo, which is why we haven’t found any handaxes there
        
        Erosion, sedimentation
        
        Soil chemistry and decomposition
        
        Extremes are what preserve: extremely wet, extremely dry, extremely hot, extremely cold
        
        Bioturbation
        
        g. the Shanidar 1 burial with pollen
        
        Animal burrows, rodents, etc
        
        General human development on the landscape before we had CRM
      - Pompeii fallacy = the idea that most archaeological sites are like a time capsule
        
        This almost never happens in archaeology
        
        What we have usually instead is a palimpsest
        
        All the occupations are stacked on top of each other
        
        Hard to tease this apart and identify which bits are from which occupation

Colonization of Oceania across the Wallace Line

Nauwalabila I, Australia (60-53kya):
- Flake tools
- Burial
- Context: other side of Wallace Line (the boundary, you could not go without a boat)
  - No erectus
  - Only AMH
- This is the first site we have on the Australian side of the Wallace line
  - Erectus never made it across; only AMH did
- Routes:
  - Across water, 90km (not visible)
  - Or multiple 10 km of water (separated by islands, so visible) – north route
- 10,000 years before AMH arrives in Europe
Lake Mungo, southern Australia (50-40kya):
- Three burials
  - LM3 40kya
  - Red ochre in the burials (this is a modern symbolic thing)
- Flake and core tools
- Hearths, animal bones, fish
- Articulated skeletons (articulated means “put together”)
- The fish is modern too, but cores and flakes not so much – only some modern traits made it across the Wallace Line
New Britain Island, Melanesia (29 kya):
- Context: not visible from land
  - You have to have confidence that you’ll occupy the island successfully and survive, etc – when you go somewhere and you can’t see back
    - So you need a certain population size to be sure you can occupy the space, and to be sure you can have enough kids, etc
  - Why did they go?
    - Climate
    - Resources: this island had really great obsidian (which is the ideal stone tool material)
  - Currents of Oceania have an effect on its colonization
- Solomon Islands & Bismark (20kya):
  - Obsidian from New Britain
  - Bones from New Guinea fauna (New Guinea is far by boat; obviously trade systems in place)
  - They have mastered sea-faring: how to cross large water and make it back safely, how to navigate it all

New World Colonization

Siberian life (36kya):
- Denisovan and Neanderthals in Siberia as late as 48-30 kya
- Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition ~36kya
- Horse, woolly rhino, bison, yak, extinct antelope, sheep, hyena, wolf, marmot, hare
- What tools present here? Blade cores
- What were they used for?
Shortly after this, 12-15kya, people crossed an area called Beringia (which is now under water, but was a grassland environment full of the above species)
- Two routes that people could have taken into the new world, once they crossed Beringia and got to Alaska:
  - Ice-free corridor (like a narrow hallway)
  - Coastal route: more recent idea
- Before the ice-free corridor opened up (17.0kya), we potentially have an occupation at Meadowcroft (in Oregon) – support for the coastal route hypothesis
  - By 15kya, we have Monte Verde, and Buttermilk Creek occupied – ice-free corridor still not opened up
  - The first Clovis site is 13kya
    - Beringia is still attached, north America is still attached to Siberia
    - Right after the ice-free corridor opened up, we find these sites
    - As the glacier recedes, water levels rise and Beringia is separated
  - Classic Clovis-first mode:
    - The first people to make it to the new world followed megafauna across Beringia and through ice-free corridor
    - Highly mobile hunting populations did this; small groups, limited toolkit
    - Clovis had killed the megafauna – this hypothesis was from the fact that the megafauna disappeared shortly after the Clovis
    - Big spear points to kill mammoth
    - Overkill hypothesis
  - Broken Mammoth Cave, Alaska (14-12.8kya): supports the classic Clovis-first model:
    - Earliest known site on east of Beringia, just as bridge closed
    - Large bison and elk bone assemblage (25%)
    - Additionally small game (30%), birds (10%)
    - Extensive hearths, tool making, butchering, caches of tools and meat, and clothing manufacture
    - Spring occupation only
    - The Clovis point was thought to be an innovation that hunters made once they got there, to kill the megafauna
  - Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Penn. (23-15.5kya):
    - Excavations started 1975
    - Oldest site by far at the time
    - Completely refuted accepted Pre-Clovis model
    - Even now only 40% of archaeologists accept it as evidence of pre-Clovis occupation
  - The Meadowcroft Debate:
    - What is the context under discussion?
      - The bottom couple layers (before the ice-free corridor was open; the ones that shatter the Clovis-first model) is what they are arguing about
    - What part of the methodology is being criticized?
      - There’s a creek 15m below the site; excavation dug down 12m
        
        And creeks tend to rise in the fall
        
        So when occupations would have been there, the water table would have rose and contaminated the evidence
      - Coal is another source of carbon – coal is a very old source of carbon
        
        So the presence of coal would have made it seemed older
      - So they are criticizing their interpretation of context
    - What is their response?
      - Re coal criticism: they would have found coal particles
      - Re water table shift idea: selective contamination of just that layer is unlikely
        
        Only the dates that refute the model are contaminated? Don’t think so
        
        Suggestion that the contamination started low and rose up, but not all the way – but why would the lowest layer have the most contamination? Haynes hasn’t discussed a feasible mechanism that would explain selective contamination that all the while maintained the correct order
      - Do you buy it?
        
        At the time of discovery, Meadowcroft was an isolated site – it isn’t anymore
      - Buttermilk Creek, Texas (15.5kya):
        
        Published 2011
        
        Ice-free corridor closed
        
        Clearly pre-Clovis occupation
        
        OSL dates can’t be contaiminated
        
        Modern methods, no contamination
        
        Irrefutable
        
        15,528 lithic artefacts (so it’s also not a small site)
        
        All small and light
        
        Interpreted as part of mobile group
        
        Monteverde, Chile (15kya):
        
        First widely accepted pre-Clovis site (70% of archaeologists accept this one)
        
        And it’s in Chile!
        
        They obviously had boats – bc to run that distance would take too long
        
        Strong support for coastal route
        
        Communal hearths and small fireplaces within it
        
        On the river
        
        Remarkable preservation – we see wood! Bc this site was flooded, it has great preservation of organics
        
        Child’s footprint
        
        Scraps of vegetable matter – turned out to be a 15,000 year old potato
        
        Chewing tobacco: two parts seaweed, one part (medicinal) leaf, one part potato
        
        A half-chopped through piece of wood
        
        Horn of an animal made into a tool
        
        Bone points (for fishing)
        
        Typical Clovis (13.1-12.5kya):
        
        Pre-Clovis sites change context of interpretation for Clovis sites
        
        The typical Clovis interpretation was:
        
        They were chasing large prey, with spear points
        
        They were highly mobile hunters, and that’s why they entered North America, bc they were chasing these megafauna
        
        Maybe this bloodthirsty mammoth killer model is overblown
        
        Given that we know people were in North America already
        
        Maybe really, it was in situ development
        
        And if you re-look at it, Clovis sites had organic materials, evidence that they were eating plant foods
        
        You also find small mammals
        
        Only a dozen mammoth kills known

Textbook, Chapter 6 (6.2 – 6.3)

Australia:

Migration routes to both Australia and the Americas led through East Asia
In glacial times, when sea levels were low, most of Southeast Asia was one landmass = “Sunda”
- Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania = “Sahul”
- These two landmasses were separated by the Wallace Line
Human occupation of Australia began 60kya, and they covered the continent quickly (within 10,000 years)
- They therefore arrived in Australia 10,000 before they arrived in Europe
- This may support the multiregional hypothesis – maybe they evolved locally in East Asia
  - Or could be multiple migration waves
- At the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, there was widespread extinction of megafauna (huge animals; e.g. rhino-sized kangaroos)
  - In Australia, they became extinct between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago
    - Just after human arrival, and before the climate change (so climate cannot explain this so well)
    - This suggests that humans caused their extinction, but there is almost no evidence of humans hunting megafauna
      - Maybe humans somehow altered the ecology of Australia, and this caused megafauna extinction
        
        Maybe it was through the humans’ fire-stick farming
      - People ventured farther out into Melanesia only 3500 years ago, when the Lapita culture spread across the region
        
        Then these Lapita people spread out and migrated father
        
        This cannot be explained simply by population growth – the growth doesn’t fit with the rapid rate of expansion
        
        It may have to do with their social structure: the firstborns are heavily favored, so junior siblings might venture off

The New World:

3 models for human occupation of the Americas:
- Clovis-first model
  - The Clovis culture (13.5-12.5kya) is the initial human occupation of the Americas
  - If true, we would expect to find tools in Siberia and Alaska before 13,500 years ago, the date of earliest Clovis sites
    - The earliest Beringia settlement is Broken Mammoth Cave in Alaska
      - The stone tools here are Nenana culture, which dates to between 14,000 and 12,800 years ago
      - Nenana = the earliest culture in Beringia
    - Pre-Clovis model
      - The initial human occupation of the New World dates back earlier than 13.5kya
      - Pedra Pintada:
        
        This site does not claim to be earlier than Clovis, but it shows that around the time of Clovis, humans were here eating plants and fish as well! Challenges the notion that the earliest occupation was by Clovis hunters – Clovis hunters many be one of several regional traditions
        
        This is also supported by Quebrada Tacahuay – people in Peru were hunting seabirds and fishing, possibly with use of netting, roughly contemporaneously (12.7-12.5kya) with Clovis
      - With Monte Verde, Chile, people’s main argument was that it’s implausible that humans would get to Chile before the Great Plains, if the ice-free corridor was the only route
        
        In response to this, the idea of coastal migration came up!
        
