Development of World Civilization

COURSE OBJECTIVES

•      Examine the basic methods and concepts of archaeology

 

•      Examine world prehistory: the development of human culture, from earliest human ancestors until the present

 

•      Examine, in particular, the rise of complex societies and the State in the past

 

 

Civilization Defined

•     Websters: “1a: a relatively high level of cultural and technological development; specif : the stage of cultural development at which writing or the keeping of written records is attained  b : the culture characteristic of a particular time or place”

 

 

What is Archaeology

‘a subdiscipline of anthropology involving the study of the human past through its material remains’ (Renfrew and Bahn 1991)

 

‘archaeology is the study of ancient human societies using material remains to reconstruct human behavior in the past’ (Fagan 1998)

 

‘the study of the human past’ (Thomas 1989)

 

Actually, involves several questions:

1) What do archaeologists want to learn;

2) How do they learn it, and;

3) How do they employ what they know

 

 

Anthropological Archaeology

•      Anthropological archaeology differs from Biblical and Classical Archaeology, which focus largely on Mediterranean and European civilizations and are more closely linked with history and art history than anthropology, in that the emphasis is on understanding and explaining human cultural behavior in the broadest sense, including the pasts of non-Western peoples.

 

 

What is Anthropology

•      Anthropology,  the study of humankind (from the Greek anthropos, for ‘human,’ and logos, for ‘study’), is a social science, insofar as it seeks to reveal and understand generalities in human cultural behavior through cross-cultural comparison.  It also employs humanistic perspectives, similar to those of the humanities (e.g., literature,  philosophy, history), that seeks to address the unique aspects of specific peoples

 

 

Holistic Perspective

•      Anthropology differs from other social sciences in its holistic perspective: it attempts to understand the full range of human diversity from both biological and cultural perspectives

•      Biological anthropology attempts to understand humans as biological organisms

•      Cultural anthropology attempts to understand humans as cultural beings

–   Subdivided into ethnology (focused on living societies) and archaeology (focused on past societies)

 

 

Culture

•      Roughly defined, culture refers to the rules or standards by which societies (groups of socially integrated peoples) operate: the guiding principles, practices, and values that orient human cultural life.

 

 

Cultural Relativism

•      An attitude shared by anthropologists that a society’s customs and ideas should be understood in the context of that societies problems, opportunities, and history: attempts to move the ‘ethnocentric’ or culture-bound views that the way w do it is the right or best way

 

 

Goals of Archaeology

•      The broad goal of anthropological archaeology is to understand human cultural diversity through time and across space, particularly the processes of cultural change over relatively long time spans (centuries and millennia)

 

•      ‘Archaeology is concerned with the full range of past human experience – how people organized themselves into social groups and exploited their surroundings; what they ate, made, and believed; how they communicated and why their societies changed’     (Feder 2000)

 

 

Goals of Archaeology

•           Specific goals of archaeology:

•           Develop cultural chronologies: address questions of what, where, and when things happened in the past

•           Reconstruct past lifeways: breathing life into chronologies – address questions of how some human group lived in a specific time and place

•           Understand cultural processes that underlie human behavior: address why questions of how cultures changed over time

 

 

Antiquarianism

•      A term used in the 18^th   and 19^th centuries referring to someone who collected antiquities to fill cabinets of curios, including ancient artifacts

•      Although having roots in the history of the classical civilizations of the ancient world, biblical studies, and art history, there was no attempt to understand non-Western peoples or past lifeways

 

 

American Archaeology

•     In America, anthropological archaeology began with the early excavations of Thomas Jefferson (1787), attempting to answer the question of the origins of Native Americans

 

 

Roots of Scientific Archaeology

•      In 1841, Boucher de Perthes published convincing evidence that human made objects associated with the bones of extinct animals

•      In 1848, Thomsen suggested that collections of antiquities could be divided into three periods: Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age

•      In 1859, Charled Darwin published On the Origin of the Species

 

 

What is Science

‘Science is sciencing’ (Leslie White 1949)