        One objection to this idea: glaciers may have blocked the coast, so they would have had to use boats
        
        Also problem: no evidence of any early sites on the West Coast from Alaska to California
        
        But the sea level was lower then, so any coastal occupations would now be submerged
        
        Could be that people migrated along the coast and branched off to inhabit inland regions they encountered along the way
        
        Clovis would simply be one of these branches
        
        Early arrival model
        
        human presence in the New World by 30,000 years ago
        
        A minority position
        
        Both the Clovis and pre-Clovis models agree that human occupation of the Americas took place during the later stages of the last period of glacial advance (the Wisconsin glaciations, or OIS 2)
        
        This implies that the Americas were the last continents to be occupied by humans (except Antarctica)
        
        This model states that it was much earlier, as early as 50,000 years ago, in OIS 3
        
        Pedra Furada (Brazil): dating between 48,000 and 35,000 years ago
        
        The only real evidence, fire patches and stone pieces (that they claim are stone tools)
        
        But the fires could be natural, not human-used
        
        And it’s likely that the chippings found on the stones are the result of the impact of cobbles as they fell down the cliff
        
        They are “geofacts” – objects created by geological forces (vs. artifacts, made by humans)
        
        Solutrean hypothesis:
        
        Since antecedents of Clovis points were not found in Siberia and Alaska, and since the ice-free corridor route isn’t convinced to be a viable route, the Solutrean hypothesis was proposed
        
        The origin of the Clovis people was not Siberia, but rather Western Europe
        
        Clovis points are similar to Solutrean tools
        
        But this would require crossing of the Atlantic, which is unlikely – and the similarities could simply be parallel invention
        
        Also, there are differences between the two types of tools, and the Solutrean industry ends 5000 years before the beginning of the Clovis
        
        There is tentative skeletal evidence that there were multiple waves of migration to the Americas
        
        In the Americas (vs. Australia), there is evidence that Clovis people hunted megafauna – seems clear that that led to their extinction
        
        Some archaeologists doubt that their extinction was the result of overhunting
        
        It’s possible that an extraterrestrial impact event (a meteor, maybe) caused their extinction
        
        Maybe a meteor caused fire and sudden climate change, and this in turn killed megafauna
        
        There is some evidence for this, but the layers showing this could simply be constant and noncatastrophic rain of micrometeorites
        
        Also a problem: the extinction was shown to be gradual, not catastrophic
        
        Also: no decrease in human population at the end of the Clovis
        
        Also: the “black mat” layers could be formed by a higher water table vs. burning
        
        Megafauna in the Americas became extinct 13,000 years ago
        
        Gainey Complex = an eastern North American culture contemporary with the Clovis culture
        
        Clovis cultureà Folsom (12.5-12kya)
        
        These and other regional cultures are referred to collectively as the Paleoindian time period
        
        After the Paleoindian comes the Archaic
        
        Late Paleoindian (10,000 years ago) shows evidence for mass kill sites
        
        Late Paleoindian technology: tools used for hunting
        
        Folsom points are the most sophisticated stone tools ever made
        
        They also made huge nets
        
        Criteria that distinguish Paleoindian from Archaic:
        
        Increased reliance on small animal and plant foods
        
        Technology for food processing, including grinding stones and stones used for cooking
        
        Reduced mobility
        
        Systematic burial of the dead
        
        Wilson-Leonard site: an Archaic level (the Wilson component) lies between two Paleoindian occupations
        
        The Archaic occupation: 11.5 – 10.25 kya
        
        Shows that the transition from Paleoindian to Archaic was lengthy and they overlapped
        
        In the Archaic, evidence of copper tools
        
        The Arctic was not settled into 5,000 years ago
        
        These societies = Paleo-Eskimo
        
        2500 years ago, changes in these societiesà appearance of the Dorset culture across much of the Arctic
        
        Began developing small winter villages insulated with snow
        
        Reflects changes in adaptation and social organization, in response to unstable climate conditions
        
        Heating from oil lamps (made from hunting animals that are rich in fat)
        
        The ancestors of contemporary Inuit were known as the Thule; they spread across the Arctic from Alaska 1000 years ago
        
        They arrived with new technology
        
        A skeleton from the Arctic from 4000 years ago was found – DNA sequenced
        
        No genetic relationship between it and the modern Inuit (that came from Alaska), but shared genetics with inhabitants of the Arctic regions of East Asia
        
        Supports the idea that the early settlers were from Siberia, and that then the Thule replaced the Dorset
        
        The arrival of the Thule coincided with a warming trend in climate

Is Agriculture Better Than Gathering? & the Fertile Crescent

AMH occupied the modern world; not Neans or Denisovans, they are gone by now
- But some Denisovan genes
  - This makes sense, given that Denisovans were in Siberia!
  - Likely that as AMH passed through Siberia, they interbred – and those descendents are the ones that made it into the New World
  - So AMH, but with a little bit of Denisovan
- Higher frequency of Denisovan genes in South America à supports the idea of multiple waves of migration

Agriculture

Agriculture appears all over the world at roughly the same time
- The Near East is the earliest
- Different crops in different places; independent innovations all at the same time
Was agriculture actually an improvement for humanity? Negatives in terms of:
- Health
- Safety
- Risk (re food) (not a lot of risk in hunter-gatherer populations)
- Personal satisfaction
Domestication = the process of altering the characteristics, through selection (though not always intentional), of a plant or animal until they are dependent on humans for their protection and reproduction
- Agriculture is both plants and animals
Types of domestication of plants:
- Seed dispersal
  - Rachis: the bit of the stem that holds all the seeds together
    - It shatters when the seeds are ripe, allows the seeds to disperse in the wind
  - In a domesticated plant, you make the rachis tough and unbreakable, so that the seeds don’t go all over the place
    - Because humans beat down the plant to break the rachis, so the seeds can be collected all in one place
    - This is evidence for domestication of plants, when we find this
  - Cuttings
    - You cut off a branch and plant it, so it grows a new tree
  - Paleoethnobotany techniques: to figure out what plants were being eaten
    - Floatation:
      - Organics float, soil sinks
      - Charred organics don’t decompose
      - Dump measured volume of soil into drum of water, stir, and skim
      - Abundance (to figure out reliance on plants) / cubic meter quantified intra- and inter-site
    - Pollen:
      - Pollen does decompose
      - Look at bogs, lake or ocean floors
      - Sites if preservation allows
      - Deforestation
      - g. if you see a dramatic reduction in tree pollen, you know they were cutting down trees
    - Phytoliths:
      - Part of plant made of silica
        
        As they take water up into their roots, silica accumulates in certain portions of the plant
      - Unique shapes in each genus
        
        By identifying the shape, we can categorize them
      - Sometimes found embedded in teeth plaque, or on tools
        
        The plaque would build up and keep the stuff there – before people used to brush their teeth
      - Plant DNA:
        
        DNA extracted from seeds, pollen, or wood
        
        We can trace plant populations/evolution, just like we do with humans
        
        Species identification
        
        Track origin and spread
        
        You can tell if it’s wild or domesticated plant from this information
      - When animals are domesticated, they become:
        
        Weaker and smaller
        
        Faster maturity
        
        Mortality profiles: dead young males
        
        Bc males are hard to control, and you don’t need many males to reproduce
        
        And they don’t produce milk, etc
        
        Extended geographic range (bc humans are controlling their movement)
        
        DNA as well
      - The shift from hunter-gathering to the Neolithic (or agricultural) way of life – has been called a revolution
        
        Bc it shifts every way of life
      - Economy:
        
        Shift in control of food source
        
        Mitigation of risk
        
        Storage of surplus isn’t possible in hunter-gatherer life
        
        You can extract more calories per unit area, but was area limited?
        
        Food quality decreased
      - Mobility is a key shift as well – the amount that you have to move around to feed yourself and your family
      - In agriculture, you don’t have to move for food
        
        And in fact, you can’t move, because of your food
        
        Your food is stationary, so you must be too
        
        Since you can extract more calories per area, you see a correlation with population increase
        
        Carrying capacity redrawn
        
        Control of resource
        
        Processing technology
        
        With the reduction in mobility, can’t run away from conflict
        
        This changes the social organization of society
        
        You start to need rules, and people to enforce those rools
        
        Then status comes into play, bc only some people can control the rules
        
        Then once you have status, you automatically have hierarchy
        
        Specialists
        
        Community labour
        
        Lots of people working on one project; the people were probably coerced in some way
        
        More in symbolic architecture
        
        Surplus and status buy more symbolism
        
        You have specialists in symbolism
        
        All these things fall under the umbrella of cultural complexity
        
        Cultural complexity = a measure of the number of cultural traits, and the number of relationships between them
        
        Increases gradually, in general
        
        Tricky term in practice – how do you measure this?
        
        Increase in complexity DOES NOT EQUAL progress
        
        History of perspectives on the Neolithic transition:
        
        Childe, 1942: The escape from the impasse of savagery was an economic and scientific revolution that made the participants active partners with nature instead of parasites on nature
        
        1980s: Rindos argued that:
        
        Shift to agriculture was unintentional
        
        Before agriculture, nobody knew that you could domesticate plants!
        
        People evolved with the wild plants – a co-evolutionary, symbiotic relationship that changed both humans and plants/animals
        
        Humans receive food
        
        Plants and animals receive nurturing
        
        An evolutionary accident
        
        Ingold (1980s):
        
        Hunter-gatherer’s trust in nature: at equal footing with nature
        
        Agriculturalist’s domination: superior to nature (controlling nature)
        
        It’s about the individual relationship with nature, that’s what the shift was about
        
        The shift also represents a shift in how we see space:
        
        Hunter gatherers perceive space as a series of points in a landscape, and the paths they take between them
        
        No conception of area / boundaries/ bounded territories
        
        In agriculture, there’s implied ownership over space, if you’ve been working on your farm
        
        Sahlins: gets back to the question, was agriculture actually better
        
        Hunter-gatherers the “Original affluent society”
        
        Sporadic 4-5 hours a day of work (know when and where food will be)
        
        Few wants, easily satisfied
        
        Ethnographic examples all marginalized and not representative of pre-agriculture
        
        Drivers of change:
        
        Climate change
        
        Holocene climate warmer and more stable
        
        Makes sense in terms of synchronous timing (the way agriculture arises all over at the same time)
        
        There is no other factor that would explain this – it has to be external and on a large scale, and climate is the go-to for this
        
        Hunter-gatherers were doing well too
        
        Population pressure
        
        Assumption that agriculture caused pop increase wrong
        
        Seems that population usually increased first – and then agriculture was taken up by an increased sedentary population
        
        Mosaic explanation: growing acceptance that different factors, or combinations of factors, drove the transition in different places
        
        Summary – carrying capacity extended
        
        Unleashed a cultural adaptive radiation
        
        Towards what depended on local circumstances

Fertile Crescent

Early models:
- Agriculture = food surplus
- Led to sedentism, population increase, status, complexity
Fertile crescent doesn’t fit this model
- So we have to revise models with new data
  - Order wrong
    - Increasing of the breadth of the diet (both plants and animals) without significant change in housing
    - Architecture and complexity
    - Then agriculture (domestication of plants
  - Rate wrong (it was more gradual than we thought)
- Fertile crescent geography (it’s in the middle east):
  - Ice caps from surrounding mountains caused floods
    - Rich soil
  - Because of Holocene, we have wet winters, dry summers
  - Full of wild cereals
- Kebaran phase (25-15kya):
  - Followed by the geometric Kebaran (tools in triangles and rectangles)
  - The first stage in the shift from hunter gatherer to Neolithic
  - Covered the entire western portion of that fertile crescent
  - Ohalo II, Israel (23kya):
    - 60,000 seeds and fruits around a grinding stone
    - Blade manufacturing area opposite
    - Male vs. female tasks? Men making lithics for hunting purposes, females making the plants?
    - Incredible number and diversity of plants being consumed
  - Wadi Mataha, Jordan (17kya):
    - Hog-tied man
      - His shoulders are overlapping – so they’d have to be tied behind his back
      - Interpreted as a murder
      - Broken stone bowl
      - Flint blade
      - One arm significantly stronger than the other
    - Ingold’s shift towards ownership of land?
      - We don’t see a lot of interpersonal violence until we get to agriculture
        
        We start to have disputes, and you can no longer move away from conflict
      - Abundant plant and animal foods (all wild varieties)
      - No apparent status differences within sites
      - Sex-based division of labour
      - Really strong arm could indicate a specialist
    - Natufian (15-12 kya):
      - Ain Mallaha, Israel (14-11.5kya):
        
        12 stone buildings at Mallaha (TPS)
        
        The earliest stone buildings
        
        5-6 m in diameter
        
        What does this represent for the people who lived there?
        
        Economy
        
        Maybe they are now eating at home
        
        You can store food better
        
        Means they have a lot of confidence in their food base; it’s successful agriculture
        
        Social organization
        
        Family units (10 people can fit) – they are divided, since there are 12 buildings, not just one bigger one
        
        Mobility
        
        They were sedentary, stayed in one place permanently
        
        Year-round occupation
        
        Technology
        
        They figured out how to build houses
        
        Better tools
        
        If you know you aren’t moving around, you can have a bigger toolkit – you no longer have to carry it around with you
        
        Significant time and effort
        
        What else must change?
        
        Not a lot of status, since they are all roughly the same size
        
        Technology:
        
        Lunates
        
        Sickle gloss (sickles are to cut wheat)
        
        Ground stone:
        
        Fundamental shift in stone tool manufacture
        
        Different material & manufacturing technique
        
        Much heavier
        
        Shaft straighteners, mortar & pestles
        
        Great amount of energy to build these
        
        Long distance trade:
        
        Particularly shell beads from Mediterranean & Red Sea
        
        Obsidian
        
        Social hierarchy:
        
        Population increase
        
        Largely egalitarian still
        
        Natufian princess
        
        “Fifty tortoises, the near-compete pelvis of a leopard, the wing tip of a golden eagle, tail of a cow, two marten skulls and the forearm of a wild boar which was directly aligned with the woman’s left humerus… A human foot belonging to an adult individual who was substantially larger than the interred woman was also found in the grave”
        
        She must have had higher status
        
        Symbolism:
        
        Natufian princess (things were put in her grave symbolically) & necklace of course
        
        Ain Sakhri lovers: world’s oldest depiction of people having sex
        
        Domestication:
        
        No intensive domestication of plants or animals
        
        Except for dogs (bc we have a dog buried with a man)
        
        Minimal evidence for the domestication of rye at Tell Abu Hureyra
        
        Gazelle is still the main meat staple (which was never domesticated), lots of wild plants
        
        Sedentism and population increase could mean all kinds of rules
        
        Status implies a population increase
        
        Grinding grain is very labour intensive, compared to gathering wild plants – that’s not great, re quality of life
        
        Then again, doggies – good, re quality of life
        
        Pre-pottery Neolithic A (12-10.8 kya) (PPNA):
        
        Toolkit:
        
        Bigger blades (vs. tiny lunates), more serrated, more sickle-gloss
        
        Lots of arrowheads
        
        Gazelle, fish, birds
        
        A much expanded ground stone toolkit
        
        Axes for tree clearing
        
        Grinding stones (grain)
        
        Bowls
        
        Significant effort involved in making groundstone
        
        Village organization:
        
        Bigger settlements, 20-30 families
        
        Community structures (TPS)
        
        What’s the motivation?
        
        They frequently contained storage areas, but they also had burials in them
        
        They serve functional + symbolic purpose
        
        Who builds them? Because they are not for individuals
        
        Can the design, construction plan, and organization of work be done with leaders?
        
        You need somebody to direct it, can’t do this in an egalitarian way
        
        Can be protection from floods, attacks (could be a defense for the village), or ritual (burials)?
        
        Whichever you interpret it to be used for, this effects the implications for leadership
        
        Ritual and defense requires leadership; a community can together probably build protection from floods
        
        Headless guy in burnt and destroyed structure
        
        Interpersonal violence
        
        The guy was decapitated and burned in a community structure – the building was set on fire on top of him
        
        Körtik Tepe, Anatolia (12 kya) – PPNA Ritual
        
        Skulls hidden in floors and walls
        
        Array of symbols, grave goods
        
        Domestication:
        
        Only figs (cuttings)
        
        Harvested wild barley and wheat
        
        Sedentism continues, population size increases
        
        Inter-personal violence seems to have increased along with it
        
        Self-expression in the form of symbolism increasing
        
        Lots of skulls in your floor
        
        All the figs & gazelle you could eat
        
        Pre-pottery Neolithic B (10.8-8.5 kya):
        
        Toolkit:
        
        Stylized blade-based arrowheads
        
        Structures:
        
        Plaster, layer after layer
        
        Patches here cover floor burials
        
        Plaster is directly datable because burned in manufacturing
        
        Abu Hureyra, Syria
        
        Shift from circular to rectangular buildings in this phase
        
        Up to 5000 people in 1440 houses
        
        These are cities!
        
        Badja, Jordan
        
        Multiple story buildings
        
        Storage
        
        PPNB Ritual
        
        Plastered skulls
        
        Buried in floors, dug up, and redeposited
        
        Groundstone axes in walls
        
        Carvings of people in bone
        
        Domestication finally (10.8-8.5 kya)
        
        Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley, lentil, pea, bitter vetch, chickpea
        
        Goat, sheep, pigs, cattle
        
        Possibly related to population decline in gazelle
        
        Village life getting crowded
        
        Work tending fields and animals
        
        But no more gazelle hunting
        
        Possibility of specialist religious elite controlling skulls
        
        Late Neolithic (8500 – 7000 years ago):
        
        Decline in settlement size / population
        
        Ecological degradation & deforestation?
        
        Or herding? Animals need more grass space
        
        Pottery:
        
        Innovation of pottery and new symbolism
        
        Plaster out, pottery in
        
        Toolkit:
        
        Arrowheads out (means they are no longer hunting, they have domesticated animals), sickle blades still in production
        
        Çatalhöyük, Turkey (9-8 kya):
        
        Daily ritual life
        
        Bulls in the walls
        
        Cows as ritual (not food), goats as food
        
        Wall paintings
        
        A lot of goat meat
        
        Continuing all domesticates
        
        Cooking and eating in pottery
        
        Greatly expanded symbolic repertoire
        
        Appears to be engrained in everyday life
        
        Dense settlement could lead to disease outbreaks, sanitation issues, physical labour
        
        Hodder’s opinion: “One of the conditions that made agriculture possible in the Middle East was a changed relation to time and history. Rather than immediate and short-term relationships, societies in the region developed a strong sense of temporal depth tied to specific places well before domesticated plants and animals emerged”
        
        Particular places become very important; symbolic relationship to a particular place
        
        Summary – sequence of agricultural transition:
        
        Actual domestication seems rapid (in PPNB)
        
        Interpretation for this: innovation & stimulus diffusion
        
        Stimulus diffusion: once you have an idea, you can exploit that idea into all kinds of new realms
        
        So once one crop was domesticated, it immediately became apparent that you could do this for other species
        
        Pop size and sedentism gradual and out of expected sequence
        
        Villages preceded agriculture
        
        Is agriculture actually progress? Is it better?
        
        Settled villages led to increases in violence, disease, social hierarchy
        
        Perhaps increase in symbolism was part of coping mechanism for more challenging life?
        
        Or maybe symbolism was just a way for the elite to leverage collective labour

Textbook, Chapter 7 (7.4 – 7.6)

The Early Neolithic = PPNA + PPNB
- The beginning of the PPNA corresponds with the end of the Younger Dryas event
- The PPNB corresponds to a period of improved climate
Small, dispersed communities may characterise the Late Neolithic, replacing the nucleated large village communities of the Early Neolithic
During PPNA, the size of settlements increased and the first evidence of communal structures appeared (though houses continued to be circular)
In PPNB, settlement size increased more – the shift from circular to rectangular houses allowed the site to be more densely packed
No evidence of status in Early Neolithic villages – all houses looked the same
Early Neolithic period = the “birth of the gods”; ritual behaviour in 3 categories:
- Hidden rituals:
  - Ritual objects in pits or under floors
  - g. plastered skulls buried beneath floors
  - In some cases, plastered skulls were removed from their hiding places and then carefully re-deposited, maybe as an aspect of ancestor worship
    - Maybe it was through reverence for the ancestor, that these societies maintained cohesion
  - g. unused axes hidden within walls – these may have had a magical function
- Display rituals:
  - PPNA: Jericho tower, and others like it, as visible symbols of the community (regardless of their practical function)
  - PPNB: the context for display now is within temples or sacred precincts
    - Suggests that access to visible signs of divinity was controlled – perhaps the elite of Early Neolithic society was a ritual elite
  - Daily life rituals:
    - Clay figurines had symbolic meaning
  - Animal domestication developed somewhat later than plant domestication
    - Sheep and goats domesticated in the later part of PPNB
      - Pigs and cattle were domesticated by the end of PPNB
    - The domestication of sheep and goats followed a fall-off in gazelle populations
  - Collapse of the Early Neolithic settlement system was the result of ecological degradation caused by deforestation
    - Could be that by producing plaster, humans deforested
    - An alternative idea: it wasn’t a collapse, but a shift to a way of life focused on the grazing of herds of domesticated animals
    - At the same time as the settlement system collapsed, there was the introduction of pottery (it replaced plaster production) and changes in the production of symbolic artifacts
      - Symbol system: no more skull removal and ornamentation; small figurines of stylized humans rather than animals
    - Also change in stone tool manufacture during the Late Neolithic:
      - The skillful production of blades disappeared, arrowheads became rare
      - Most tools are now expedient tools made on locally available materials with minimal investment of energy
      - Sickle blades remain common and often have a serrated edge
    - In central and western Turkey, there is continuity in dense village settlement through the Late Neolithic – Catalhoyuk (9000-8000 years ago):
      - Goddess figurines – some argue that Neolithic society was focused on a goddess cult
      - Main source of meat was domesticated goats
    - During the Late Neolithic, there is continuous decline in the role of hunting for subsistence
    - May be that the climate stress of the Younger Dryas corresponding to the end of the Natufian and the beginning of the PPNA was a trigger in the development of villages
    - Agriculture developed as a consequence of people living in villages
      - Villages preceded agriculture in the Middle East

From History to Science & Neolithic Diffusion

History of Archaeological Theory

Archaeological theory = ideas that archaeologists have developed about the past and about the ways we come to know the past
- Archaeology needs a consistent way of interpreting the archaeological record
  - A “theory” is this explanatory framework we use to interpret data
- Antiquarianism (16^th – 18^th centuries):
  - Treasure hunters, for personal collections or museums
  - They weren’t concerned with the daily life of people in those days – they wanted the big cool stuff
  - Eventually, identified stone tools & established stone, bronze and iron ages
- Darwin’s evolutionism (19^th century):
  - Darwin: established a theory of change – change isn’t just a series of historical accidents; there’s a system behind change
  - De Perthes: described association of stone tools and extinct mammoths
  - Lyell: a geologist, used geological strata to give weight to de Perthes
  - Morgan: defined social evolution as a unilateral transition from savagery (hunter-gatherer)à barbarism (anyone who had pottery; essentially agriculture)à civilization
    - He thought you couldn’t get to civilization without passing through the previous two steps
    - And if there are any savagery tribes left, it’s just because they couldn’t figure out how to get up the chain
    - Now we know there are multiple ways to get there
  - Cultural-historical approach (late 19^th – 1949):
    - First real theory of archaeology and archaeological remains
    - These guys are interested in describing artifacts, and all artifacts (not just impressive-looking tombs and stuff)
    - Seriation established relative chronologies
    - Typology classified artifacts and defined “cultures”
      - Very fine division in their classification scheme
        
        g. we still use types, we use handaxes
        
        But they use double convergent handaxes, single side-scapers, etc.
      - Gordon Childe description of artifacts à societies of people
      - Neolithic revolution: Childe’s Marxist interpretation of agricultural origins
    - Processual archaeology (1949 – 1985):
      - Started when radiocarbon dating was figured out
      - Scientific methods, emphasized deduction, hypothesis testing
      - Identify general laws and models of cultural dynamics
      - Result was focus on adaptation to environment, symbolism ignored
        