 

Search for patterned regularities and universal laws of nature using scientific methods

 

 

Scientific Anthropology

•      ‘human reality is too important to leave to the novelists’ (Glassie

•      Render the human experience intelligible to modern people

•      Attempts to objectively reveal cross-cultural generalizations about humankind

 

 

Culture History

•      The initial goal of archaeology: to establish the when, where, and how of the past

•      Understand the distribution of things in time and space

•      Develop long term sequences of cultural continuity and change

 

 

Paleo-Ethnography

•     The study of extinct lifeways

•     Attempts to reconstruct the specific cultural characteristics of a specific group in the past

 

 

Processual Archaeology

•      Processual (the ‘New Archaeology’) attempts to reveal and explain the general processes that underlie cultural behavior

•      Sees culture as adaptive to general ecological, economic, and demographic factors

•      In other words, infrastructure determines the nature of culture and structural (sociopolitics) and superstructural (religion) patterns

 

 

Humanistic Archaeology

•      Commonly referred to as ‘Post-processual’ archaeology

•      Emphasizes the importance of history, ideology, power relations, and the human subject in cultural process and change

 

 

Course Outline and Requirements

•     Requirements

–   Read Fagan’s People of the Earth, come to class and pass two equally-weighted exams

•     Course is divided into five segments:

–   Introduction to Objectives and Concepts

–   Origin of Biological Humans and Culture

–   Origin of Food Production and Settled Life

–   Rise of Social Inequality and Complex Society

–   Rise of the State and Urbanism

 

Time, Space and Analogy:

The practice of archaeology

The Stuff of Archaeology

 

Archaeological Objects

Major categories of artifacts of pre-industrial technologies, include: stone, ceramics, metals, and perishable artifacts

 

Human Skeletal Remains

•     Human skeletal remains provide another important source of information on, for instance: age, sex, pathologies, stress, general health, diet. Among other things

 

Environmental Archaeology

•     Evidence from archaeological sites also includes a variety of evidence from carbonized plant remains, pytoliths, and pollen, studied by paleoethnobotanists, burned and unburned animal bones (faunal remains), studied by zoo-archaeologists, as well as evidence incorporated in soils, studied through geo-physical and geo-chemical means by pedoarcchaeologists

 

Archaeological Record

•     Most archaeologists study material culture that is no longer being used in the dynamic context of a contemporary society, but in the static context of the archaeological record – the surviving physical remains of past human activities

 

•     Therefore, issues of preservation, visibility, and post-depositional disturbance loom large

 

An archaeological deposit has two critical attributes:

•            contains objects of the past; and (2) these are found meaningful context;

 

 ‘This is all that matters in archaeology: objects and meaningful contexts.  All else is secondary’     D.H. Thomas 1998

 

 

•            The archaeologist seeks to learn about culture from the fragmentary remains – the remnants – of human activity preserved in the archaeological record;

•            human behavior is patterned, governed by guiding norms (culture); hence, there is patterning in the remains it leaves behind: patterning in the archaeological record, across time and space, is the primary concern of the archaeologist

 

‘Take a glass coffeepot, a set of rosary beads, a wedding ring, a fishing pole complete with reel, a jewelry box, a pair of skis, an eight ball from a pool table, a crystal chandelier, a magnifying glass, a harmonica, and a vacuum tube and break them to pieces with a hammer.  Bury them for three centuries, and then dig them up and present them to a literate citizen of Peking.  Could he tell you the function of the objects which these fragments represent?’      James Deetz

 

This quote draws our attention to the fact that, once removed from their lived settings, these material remains become fragmented – some things are broken down into bits, some do not preserve and disappear This obviously makes it harder to interpret the function or meaning of the objects to their original users

 

 

Archaeological Context

•          Therefore, artifacts and ecofacts are studied not only as objects, but careful attention is directed at understanding the relationships between artifacts, ecofacts, and other cultural materials in the natural matrix in which they occur