        They defined external forces but ignored internal forces of culture
      - Ethnoarchaeology: relating ethnographic observations to archaeological record
        
        They’d go observe current hunter-gatherer groups
      - Post-processualism (1985 – 2000):
        
        Emic perspective: view of prehistory as history (not science)
        
        Cultural relativism (not judging other cultures from our perspective; each culture should be evaluated in its own terms, against broad comparisons)
        
        & recognition of archaeologists own biases (our biases are build into our interpretations)
        
        Role of women and children had been ignored; fix gender bias in interpretation
        
        Agency: purposeful individual action within society
      - Evolutionary archaeology (2000 – present):
        
        Kind of processual archaeology, rebranded (and with its criticisms incorporated)
        
        Internal drivers are thrown into computer models, they look at things processual archaeology ignored
        
        Cultural evolution as analogy to biological evolution
        
        Human behavioural ecology (humans as animals within the environment)
        
        g. optimal foraging, diet, risk-gain, etc
        
        Gene-culture coevolution
        
        A recognition that our genetic makeup is affected by our cultural behaviour
        
        How we have modified our environment affects us
        
        Gene and culture can’t be separated, they work together
        
        Cultural phylogenies
        
        Using biological algorithms that are used to generate species trees
        
        Evolutionary tree for material cultures
        
        Niche construction
        
        People modify their environment in order to better suit them, as biological consuming entities

Neolithic Diffusion

Agriculture was first innovated in the Middle East
- Spread of this Neolithic material culture to Europe:
  - 8500 years ago: southeastern Europe
  - 7500 years ago: western Europe
  - 6000 years ago: Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland
- Along with this, we can map the spread of different lineages of mtDNA and Y-chromosome DNA
  - mtDNA à maternal history
  - Y chromosome DNA à paternal history
  - DNA gets diluted as it moves from Middle East to Europe
    - Bc farmers traveling into Western Europe intermarried as they went
  - We also have language maps:
    - The indo-European language family went into Europe and diverged as the romantic languages
  - All three (material, DNA, language: the Neolithic package) follow the same pattern of spreading from the Middle East throughout Europe
    - The Neolithic package: shift in all aspects of life:
      - Economy
      - Social organization
      - Language
      - Symbolism
    - This pattern is like the middle to upper Paleolithic transition
      - A complete shift, same spread
    - Neolithic diffusion models (these are primary cultural processes):
      - Migration
      - Independent innovation
      - Demic diffusion
      - Cultural diffusion
    - Kossina (1940s): Germans conquered Europe in the Neolithic, coming from the noble stock of German blood
      - Saw German stuff appearing elsewhere, he interpreted that as Germans conquering
    - Childe’s Neolithic revolution:
      - Control of food production as the cause of this revolution
      - Agricultural surplus allowed population to increase and culture to complexify
      - Migration and replacement from Middle East
      - Influenced by Marxism
    - Renfrew’s model (in the processual archaeology school):
      - Britain first (1970s):
        
        Britains independently innovated our megaliths and burial practices
        
        They didn’t like that stonehedge was a Middle East export
        
        Britain is special
      - Language dispersal hypothesis:
        
        Changed his mind by 1990
        
        Mapped spread of Indo-European language family and connected it to Neolithic
        
        Package of material culture and language, later added DNA to his theory
        
        Everything coming out of Middle East as one giant thing, replaced the Mesolithic culture
        
        Later added DNA to the replacement package
        
        Zvelebil, Richards, and Heggarty: cultural diffusion
        
        The replacement models too simplistic
        
        Interbreeding and acculturation should play a role
        
        Political climate played a role in this shift
        
        Increasing perception/respect for hunter-gatherers
        
        Cultural relativism:
        
        Modern day indigenous groups
        
        Colonization no longer in vogue

Mesolithic Europe

Invented bc they needed something between the Upper Paleolithic blades and the Neolithic groundstone
Culture-historical category
- Upper Paleolithic: Blades
- Mesolithic: Faunal tools
- Neolithic: Ground stone
Childe’s “Dawn of Europe” solidifies definition and the variability of the timing
General material evidence (12 kya – Neolithic):
- Faunal toolkit further diversified & specialized
  - Gave up on stone tools, except to sharpen faunal tools
    - Flaked tools used to make faunal tools
  - Groundstone axes and celts, both for woodworking
  - Increasing size and duration of settlements
  - Diet breadth extended
    - Focus on fish with nets, fish spears, weirs
    - Variety of animals & plants
  - Hunter-gatherer populations were flourishing under the Holocene climate
- Franchthi Cave, Greece (11 kya):
  - Broad spectrum foraging: red deer, cattle, pigs, snails, shellfish, pistachios, almonds, pears, wild oats, wild barley
    - And tuna! This means they’ve figured out how to do deep-sea fishing!
  - Obsidian traded over 100km of Mediterranean
- Burning England
  - Extensive landscape modification using fire
    - Brings game
    - Post-fire ecological succession edible plants
  - This is niche construction: you change your environment to suit you
    - Now it’s active (vs. passive)
    - This is correlated with the Holocene climate being favourable
  - The Danube river is the highway by with the Neolithic package entered Europe
  - Lepenski Vir, Serbia (8400 – 7600 BP):
    - Diet
      - On the Danube – so wide variety of fish species
      - But later, they switch to a diet of deer
      - As well as a broad spectrum foraging diet
    - Spatial organization & Structures
      - Many structures occupied simultaneously
      - Sedentary, permanent
      - Uniformity in the design of their houses
      - Communal space (an open plaza) in the middle of the village (same look as the houses, all the same)
      - Streets with paving stones from the communal space
    - Burials
      - As with the Neolithic, we have more well-defined pattern burials
        
        Burials in floors, etc
      - One burial of a man shaped like a triangle! They put his legs together, etc – maybe bc it’s the same shape as the structures – symbolic aspect
      - Nothing elaborate like the Natufian princess
    - Symbolism
      - Statues of human-like fish
      - Fish is important in their symbolic repertoire – it’s a fishing village, they live on the river, it’s the main point of their diet, etc
      - These structures are “megaliths”
      - These statues are spread out across the site – it’s not that one house has all of them à implies that everyone is still generally equal in status (everyone has access to the rituals and symbolic aspects of life)
      - Alters
    - Everyone has same status, but there is a very strict way to build your structure
      - Intricately patterned rules
    - Terminal phase:
      - Neolithic sites appear contemporary with later stages
        
        Agriculture has arrived, but they haven’t been replaced by the Middle Eastern farmers – they just keep on doing their thing
      - Reminiscent of the Chatellperonian problem
        
        Cultural diffusion vs. migration/replacement?
        
        This time, no morphological differences
        
        If trade goods are showing up, people must have been showing up with them – but we don’t know how they interacted
        
        The fact that they were already very advanced, means that they would have easily just adopted agriculture
        
        Prior complexity facilitated cultural diffusion?
        
        The fact that they were complex means they would have been hard to just replace
        
        Their complexity complicates things
        
        The fact that seeds came to them doesn’t mean the whole Neolithic package came too
        
        Summary:
        
        River and land resources provided abundant food
        
        Highly complex sedentary hunter-gatherer society
        
        Possible small status differences based on size of house
        
        What effect would this have on their resistance or ability to change?

Neolithic Europe

Linear Band Keramic (LBK) Culture (7200 – 6500 BP):
- A style of pottery
- The first phase of Neolithic
- In addition to pottery, we have Middle Eastern plants & animals
- Independently innovated housing (they are not using Middle East style housing)
  - Instead they had longhouses (in villages)
  - Kinship & social structure within a 30m longhouse (This is massive)
- Is this more similar to the Mesolithic housing, or to the Middle Eastern Neolithic we saw earlier? They are more like a scaled-up version of the Mesolithic
  - Hybridization of architecture styles
- Diachronic change in the statigraphic record – we don’t see waves-of-advance
  - So different models are using the same data!
  - Models:
    - Cultural diffusion
      - Sees continuity in local traditions (housing)
    - Migration models
      - Sees abrupt shifts in local traditions (ceramics, domestication)
      - But what is “abrupt” enough for replacement?
    - Biases that made different researchers see different models:
      - Human capacity for innovation, adaptation
        
        If you see hunter-gatherer to be savage and backward, then you don’t give them much credit to adopt a new way of life
      - Biases for or against colonization
      - 21^st century, everything is caused by climate change
    - Hybridization model:
      - Adaptable Mesolithic hunter-gatherer, coming into contact with Neolithic agriculturalists and having friendly trade, interaction, and intermarriage
      - This might be a bit of a utopian view
        
        May be a bit of post-colonization guilt thrown in there
      - Massaker von Talheim, Germany (7000 BP):
        
        Massacre at Talheim: small scale genocide, many individuals thrown into a pit
        
        Initially suggested Mesolithic vs. LBK (this may be LBK vs. LBK)
        
        Chazan points out this is absent from Lepenski Vir
        
        The Mesolithics did not have this level of violence
        
        Schletz-Asparn, Austria: 300 dead (this is LBK)
        
        Herxheim, Germany: 450 dead (this is LBK)
        
        It might have been contagion containment, except for a skull with an axe in it – this was no infection control
      - DNA evidence:
        
        Decline of DNA frequency suggests hybridization
        
        Since this was a gradual decline, doesn’t seem like replacement – points to intermarriage
        
        Mesolithic derived vs. middle eastern
        
        Lactase persistence in Europeans! Those of us who aren’t lactose intolerant, we must be from European stock!
        
        Lactase persistence developed only where there are cows
        
        Mosaic of explanations (over space): different parts of Europe underwent the transition in different ways
        
        Mosaic – Arias 1999
        
        Mesolithic populations: some would promote or inhibit cultural diffusion over space
        
        Water-centric populations had an alternate route to cultural complexity
        
        This populations had a different pattern of transition
        
        Eventually, most of Europe did transition into agriculture
        
        But different ways: adoption or replacement in different areas
        
        Three types of transitions:
        
        Replacement (more likely in the inland territories)
        
        An early wave of Neolithic farmers intermarried and culturally diffused their traditions until they were adopted
        
        Cultural diffusion along Mesolithic trade routes influencing change
        
        Mosaic – Gronenborn 1999
        
        “A combined migrationist/diffusionist model is presented, arguing for an emergence of a farming economy among hunter-gatherer populations in Transdanubia and the subsequent spread of this economy through migration. The new settlers interacted with local Mesolithic groups and adopted and incorporated local material culture and sometimes even aspects of local Mesolithic economy, a process which continued throughout the Early Neolithic”
        
        Mosaic simulation – Lemmen et al 2011
        
        Simulation model shows interaction of three types of individuals:
        
        Migrating farmers (replacing)
        
        Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (adopting)
        
        Farming Mesolithic converts (Mesolithic populations converted to farming through learning/acculturation, and then these groups travelled and acculturated other Mesolithic groups)
        
        Makes sense that Mesolithics would be more successful in converting Mesolithics!
        
        Converts played a key role in acculturating hunter-gatherers (HG)
        
        “A small share of introduced technology is sufficient to spark local invention and trigger the transition”
        
        Stimulus diffusion concept
        
        “…predominant adoption despite migration”
        
        You didn’t need migration in order to have adoption
        
        History of Neolithic Diffusion:
        
        History of theory has played a large role in interpretation of Neolithic transition
        
        Passed over each cultural process several times, as history has progressed – as the political climate changed, essentially
        
        The medium/mechanism of both cultural diffusion and hybridization is inter-group contact
        
        Do they share their information, or their information and their genes?

Textbook, Chapter 7 (7.7)

According to the replacement perspective, the driving force behind the expansion = the population increase associated with farming
Language dispersal hypothesis: the spread of agriculture as the movement of people carrying with them an entire way of life, including farming, religion and language
- In this model, a gradual wave of advancing farmers replace passive defenceless HGs
Evidence of burning in the Mesolithic HGs muddies the division between HGs and farmers
- Clearly, the Mesolithic HGs were capable of actively manipulating their environment
Domestication of plants and animals emerged in the Middle East; yet maybe these Mesolithic HGs innovated some of this on their own – debate on this topic
- A compromise position: the shift to agriculture in Europe is an interaction btwn incoming populations and innovative HGs
  - But what kind of interaction? There is evidence both of trade, and of violence, between Mesolithic (HGs) and LBK (farmer)groups

Learning from Comparison & Neolithic Africa vs. the Fertile Crescent

Inter-site comparisons: look at the similarities and differences between two or more sites
- Expands the sample size
- Allows us to build a broader understanding of how and why
- Explore possible drivers of cultural change by seeing how things turned out similarly or differently over space and time
Regional level synthesis:
- Aggregate archaeological data over a larger region
- Study synchronic and diachronic variation in cultural traits
- Often difficult to do in practice
  - Differences in documentation
  - Availability of reports and raw data
- Ethnoarchaeology (type of comparison): studying living groups to see the “archaeological” record forming
  - Socio-cultural ethnography
    - Garbage
    - Structures
    - Depositional bias (what do people throw away vs. toss in the woods, what is organic and not likely to keep in the record)
    - Technology manufacturing
  - Why do we do it?
    - Interpretation difficult with no reference point
      - Stone tools once thought to be caused by lightening
    - Archaeologists are less familiar with hunter gathering than hunter gatherers are
      - Insight into perceptions of natural world
      - Cultural contact influences spread of ideas and trade goods
      - How to use prehistoric tools
    - Source of hypotheses to test against material remains
      - Expands limits of our imagination
    - Things we learned from ethnoarchaeology:
      - Flintknapping
      - Ground stone manufacture
      - Bead manufacture
      - Atlatls (bannerstones)
      - Poison tipped points
    - Preservation bias:
      - Case study in Ethiopia:
        
        “tef” was a particular grain; roasting it isn’t necessary to manufacture into flour and bread
        
        So the charring of the seed, etc – wasn’t done
        
        So looking at the record, we would see other grains, but we wouldn’t see tef
        
        So: potential immensity of the gap between what we find and what there was
      - Tyranny of the ethnographic record:
        
        Range of possible behaviours much broader
        
        Much more possible than what we see in current HG populations
        
        Past conditions different
        
        Reproduce ethnoarchaeology in the archaeological record
        
        Emphasized bottom-up approach of “strong inference”
      - Experimental archaeology (another type of comparison):
        
        Replicating aspects of material culture to better understand them and the behaviour needed to make them
        
        Hands-on approach
        
        Flintknapping is a very common skill among archaeologists
      - Things we learned from flintknapping:

How to recognize:

Flakes
Variation in manufacturing
Tools used in manufacturing

Importance of debitage patterns (debitage is the debris)
Strength of Neanderthals
Importance of raw material
Conservation of raw material
Heat-treatment

Use-wear studies:
- Replicate use of tools to study damage and polish development
- Another type of experimental archaeology
Another type of experimental archaeology = re-enactments

Neolithic Transition in Northern Africa

Fertile Crescent:
- Favourable environment allowed for intensive harvest of wild grains and pulses
  - This allowed for sedentism
  - With this came population increase, complexity increase, organized villages and symbolism, and then after that, domestication
- Extensive human occupation of the Sahara (14-4.5kya)
  - It used to not be a desert – it used to receive a lot of rainfall
  - As rainfall increased, settlements increased
  - Gobero (9700 – 8300 ya / 7700 – 6300 BCE):
    - We actually have a fishing village during this wet phase
      - Bone harpoons, hooks
    - Abandoned as desert took back over
    - Reoccupied again 6kya with cattle added
    - Changing rainfall patterns
  - Pastoralism: herding domesticated animals to grazing and watering locations and subsisting off milk, blood, and meat when necessary
    - These guys follow their animals over long distances
  - Sedentism:
    - Villages similar to Natufian
      - 15 houses in two rows
      - Storage pits
      - Broad diet breadth
      - Grinding stones
    - But they already had pottery – in Africa it was right there from the beginning
  - Nabta Playa, Egypt (10800 – 6200 cal BP):
    - Controversial but important site
    - Argued for independent domestication of cattle at 11k cal BP
    - Early pottery of Khartoum style
    - Wells, status, megaliths
    - Early Neolithic (10800 – 8900 cal BP):
      - Lithic and bone scatters around hearths
      - Wild millet and legumes
      - Seasonal settlements when water present
      - Wells haven’t shown up yet
      - Early pastoral phase
    - El Adam type settlements (10,800 – 9800 cal BP):
      - Bladelet-assemblage
      - Endscrapers made on recycled MP tools!
      - Few grinding stones
      - Early Khartoum pottery
        
        Status rather than functional given rarity
      - Possibly early domestic cattle
      - Mostly gazelle and hare, plus a few bones of jackal, turtle, small rodents, and birds
      - Interpreted as pastoralists visiting seasonal grazing grounds
        
        Used for by-products rather than meat primarily
        
        “Not widely accepted” that this was cattle
        
        Recent mtDNA of the cattle: suggests separate African domestication (vs. Middle East)
      - Then arid period when the site was not occupied
      - Then: El Ghorab type settlements (9600 – 9200 cal BP):
        
        After an arid hiatus
        
        Reoccupied with toolkit of elongated scalene triangles, microburins, grinding stones
        
        Few shards of pottery
        
        Same cattle and desert adapted small fauna
        
        Seasonal water settlements
        
        Then aridity again!
      - Then: El Nabta type settlements (9100 – 8900 cal BP)
        
        Large oval huts and smaller round huts
        
        Bell-shaped storage pits
        
        Deep wells (2.5 m), some with shallow basins beside for cattle
        
        This allowed for year round occupations (except during summer floods)
        
        Bone points, pottery
        
        20,000 wild seeds of grasses and legumes as well as tubers and fruits representing 80 different morphological types
        
        Possibly domesticated sorghum
        
        Wild or domestic, they were harvesting for long-term storage
      - The next phase: middle Neolithic (8300 – 7600 cal BP):
        
        Gazelle declines (as in NE, but could be hunting or the aridity cycles)
        
        Wider variety of animals took their place
        
        Introduced domesticated goat or sheep from NE, becomes important meat food
        
        Cattle bones still rare, suggesting by-products favored
        
        No plant remains due to preservation but storage and grinding stones
        
        Houses common in clusters of six plus
      - Site E-75-8, El Nabta:
        
        No houses, but lots of stone lined hearths
        
        After most sites with no cattle, this one lots of cattle bones
        
        Maybe this was desperate times, and they needed to eat the cattle
        
        Maybe this was a long term occupation and the cattle bones just accumulated over time
        
        Maybe this was symbolic – maybe this place was a ceremonial centre when communities aggregated, where they ritualistic-ly slaughtered cattle and ate them (excavator interpretation)
        
        Late Neolithic (7500 – 6200 cal BP):
        
        Another period of aridity
        
        Larger hearth only sites
        
        Projectile points interpreted as weapons as defense
        
        Site E-75-8 reoccupied and expanded
        
        Same aggregation site occupied
        
        Calendar circle and other megaliths added
        
        Huge blocks make usually empty enclosures
        
        Most burial spaces empty
        
        Complete young adult cow buried in a claylined and roofed chamber below a mound
        
        Six other mound also have buried cow remains
        
        Carved stone slab buried 3.5m below surface
        
        Shaped like a cow? A mushroom?
        
        Nabta playa – summary:
        
        Early occupations took cattle to the Nile valley during dry seasons, traded for pottery
        
        Later innovated deep wells and didn’t need to go to Nile (and potentially have conflicts with the agriculturalists there)
        
        Seasonal population aggregation developed into calendar circle and cow burials
        
        Uan Afuda, Libya ((9000-8000 ya):
        
        Excellent preservation, even longer occupation sequence
        
        “Middle Paleolithic – Aterian?” (Undated)
        
        Aeolian sands (wind-blown) are mixed with MSA lithics
        
        Mixing sands left no other evidence
        
        “Epipaleolithic” (9700-9200 BP):
        
        Microlithic tools
        
        Specialized hunting camp for Barabry sheep (100% of fauna found)
        
        Preservation excellent, only plants were for fire (evidence of absence)
        
        Small hut with multiple unstructured hearths
        
        “Mesolithic Pottery Bearing” (8765-8000 BP):
        
        “Fill” is mix of dung and plants
        
        Specialised fire areas, stone structures
        
        Intensive use of wild plants, grinding cereals
        
        Shift from “procurement” to “processing” of wild foods
        
        Basketry could suggest storage
        
        Painted eggshell
        
        Decorated ceramic
        
        Dung & grass in the back of the cave
        
        “Early Pastoral” (7700-6400 BP):
        
        Pick up the sequence at other sites
        
        Domesticated sheep introduced from Near East (Smith)
        
        Genetically unrelated to today’s African domesticated species
        
        Merimde beni-Salam, Egypt:
        
        Village with domestic cattle, sheep, and pigs all from Near East
        
        Simple graves: bead, an amulet, or a reed mat
        
        Rock paintings of people with cattle
        
        Proximity to early farming sites in the Nile flood zone suggests domestic animals brought in by farmers before being picked up by hunter-gatherers away from the Nile
        
        “Middle Pastoral” (6100-5000 BP):
        