•          The associations between things in the archaeological record is referred to as archaeological context, and includes:

•          Matrix – the natural deposits

•          Provenience – vertical and horizontal position within in matrix

•          Association with other finds – relationship between things

 

 

Archaeological Sites

•      Patterning can be studied at various levels:

•      The region

•      The site

•      Activity areas within sites

 

•      The fundamental unit of archaeological analysis is the site: a discrete archaeological deposit representing, for instance, an ancient quarry, campsite, village, or town

 

 

Archaeological Features

•      Intra-site patterning is studied with respect to the distributions of material remains across sites, particularly with respect to specific activity areas and cultural features – non-portable remnants of past huan activities, such as garbage pits, fire hearths, structures, etc.

 

 

Archaeological Survey

•     The first level of an archaeological study involves survey: the identification and preliminary characterization of sites in a predetermined study area or region

Archaeological Excavation

•      More involved investigations involve systematic excavations at individual sites to more fully document spatial patterns and distributions and recover a wide range of cultural remains

 

 

Dating

•     Archaeologists are not only interested in the distribution of things in space – spatial patterning, but are intimately concerned with how things are positioned in time

 

 

Time and Dating

•     Archaeologists are not only interested in the distribution of things in space – spatial patterning, but are intimately concerned with how things are positioned in time

•     Archaeologists have two primary means through which to date archaeological finds: relative and absolute dating

 

 

Relative Dating

•      Relative dating refers to techniques that assign a date to things relative to other things, for instance based on their position within the stratigraphy of an archaeological deposit or relative to artifacts known from other sites and regions, a technique known as cross-dating

 

 

Stratigraphy

•      Based on geological principle of superposition, whereby in layered deposits younger sediments are superimposed over older, deeper, deposits

 

 

Absolute Dating

•      Absolute dating involves assigning a specific date (June 6, 1957; AD 1492) to an archaeological find:

 

•      Calendric dating

•      Radiocarbon dating

•      Potassium argon dating

•      dendrochronology

 

 

Radiocarbon Dating

•      A physiochemical method for estimating the length of time since the death of an organism

•      Developed originally in 1949, radiocarbon dating is based on statistical probability and, in recent decades, has been refined considerably, although all dates must be interpreted critically

 

 

Breathing Life into the Archaeological Record

•      Moving beyond the logistical concerns of recovering, dating, and analyzing  archaeological materials, the archaeologist is faced with the formidable problem of interpretation: giving meaning to the archaeological record

 

 

Paleo-Environment

•      One of the first steps in archaeological interpretation involves reconstruction of past environments, clues to which often come from geology, palynology, climatology, as well as the archaeological study of ecofacts in sites

 

 

 

Formation Processes

•     Archaeologists must also attempt to understand the specific conditions which led to the formation of sites: formation processes

•     Consideration must be given to both the cultural and natural factors of deposition and post-depositional disturbance

 

 

Analogy

•      Ultimately, interpretations of what archaeological finds signify, in terms of past cultural patterns, involves analogy

•      The primary source of analogy is the ethnography of living groups

•      Two varieties: direct historical (homology) and general analogy

 

 

Ethnoarchaeology

•     The study of contemporary peoples to understand cultural processes that are relevant to understanding past cultures

 

 

Historical Approaches

 

•     Direct historical approaches to ethnoarchaeology

•     Text-aided interpretation of archaeological deposits (combining documentary and archaeological analyses)

•     General view that things must be understood in their sociohistorical context

 

 

Cross-cultural Approaches

•     Comparative approaches to the study of human societies that seek to reveal commonalities or generalities that exist between cultures

•     In archaeology, promotes the view that regularities or generalities between cultures can provide models for understanding past societies: I.e., hunter-gatherers live in small, mobile commmunties

 

 

Divine Creation

•      Through 14th C. the Genesis version of Divine Creation accepted as explanation for biological diversity

•      Included following beliefs:

–    Earth was young (4004 BC according to Archbishop Ussher (1581-1656)