        Alternately occupied lake zones and mountain regions
        
        Fishing around the lakes, mountains for grazing sheep and goats
        
        Exotic lithic materials from lake zones found in all sites
        
        Lake sites also had pits for large ceramic vessels, and hiding places for a few grinding-stones and hand querns
        
        “Late Pastoral” (5000-3500 BP):
        
        Rainfall reduced, lakes dried up
        
        You would think since water is essential for cattle, a reduction would reduce pastoralism
        
        But actually it did the opposite- it allowed the spread of pastoralism through Africa
        
        Because before, the tsetse fly was a natural southern boundary (this fly bad for cattle)
        
        But with reduced rainfall, reduced tsetse fly – cattle can now spread
        
        Helped spread cattle-based pastoralism because the tsetse fly now gone
        
        Focus also shifted towards Nile and other river valleys
        
        Summary of Neolithic Pastoral Africa
        
        Consumed wild grain and animals, fish at times
        
        Small villages formed around lakes
        
        Grinding stones evidence of extensive grain processing
        
        Pottery was first for status, then storage (more functional)
        
        Hunting with pre-domestication control of wild animals (Sheep and possibly cattle)
        
        Domesticated species introduced from Near East, easily adopted
        
        Pastoralism widespread before large farming communities

Middle East (ME) (or Near East, NE)	Africa
Wild use intensifies (plants and animals both) (due to Holocene climate change, favourable conditions made wild plants widespread and dense, and gazelle population boomed)	Same Pre-pastoral conditions
Population increase	Smaller population increase
Complexity increase (pottery not here until after domestication)	Not to the same degree, but pottery as status
Architecture	Pottery as storage
Community structures	Small village Megaliths
Domestication	Same à true pastoralism

Often new technology is like that (like pottery): first for status, then when it becomes commonplace, it becomes more functional

Textbook, Chapter 9 (9.1)

There is a lot of flexibility in the sequence of events leading to the shift from hunting and gathering to farming
In Africa, pastoral societies based on domesticated animals developed without plant domestication
The development of agriculture in Africa involved the indigenous domestication of plants and possibly animals, as well as the adoption of domesticated plants and animals from the ME
The current arid environment of the Sahara developed only 4500 years ago
- Between 14000 and 4500, there was more rainfall, and thus human occupation
During the period of increased rainfall, small villages of HGs developed across Northern Africa
- The sites resembled the Natufian societies of the ME (re their size, structures, exploitation of wide range of resources, and use of grinding stones), except they had pottery (which only developed in the ME in the Late Neolithic), and storage pits
  - g. of this = Nabta Playa, site E-75-6, 9000 years ago
- Uan Afudaà pre-agricultural societies of the Sahara, between 9000-8000 years ago
  - One finding was wild sheep in a pen – so although no domestication, they were employing some form of animal management by capturing animals and keeping them in a pen
- Gobero, a fishing village, 9700-8200
  - The site was abandoned due to aridity 8000 years ago
- The earliest evidence of domestication of animals in the Central Sahara = 7000 years ago
  - No evidence of domesticated plants
- First farming villages:
  - First domesticated plants in Egypt = 7000 years ago
  - Idea = HGs domesticated plants as a “backup”, and then it took off
  - In Western Africa, the earliest plant domestication = 3500 years ago
- In Africa, as in the ME, small villages predate the domestication of plants and animals

Life, Bureaucracy, and Pharaohs – Ancient Egypt

There was a gradual development of the empire – it didn’t come from the sand or the skies
- Gradual emergence from typical cultural processes
Ancient Egypt was in the Nile Valley
- The increased rainfall allowed the desert sections to be more habitable – we talked about this yesterday
The Pre-dynastic phase of Egypt:
- Rulers trying to control territory
- It starts
3000 years of civilization building
The role of the people in Ancient Egypt is still a bit of a mystery
Role of writing in archaeology:
- No one has had writing so far
- Archaeology is interpretation of spatial patterns – writing is like cheating
  - Shifts to the tradition of historical archaeology
- Archaeology confirms things, but we know all about Ancient Egypt from writing
- The Rosetta Stone = a huge piece of rock that has the same text, written in 3 different languages (ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek, and a Mesopotamian language)
  - We understood one of the three languages, so this allowed us to build a dictionary of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics
- Ancient Egyptian civilization is built on the Nile
  - Every year, a huge excess of water comes in to the banks of the Nile, and floods the banks – this makes the flood-banks – a new layer of nutrients washes up onto the shore
  - There was a strict boundary between habitable floodplains, and barren desert (this is a strict external force)
    - But if you build stone structures in the floodplains, they get washed away yearly
    - So houses are right at that floodplain-desert boundary
  - 2 halves of the empire
    - Upper Egypt = upper part of the Nile
      - As you go up the Nile, strict boundary between floodplains and desert
    - Lower Egypt = down part of the Nile (where it ends at the Mediterranean)
      - Less strict boundary, because it widens
      - Cataracts – pieces of land to the South, un-crossable
    - Pre-dynastic dynasty: family linage of kings
      - Overlaps with the pastoral phases
    - Then early dynastic
    - Then first intermediate – when the dynasty collapsed, period of chaos
    - Oscillating cycles of empire consolidation, and then collapsing again
    - Predynastic (4500 – 3000 BC):
      - Similar to ME Neolithic
      - Imported domestic plants and animals from ME
      - Usual debates over acculturation vs. replacement
        
        More likely that it’s Egyptians adopting, bc slow adoption of elements of Neolithic package
        
        Also DNA supports this, says that Ancient Egypt was built by Egyptians
      - Burials in structures
      - Faiyum A Culture (5200 – 4000 BC):
        
        Mix of agriculture and HG
        
        Broad spectrum diet (abundance of wild, mixed in with some domesticated stuff)
      - Merimde culture (4800 – 4300 BC)
        
        A neighbouring contemporary culture with the Faiyum A
        
        Cool art culture: human masks, etc
      - Then there were a series of other archaeological cultures
        
        Short lived, and defined by pottery styles
        
        Early sedentism, mud-brick
        
        Burials outside villages (in more cemeteries)with grave goods
        
        Extensive trade in obsidian, pottery, gold, and copper
        
        Reduction in rainfall
        
        All those people from the Sahara (that we talked about yesterday) had to move into the Nile Valley
        
        Except the pastoral communities more inland
        
        Increased competition is maybe the origins of the Egyptian state (competition over resources and dense settlements – coincides with building of hierarchies, and control of things, etc)
        
        Dependence on Nile Valley farming
        
        Early dynastic (3000 – 2575 BC):
        
        King Narmer unites Upper and Lower Egypt
        
        The first Pharoah of Egypt
        
        Before, were small centres of control, and the two halves had been fighting for territory, etc
        
        Consistent struggle between the two regions for power
        
        Typical of early days of an empire
        
        Internal divisions, control tends to oscillate between the two
        
        Cycles of centralized power, state collapse, and re-centralization often in the other part
        
        The first burial architecture (origins of pyramid building) was modest – a stone tomb underground, excavated in early 1900s (so unknown date)
        
        “Hierakonpolis” – unknown date, and unknown king
        
        On the walls of this tomb, was an elaborate painting – of a battle-scene on boats
        
        Next one: Abydos (3050 BC)
        
        Not a pyramid, but a monumental structure
        
        First large scale burial construction
        
        We also find a fleet of boats buried in the desert, just after this structure
        
        The first pyramid: Djoser Complex (2668 – 2649 BC)
        
        Ziggurat: a step pyramid (vs. the smooth side pyramids we see later)
        
        Seen in Central America
        
        Behind an enclosure wall
        
        Emphasized the status division, the sacred area controlled by the elite, vs. the rest
        
        Snefru’s Bent Pyramid (2613 – 2589 BC):
        
        First attempt at a smooth pyramid
        
        First non-step pyramid
        
        For structural reasons, they decided to shift the angle, so it wouldn’t collapse
        
        Giza – Khufu’s Great Pyramid (2589 – 2566 BC):
        
        The first one built (at Giza) was the biggest one built
        
        Blocks of stone, vs. mud
        
        Encased in polished limestone
        
        Maybe capped with gold
        
        Can’t see this now; all we have is a missing peak, and hieroglyphics depicting a gold cap
        
        3 main burial chambers
        
        The one deep underground was never finished
        
        One higher up in the centre of the pyramid – thought to hold this king, but he wasn’t there when we found it
        
        One higher up for the queen
        
        Giza – Khafre (2650 – 2480) & Menkaure’s (2532 – 2503 BC) Pyramids
        
        Khafre’s slightly smaller, similar build
        
        Menkaure’s faced with granite slabs, but unfinished
        
        The granite only goes partway up the side
        
        The pyramids were build during the life of the Pharoah
        
        When he died, they stopped working on it and started on the new guy’s pyramid
        
        Thought that he died while it was being built
        
        Valley of kings (1532 – 1070 BC):
        
        Pyramids had gone out of style
        
        They got smaller and smaller, until they started just using the valley
        
        63 known tombs, latest found only in 2005
        
        King Tu-tankhamun (King Tut), boy king, was buried here

Life in Ancient Egypt

Controlled by empire bureaucracy
Pharaoh is human reincarnation of the god Horus
- Pharaoh is supposed to maintain balance, and order and justice in the world (against chaos and disorder) (maintains ma’at)
- But in daily life, he really controls an army of accountants
- Travelled to inspect, tax, perform ceremonies
Scribes accounted for everything, used to control population
- Tracking grain from field to bread and beer
- Most early writing is fore accounting
- It’s the accountants that ruled the empire
The division of labour is also interesting – the people who built the pyramids
- Their daily labour was divided into equivalent portions and sub-portions
  - Team, sub-team, sub-sub-team
    - Amazing logic to it
  - We can track their work with graffiti on the blocks
    - They were placed on the internal surfaces, the surfaces that wouldn’t show
    - “Drunks of Menkaure”, and “Friends of Khufu” – examples of team names
  - The unfinished burial chamber in the Great Pyramid really shows how work was divided (into 4 equal labour portions)
- The 99% (the non-elite):
  - They can’t have just built pyramids
  - We just don’t know a lot about their lives
  - No urbanism (not large cities; this was an empire ruled over farming lands)
- Lahun, Upper Egypt (2030 – 1840 BC):
  - Village for the pyramid’s workforce
  - Well preserved 800 m from the Pyramid of Lahun
    - Excavated by Petrie in the late 19^th century
  - Wooden boxes with infants in the floors
  - Preserved papyri (documents written on papyrus)
  - The layout of the city:
    - Walled-in village with regularly organized houses of mudbrick
    - Internal wall separated the village
      - 1/3 had many single room houses
      - 2/3 had fewer but larger multi-room “villas” (much more comfortable)
    - Interpretation?
      - This walled-in section of the city = the labourers
      - The bigger area (but with fewer houses) = the elite
    - Construction technique similar to Mesopotamia
      - Maybe slaves were captured in warfare, and brought to the site to build the pyramid
        
        Suggests the slaves had their own material culture
      - But the pyramid at Giza thought to be built by Egyptians, not by slaves
        
        The workers at Giza had much higher status
        
        “Friends of Khufu” is not slaves
        
        Conscript / volunteer labour during flooding of the Nile (when they couldn’t do their regular farming tasks)
        
        DMJM estimated 4-5 k people (not a huge number) built in 20-40 years
        
        Cemetery nearby has 600 people, some with healed injury
      - Amarna, Upper Egypt (1363-1347 BC)
        
        City abandoned after Pharaoh Akhenaten died (“the heretic” pharaoh)
        
        This Pharaoh tried to make a lot of religious reforms – he tried to make it a one-god form
        
        People didn’t like this, so after he died, everyone left and no one came back
        
        So good preservation – workshops, bakeries, houses left intact
        
        Multi-storied buildings, backyards with wells
        
        Known for his wife, Nefertiti
        
        Workers village: neat little rows of structures
        
        Roofs made of reef thatch
        
        Areas for keeping pigs
        
        Summary – 99%
        
        We don’t know a lot other than worker’s villages
        
        Biased spatial sample
        
        Nile floods destroyed floodplain settlements
        
        Space beyond floodplain still lived in today
        
        Slaves/conscript labour vs. patriotic volunteers?
        