–    Species were unchanging (“fixity of species”)

–    Species arranged in hierarchy, with humans at top (Aristotle’s “Great Chain of Being”)

 

Evolution

•     After 1500, new interest in questions of why things changed, in evolution

•     Diversity unexplainable through Ark

•     Age of Discovery: great diversity in nature and among living things

•     Copernicus – earth was not center of universe

•     Phenomenon governed by natural laws (gravity)

 

 

Earth History

•      Divine creation accepted, but natural phenomena and processes are systematically studied

•      Theory of the Earth by James Hutton published in 1788, building on earlier views of Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), promotes view that uniformitarian processes, rather than catastrophy, responsible for features of nature –

•      Suggests much longer timescale than Ussher proposed

 

 

UNIFORMITARIANISM

•      In Principles of Geology (1830-33), Lyell argued that geological processes in the present are same as those in the past;

 

•      UNIFORMITARIANISM implied slow, gradual change, not catastrophes;

 

•      And, if change was slow and gradual, a great deal of time was required to shape landscapes.

 

 

Explaining Organic Evolution

•      Lamarck was first to propose a process of biological change

•      He proposed a dynamic interplay between organic forms and the environment

–    as environment changed, organic forms changed due to increased or decreased use

–    these “acquired” traits would then be passed on to offspring

 

•      Lamarck’s Theory of Acquired Characteristics

–    Giraffe consumes lower foliage; stretches neck to get foliage from higher branches; stretching leads to longer neck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

–    Thus, acquired trait (longer neck) passed on to next generation; theory discredited with respect to biological evolution, but theory has important implications for learned behavior and environmental factors in cultural evolution

 

 

The Darwinian Breakthrough

•      After gaining considerable expertise in natural history, while also studying medicine and theology, Charles Darwin set sail in 1831 for a 5-year global expedition on the H.M.S. Beagle;

•      He left believing in the fixity of species and shortly later grew doubtful;

•      In the Galapagos Islands, Darwin observed diversity among finches, whereas on the South American continent  only one species was observed

 

 

Variations as Adaptations

•      He reckoned that the island species descended from the mainland species, each adapting to unique circumstances of a variety of new habitats

•      He also recognized that biological variation WITHIN the mainland species was the key to this process of change

 

 

Natural Selection

•      Process often referred to as “Survival of the Fittest,” but more accurate to call it “Differential Reproductive Success”

 

–    variation exists in a given population of a species

 

–    under given set of environmental conditions, certain members possess traits that promote their survival and reproduction over those lacking them (some selected for, others against)

 

–    with each generation, population evolves, adapts

 

 

•      Darwin rejected the term “evolution,” because during his time the word connoted the unfolding of a preordained plan

•      To Darwin, evolution was simply “descent with modification”; it had no particular direction, no purpose

Genetic Change

•      How is new biological introduced that leads to speciation (emergence of new species) into a population: mutation, genetic drift, genetic flow, isolating mechanisms

•      Another problem with Darwin’s natural selection: how are genetic traits that are selected for passed on from parent to filial generation: he felt that parental traits were blended

 

 

Gregor Mendel’s Experiments

•      Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, studied sweet-pea hybridation and discovered that inherited biological material (genes) were neither blended nor destroyed but that genetic material from each parent retained its individuality

 

•      Crossed peas producing only tall plants with peas producing only short plants, only tall plants appeared in the first filial generation (F1)

 

 

Crosses Between Purebred Plants

•      When members of F1 were allowed to self-fertilize, some members of the F2 generation were short

•      The ratio of tall to short plants was consistently 3:1; 

•      Mendel reasoned that the traits must be controlled by discrete particles, and that each plant had two particles for each trait, one inherited from each parent

•      The trait was not destroyed not blended

 

 

Punnett Square

 

 

Evolution Today

•      Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics provide the foundations of modern evolutionary theory in biology

 

•      Several definitions:

–    Species: able to interbreed and produce viable offspring

–    Race (problematic term), subgroups within a species that can interbreed but seldom do

–    Clinal variation: systematic gradient in gene frequencies over space

 

    - Divergent evolution: ‘Mother’ population gives rise to two ‘daughter populations

    - Linear evolution: speciation along linear (time) trajectory (transformation)

    - Convergent evolution: two different species independently develop similar characteristics (e.g., wings, fins)  

Cultural Evolution

•      Cultural evolution emphasizes the systematic change of cultural systems through time: virtually all scientific archaeologists are evolutionists of one form or another, but differ widely on what definition of evolution they use

•      Cultural historical views tend to focus on phylogenetic view, whereas processualists, promoting the view that culture is the means through which humans adapt to their environments tend to view cultural evolution as a process that follows patterns of biological evolution: they use a natural science model

•      But, do cultural groups change according to the same principles and processes as biological species?

 

 

19^th Century Evolutionists

•    During the 19^th century, cultural evolutionists, such as Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Karl Marx, assumed that cultures passed through a series of universal (preordained) stages, such as savagery, barbarism, and civilization: unilinear evolution

 

 

20^th Century Evolutionists

•      During the 20^th century, many anthropologists shared this view of unilinear evolution and attempted to compare contemporary societies and place them in a hypothetical sequence approximating what they assumed characterized the human past

•      This view not only ignores the specific histories of non-Western people, but denies that evolutionary processes can follow different trajectories dependent on unique cultural and historical factors

•      Also, there is a profoundly Lamarckian aspect to human cultural evolution, since culture is learned and not biologically inherited 

 

 

Forms of Social Organization

•      Pre-state (kin-based societies):

–    bands and tribes: small-sized, autonomous social groupings, egalitarian, division of labor and status based on age, sex, and personal characteristics

–    chiefdoms: medium-sized social formations (1000s to 10,000s), ranked kin-groups based on hereditary status (incipient classes), regionally-organized, integrated (non-autonmous) communities

•      State (territory and class-based societies):

–    societies divided into various social classes, with centralized government, a ruling elite class, able to levy taxes (tribute), amass a standing army, and enforce law

 

 

Broad Cultural Processes

•      Innovation: development of new idea or practice

•      Diffusion: process by which ideas or traits pass from one person or group to another

•      Migration: movement of people from one place to another

•      Transfromation: internal transfromations in social organization and culture can be broad about the internal conditions of society, brought about by political process, religion, as much as by changes in economic, demographic, or ecological conditions (I.e, the infrastructure)

 

 

Primates

•      Primates (an order of mammals) is divided into two major sub-groups:

 

•      Prosimians: more primitive form, many lack color vision and fully opposable thumbs (lemurs, lorises, tarsiers)

 

•      Anthropoids: meaning human-like (monkeys, apes, humans)

–    Hominoids (superfamily Hominoidea): sub-group of anthropoids which includes large, tail-less primates (apes and hominids)

–    Hominids (Hominidae) – habitually bipedal hominoids

 

 

Eocene Primates

•      Small, arboreal insectivores, similar to tree shrews

•      Prehensile extremities, including tail, opposable thumbs, and stereoscopic vision

•      Earliest proto-prosimians in early Paleocene (65 mya) and first clear prosimians by late Paleocene (55 mya)

•      Late in Eocene, first anthropoids appear

 

 

Oligocene Primates

•      First anthropoids from the Fayum depression in Egypt; evidence for several genera of anthropoids

•      Aegyptopithecus likely common ancestor to all Old World monkeys and hominoids (apes and hominids)

•      10-15 lbs.; 2-1-2-3 dental pattern; possible Y-5 molar; sexual dimorphic arboreal quadraped

•      Also, first hominoids from the Fayum

 

 

Miocene Primates

•      Land bridge between Africa and Asia

•      Nearly 30 genera of Miocene hominoids in Africa and southern Eurasia, most without living descendants

•      Some part-time and, later, full-time terrestrial

•      Small to large (10-150 lbs)