        Lahun: 2030-1840 BC, Upper
        
        Giza: 2589-2566 BC, Lower
        
        So they were separated by both time and space – these could be factors in the difference

Textbook, Chapter 11 (11.2)

To the south, the limit of Upper Egypt is defined by a series of cataracts (rapids)
To the north, the Nile Valley spreads into several branches, forming the Delta region as it flows toward the Mediterranean Sea
Egypt’s geography is unique – it has boundaries to the east and west in the form of desert, and to the south by the cataracts
- This makes the risk of foreign invasion very minimal
The annual flooding of the Nile replenished the soil, so problems of salination found in southern Mesopotamia are not present here
- This also means that irrigation systems weren’t necessary
- The Nile Valley had no mineral resources, but the desert did, and the Egyptians used this
The Predynastic is poorly understood, but towards the end there were 3 kingdoms along the Nile Valley
The end of the Predynastic and the beginning of the Early Dynastic is marked by the unification under King Narmer
3 cycles of integration and collapse:
- Periods of integration: Early Dynastic/Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom
  - Old Kingdom: Lower Egypt held the power
  - New Kingdom: Upper Egypt held the power
  - During the Middle and New Kingdoms, Egypt went to conquer through the North, coming into conflict with Mesopotamia
    - Also during Middle and New, Egypt was active in creating trade networks
  - Periods of collapse: First Intermediate, Second Intermediate, Third Intermediate
- An Egyptian Pharaoh, upon his death, became the incarnation of the god Osiris, the god of the dead
  - He also had a special relationship with the sun god Ra
  - He fights for ma’at – fights against isfet, the force of chaos embodied by the snake-demon Apophis, which threatened the equilibrium of the cosmos
- Extended family remains an essential social unit
  - Some even say that the conception of kingship was based on an extension of the household
  - Labour groups were organized perhaps by clan or extended family
- Hieroglyphs were based on combinations of logograms (signs that represent a whole word), phonograms (signs that represent sounds), and determinatives (signs that indicate the exact meaning of a word)
  - Documents were written on papyrus, a reed native to the Nile Valley
  - Hieratic (a more efficient form of writing) was developed in the Fourth Dynasty for scribes; hieroglyphics were still used for monuments
- Giza Pyramids:
  - The largest (and earliest): Cheops
  - The second largest (and second earliest): Cepheren
  - The smallest (and latest): Mycerinus
- One of the most famous features at Giza is the Great Sphinx
- At least some of the workers were paid in food rations
- Egypt was a territorial state rather than a city state
- Memphis, the Old Kingdom capital of Egypt, cannot be reached (it’s too far below the water table) – but we have uncovered Amarna (of the New Kingdom) in Upper Egypt
  - Amarna was founded as a new capital by the heretic king Akhenaten
    - He focused on Aten, the visible disc of the sun
    - New style of art; he and Nefertiti were depicted with oddly elongated features
    - After his death, his reforms were rejected, his monuments smashed, and his city at Amarna abandoned
  - We don’t know whether cities like Amarna existed before the New Kingdom
  - Kinship continued to play an important role long after the formation of the state

Why Jared Diamond Is Full Of It – Chaco Canyon, Easter Island, Incan Revolution, and Classic Maya

Jerry Diamond has become the public face of archaeology, and we don’t like that
Guns, Germs and Steel (1997):
- Have vs. Have Nots
- Argues Western Europe was luck in geography (not superior, just lucky)
  - Led to technology advances which allowed for world conquest
  - This is good; this is true that technology advances were a bit of luck, and that races aren’t all that different
  - Gives alternative to racist ideology of “racial” differences in ability in intelligence
- But criticized for factual errors and overall flavour of Environmental Determinism
  - The extreme of external change forces we talked about before
  - It’s too simple – there is variation around the world not due to climate
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005):
  - Description of “collapsed” societies of the past with warnings of modern day hubris
  - Themes:
    - Overpopulation
    - Environmental degradation with over-exploitation
    - Climate change
    - Ego-driven rulers
    - Failure to respond to warning sings
  - Fault of the people – they didn’t react well (yes it’s environment, but peoples’ fault)
  - Criticized for factual errors and overall flavour of Environmental Determinism
- The message sounds convincing bc it connects with our feelings (everyone’s worried about climate change, etc)
  - But the specialists of the particular case studies that he is supposedly citing details from: they point to factual errors, errors of omission, and a general lack of relevant context
- After Guns, Germs and Steel, archaeologists argued it, but there was no collaborative counter-effort
  - But after Collapse, they did that – they made a volume of articles, but it was still too academic-y, and it didn’t have a huge impact on the general population
    - Specialists take on each of Diamond’s case studies
    - General disagree with Diamond’s use of “collapse”, “choose”, and “success”
    - Instead they argue that almost all societies exhibit “resilience”
      - The masses will make it, they will just go somewhere else and reinvent themselves – they will manage

Case Studies

Anasazi vs. Pueblo
- According to Diamond:
  - The last (particularly strong, 50 years) drought was the last straw, to a population already weakened by social and political strife
  - And there was too many people, they couldn’t be supported by the environmental change
  - In building all of those small rooms, they cut down trees
    - Deforestation is a contributing factor in erosion, and the erosion caused entrenchment of the river through the canyon – which meant they couldn’t get water anymore
  - So the people leaved Chaco canyon (the city) in drones
- Critique by Wilcox:
  - Challenges the idea that Chaco canyon was a significant population centre – it was a ritual place, that never would have supported large-scale agriculture
    - Evidence that the food was brought in (vs. grown in Chaco): isotope studies
  - It was European settlers (moving westward) that had been diverting huge amounts of the water for irrigation
    - And the cattle upstream caused erosion downstream
  - The drought was not that impressive
  - The descendents of these people are still alive today
    - People spread out and did their own thing in neighbouring communities, after the ritual centre was no longer usable
      - Secretive over rituals and symbols, even within a community
      - It’s not a collapse of population, it’s a collapse of the sharing of ideologies (they started keeping them secret)
    - Loss of pots of the Pueblo was interpreted as population collapse – really, it just could mean that moved! This is a flaw in archaeological practice
  - Easter Island (Rapa Nui)
    - Settled by Polynesian sailors (2000 km to nearest island, very isolated)
      - One of the last islands to be settled – talked about in the Oceania lecture
      - The winds to get there are against you – it was only settled by one group, once – it’s incredible it was ever settled at all bc of the winds and distance
    - They were agriculturalists: they diverted seasonal streams to irrigate agricultural fields
      - Raised chickens, hunted local sea birds at first
    - According to Diamond:
      - Deforestation, due to hubris of the rulers, competition to make the biggest monuments/statues
      - Society consumed with religious fervour (the monuments were thought to represent the ancestors) and status
      - Carved giant statues out of rock
        
        People fought (and killed) over resources and land and access
      - Critique by Hunt & Lipo:
        
        The rats caused the deforestation by eating the nuts
        
        And people can move Moai (the statues)without wood (like aw fridge, by pivoting) – unlike Diamond’s version
        
        Population actually increased in spite of this
        
        When the Polynesians came, they brought rats
        
        The rats had a much larger role to play in deforestation
        
        It was compounded by people burning wood for fires – but smaller role
        
        Rats didn’t have any natural predators – common problem in islands (happened in Hawaii)
        
        The only remaining trees/plants were the ones that rats don’t like
        
        And the highlands remained – bc the rats couldn’t reach it
        
        When European settlers arrived, they brought diseases – last straw
        
        Population of 300 mostly killed by European disease
        
        Conquistadors vs. Inca
        
        Pizarro, leading a ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers (really, mercenaries/adventurers), was in unfamiliar terrain, but slaughtered thousands of Incans
        
        Critique by Cahill:
        
        Really, it was the Incans that were complex, and the Spaniards that were new and rural and developing
        
        Incans were a more advanced civilization than Spain
        
        A lot of natives fought against the Incans, bc the king (Atahuallpa, from Ecuador) had just finished a massive civil war – he had just taken out the previous king
        
        Both sides of the war were diminished in numbers, exhausted, less organized than usual
        
        They weren’t expecting this
        
        The king was at a resort, relaxing from the war
        
        The Spaniards conquered through bureaucracy
        
        By managing internal strife that already existed, they managed to create internal divisions – divide and conquer strategy
        
        So when they got to the king’s camps, they had natives that had just lost to the king and were pissed about it
        
        Diamond ignores all of this stuff and just says that it was the technology (domesticated horses and weaponry)
        
        Also: who wrote about this valiant conquest? The Spanish conquistadors! There was no other writings about this, no mass grave found, etc
        
        You have to take these stories with a grain of salt
        
        These guys were adventurers, their purpose wasn’t to be historians
        
        The role of the Europeans in this is greatly exaggerated
        
        Diamond de-contextualizes events in order to have them better fit his message
        
        There was a revolution a little bit into the Spanish conquest – Indians revolted, and those who had suppressed the revolution were not Spanish, but the higher-status Incans who had allied with Pizarro
        
        This was really a continuation of the previous civil war
        
        Classic Maya Collapse
        
        Diamond’s account:
        
        Rampant warfare
        
        Pattern of escalating warfare, spiralled out of control
        
        Ego-driven rulers
        
        Deforestation in order to make thick plaster – liberal use of plaster
        
        As it nears collapse, plaster is thin, not used liberally anymore
        
        The Mayans were adapting to the change they had provoked
        
        The problem of severe deforestation was compounded by the Mayans’ increasing population
        
        When deforestation happens, you get erosion, etc
        
        Disease and malnutrition then occur – food crisis
        
        By 950 AD, not just Copan, but many Mayan cities had been abandoned
        
        Warfare a symptom, not a cause
        
        People fight bc they need resources
        
        The kings produced short-term interests (building a bigger temple than the king next door), and ignored the important long-term stuff
        
        Environmental degradation from over-farming and plaster manufacture
        
        Critique by McAnany and Negron:
        
        Rampant warfare:
        
        No evidence for widespread warfare
        
        The struggles were more personal
        
        g. a small group capturing another king, and demanding ransom (they only killed once)
        
        Warfare was to demonstrate their might, vs. to kill
        
        Bc kings were directly involved in their soldiers’ combat, they picked their fights carefully
        
        More like small-scale raids
        
        Over time, there are increasing numbers of descriptions of warfare
        
        That’s all Diamond is using; there are no bodies
        
        But there are also increasing numbers of descriptions of everything (every aspect of daily life); not just warfare
        
        The proportion of the writing that was dedicated to warfare – didn’t increase
        
        There was intermarriage between city-states, this created alliances – these descriptions also increased
        
        And the statue of the king holding a spear – that was just symbolic
        
        His name was “He of Many Captives”; not killing
        
        Environmental degradation:
        
        They were actually conserving their environment
        
        Ego-driven rulers:
        
        The abandonment of these cities – they moved more towards cities around water, they left the inland less populated
        
        They moved to cities more centralized on the trade route – i.e. on water
        
        These people are still around!
        
        Diamond talks about how a drought made people lose faith in the king, who was supposed to be divine and make it rain
        
        But really, it was a bit of a mosaic
        
        In some areas, there was still rainfall, and it carried on just fine, etc
        
        More complicated than that

Summary

Diamond failed to give adequate context
Placed his message ahead of his data
- “Cherry picked” data
Numerous (often accused of deliberate) misrepresentation of archaeological data to support his message
Some kernels of truth to his message and his interpretation
- “If you torture the data long enough, nature will confess”
Anthropologists don’t seek overarching laws, they like to contextualize, complexify, relativize, particularize, etc
- They look for specifics – anthropologists don’t deal well with looking for broad laws
  - To do that, yes, you have to simplify

Cultural Evolution: Arctic and Sub-Arctic

Does culture change systematically?
- Does culture evolve like biology?
The process of evolution (not the drivers): stages:
- Source of variation
  - For biological: mutation
  - For cultural: innovation (that’s how cultural traits come up – people invent it)
- Inheritance: selective parts of that variation needs to be inherited
  - For biological: from parent to child
  - For cultural: the cultural trait gets passed down from parent to child (vertical transmission), but we also have oblique transmission (adult to child, not necessarily parent), and horizontal transmission (in between groups)
- Selection and reproduction
  - For biological: beneficial mutation = more kids
  - For cultural: selected for because it’s desirable
- Time scale (important in the distinction btwn biological and cultural evolution)
  - For biological: on a generational time-scale – takes many generations
    - And the length of a generation depends on the species
  - For cultural: it’s within the lifespan of the individual
    - It doesn’t have to be that the infant comes with the shining new idea
    - An adult innovates over his lifetime
    - This is a key difference between biological and cultural: you don’t need inheritance on a generational scale
  - Adaptation
    - For biological: better able to cope with environment
    - For cultural: can also be an internal driver, not just external
  - Mechanisms of change today:
    - Innovation
      - g. stone tools, building larger multi-family houses (instead of smaller ones) in the Mesolithic
    - Learning with modification
      - Like broken telephone, message gets replicated, and over each “generation”, it’s changed a bit
      - Going from small houses to large ones could also be learning with modification – learning with modification is part of the innovation process
    - Drift
      - Random, when population size is small)
      - When population is large, law of large numbers keeps everything roughly the same
      - In a small population, random things could happen: smartest guy falls off a cliff
        
        In a large population, these things even out
        
        But in a small one, an event like this can really effect things
      - g. H. Floriensis – their tool kit diminished, they stopped using some tools they had brought with them from the mainland (they also started making new ones)
        
        This “stopped using” part is the drift
      - Natural selection
      - Sexual selection
    - Coastal ecotone advantage:
      - Land and sea resources – you get the benefits of both worlds
      - Marine food comes to you (you don’t have to go chasing it through the forest)
        
        This shifts the game in what’s possible
        
        Large shift in material culture and behaviour – maritime revolution in cultural behaviour (probably gradual)
        
        The first part of this shift is in economy:
        
        Marine mammals: seal, walrus, porpoise, whale
        
        Fish: salmon, other “anadromous” species
        
        Birds: great auk, puffin, loons, mergansers, geese, eggs, etc
        
        Migratory flocks come in yearly
        
        Shellfish and urchins
        
        Terrestrial fauna: caribou, musk ox, beaver, rabbit, martin
        
        Marine flora: kelp
        
        Terrestrial flora
        
        Maritime revolution: mobility
        
        Seasonal reduction in mobility
        
        Food comes to you
        
        Maritime revolution: surplus
        
        Marine resources abundant when they come
        
        Storage is key
        
        Bc you can store food, you can store more than you need: accumulation of surplus (evolution)
        
        This leads to more calories à more population à more cultural complexity (more rules that have to govern society, status differences, social hierarchies)
        
        How many revolutions have we had in material culture so far?
        
        Neolithic revolution, the invention of agriculture
        
        Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition
        
        Discovery of the New World – this is a great example of drift – it was a small population that made it into the New World, and their material culture shifted
        
        Marine adaptation has potential, but there’s only so much you can take from the environment
        
        With agriculture, you can modify the environment to suit your needs, make it have more resources (fertilizer, irrigation, etc) – but you don’t have the same control over marine environment
        
        You can build better nets and harpoons to better catch the resources that are there, but you can’t make it give you more resources
        
        There’s no niche construction
        
        In practice, not every place in the world is appropriate for marine adaptation
        
        There’s a lot of variation over space – some places you can occupy seasonally, some you can stay at year-round
        
        Only in arctic and sub-arctic regions, do you have that abundance of marine resources
        
        The northern latitudes – and almost all of them have had marine adaptation occupied at some point in pre-history
        
        Northeast New World:
        
        Maritime Archaic, Newfoundland:
        
        Elaborate burial tradition
        
        Associated with marine mammal hunting
        
        Sedentism
        
        Long-distance trade
        
        Lasted almost 7000 years (more than double Dynastic Egypt)
        
        At first, post-Clovis technological culture
        
        Then 7000 years ago is when we see the first evidence of this elaborate burial tradition: L’Anse-Amour, Labrador (also the first burial in the New World):
        
        12 year old child buried
        
        With red ochre sprinkled on top of him
        
        Buried with bone “toggling” harpoon head, walrus tusk, fish bones, and a whistle
        
        7000 ya, this burial tradition begins
        
        By 5000 ya, they’ve made it all the way up the coast, to Ramah and Saglek Bays (completely inhospitable bays) – no food resources here
        
        People came here just for this rock, and then it gets traded all the way down to Maine – you don’t come here for food, just for this rock
        
        Sandy Clove, Labrador (6kya):3 longhouses, they are clearly multi-family structures
        
        So maybe this is a communal industry, to get the maritime resources together
        
        A seasonal, sedentary society
        
        Port au Choix, NFLD (4kya, but this site was here for a long time after):
        
        Remarkable preservation
        
        It’s a cemetery of over 100 people (that were put in over a long period of time – people came back to this place to bury their dead)
        
        People lived here for part of the year, and if they died here, they were buried here. And even people who died elsewhere were brought here
        
        Many grave goods, red ochre
        
        Some graves do have more grave goods than others (so there is status), but no status differences by age or sex
        
        So no systematic way in which status is attributed
        
        A 12 year old have many grave goods – means inherited
        
        Suggests early division within the society of status and hierarchy
        
        The Arctic: not a continent; mostly ocean, with parts of North America, Europe and Asia. The ocean is largely frozen.
        
        Antarctica: a continent, not owned by a country
        
        Polar bears and penguins don’t live together – they each live on one end
        
        You can define the Arctic in 3 ways:
        
        Arctic circle (66 degrees)
        
        Tree-line
        
        Average temperature in July is less than 10 degrees Celsius: the AMAP line
        
        Arctic areas have the following in common:
        
        High levels of seasonal temperature variation
        
        Summer adaptation
        
        Winter adaptation
        
        Low carrying capacity
        
        Greatly affected by climate change
        
        Reliance on marine resources
        
        Affected by isostatic rebound
        
        The earth’s crust is like a spring
        
        When glaciers form on top of them, it gets pressed down
        
        When they melted, the spring rises – but over thousands of years, so Finland is still rising – the land is pushed up
        
        Some land becomes closer to the shoreline – becomes more shallow water; this supports more marine life
        
        Isostatic rebound = coastal displacement
        
        In Northern Finland, the coast is moving East, even today
        
        Meanwhile, elsewhere:
        
        The Neolithic revolution was happening
        
        Intro of agriculture allowed for a more sedentary lifestyle, which leads to a whole bunch of cultural innovations like:
        
        Villages
        
        Monuments
        
        Means surplus resources
        
        Means centralization of energy (to get people working together), and a hierarchy/power
        
        New technology
        
        Ceramics: a sedentary population’s tool
        
        Bc it takes a long time to make them + dry weather (which is not common in Northern Finland)
        
        Also bc they are heavy
        
        But they can be sealed, so they can carry liquids
        
        They modified the ceramics by adding a material to make it less heavy – shows innovation
        
        Specialization
        
        Special activity sites – different sites nearby (but across the river) had mainly one thing (one site had lithics, one had ceramics)
        
        Are these special workshops? If so, why across the river?
        
        So tentative evidence of special activity sites
        
        These innovations were adopted by the marine villages – why weren’t they innovated by marine? Why by agriculture? Lots of questions
        
        Inuit archaeology in Northern Quebec:
        
        Dorset
        
        Arrived in Nunavik, c. 2300 BP
        
        They didn’t have bows and arrows, despite the fact that populations before and after them on all sides, did
        
        They didn’t have drills – they gouged all the holes they had to have – even though they had the rocks to make drills
        
        They had tiny blades they would attach to bone (as opposed to making larger tools) – microliths
        
        They had a well-developed artistic tradition – they had time and surplus, so why the lacking tools?
        
        These guys, and the Thule, were more mobile than people in Finland
        
        Thule
        
        Arrived in Nunavik, c. 700 BP, replaced Dorset
        
        They have legends that referred to people that were there before (i.e. Dorset), the people that made the drivelines (for them, they think)
        
        So there was contact
        
        Ancestors of modern Inuits
        
        Had drills, unlike the Dorset
        
        The evidence:
        
        The site is quite a bit from the waterfront
        
        A few historic, European-made artifacts
        
        Some traditional artifacts
        
        Traditional artifacts made with historic materials
        
        Whale bones in higher areas of site
        
        Caribou bones in lower areas of site
        
        A lot of walrus, a bit all over the place
        
        No evidence of dwellings or architecture
        
        What was the purpose of this site? When was it occupied? Why is it so big?
        
        At least one occupation was winter – so they would kill the walrus and the whale and drag them up the hill to butcher collectively
        
        Whale bones are bigger, so they wouldn’t slide down when the slow melted
        
        Caribou hunted in the summer, and they were killed where they were
        
        We see no houses bc they were made of snow! Igloos

Textbook, p174 – 179

See Notes from Chapter 6 (6.3, the section “the New World”)

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