•      2-1-2-3 and Y-5 dental formula; sexually dimorphic canines

 

•      Major trends in Miocene evolution:

–    Old World monkey line split off from hominoid line early in period

–    Proconsul (23-14 mya) probable last common ancestor to small- and large-bodied hominoids

–    Afropithecus (18-17 mya) good candidate for ancestor to later African hominoids

–    Sivapithecus (16-7 mya) ancestor to the Asian ape, orangutan

–    Dryopithecus (11-9 mya) and other Miocene genera are evolutionary dead ends

 

 

Dating Fossil Finds

•      Unlike radiocarbon dating, which typically dates the organic artifacts and byproducts of human activities (and limited to the past c. 100,000 years), fossil finds are typically dated using K/Ar dating of volcanic rocks, using the rate of decay of radioactive Potassium (K) into stable argon (Ar) gas;

•      K/Ar can date things up to billions of years of age

 

 

Pongid-Hominid Split

•      The oldest hominids date to roughly 4.4 mya and come from Africa

•      The latest well-dated hominoid ancestors from Africa date to about 14 mya

•      Some time between the two dates lies the split between the African Great Ape line and the human line

•      The fossil record is virtually silent, but molecular biology suggests split about 5-6 mya

 

 

The First Hominids

•      A growing list of characters

–    Australopithecus is genus for at least six species in Africa, dating from 4.2 mya, and showing two distinct evolutionary trends

–    Ardipithecus is newly proposed genus for the oldest yet; A. ramidus, at 4.4 mya

 

 

What Makes Something a Hominid?

•      Long believed that the first humans would be ape-like creatures with big brains (tool users, hunters, thinkers)

•      His was a small-brained creature with indications of human-like locomotion

Bipedal Primates: Hominids

–    Ardipithecus: most ape-like hominids

–    Australopithecus: small-brained, gracile, omnivorous hominid

–    Paranthropus: small-brained, robust, vegetarian hominid (specialists more or less evenly split about whether same genus as Australopithecus, or not)

–    Homo: large brained, omnivorous hominid

 

 

•      Two major regions of early hominid fossil sites in Africa

–    South Africa, where caves have produced scattered remains, mostly skulls

–    East Africa, with better contexts for articulated finds

 

 

Lucy Sets the Record Straight

•      1970s discovery of Australopithecine (A. afarensis) provided evidence for bipedalism but with a skull not much bigger than a chimp’s

•      4-mya footprints at Laetoli in Tanzania corroborated skeletal data for bipedalism

•      “Humans were built from the ground up, not the top down”

 

 

Anatomy of Bipedalism

•      Foot

–    arch

–    great toe aligns others

•      Pelvis

–    basin shaped

–    legs to side

–    leg sockets angled inward

•      Legs

–    femurs angled inward

–    knees lock in extended position

•      Spine

–    S-shaped, lumbar curve

•      Skull

–    foramen magnum faces downward

 

 

 

Adaptive Significance of Bipedalism

•      Many theories offered to explain the adaptive significance of bipedalism

–    Adapting to savanna habitat (incl. thermal efficiency)

–    Free hands to use weapons, tools

–    Hunting

–    Food provisioning

•      Many are based on uncritical use of fossil and archaeological data (e.g., legitimacy of evidence for tools, hunting, and home bases), inappropriate use of ethnographic material on hunter-gatherers, and a Western male-biased about gender roles

•      Hunting, tool using, base camps, monogamy, and food sharing was assumed, not investigated

•      To advance beyond speculation and bias, we need solid data on the sorts of environments the first hominids occupied, what they ate, and how they went about acquiring food.

 

 

•     With its radically different anatomy, bipedalism clearly was an adaptation to terrestrial living, but was it an advantage over quadrupedalism?

 

 

Aside from Bipedalism, Primitive Features Abound

•      Consider the best-documented early hominid, A. afarensis:

–    canines are large, dimorphic

–    tooth rows parallel

–    420 cc cranial capacity (modern chimp is 395 cc)

–    relatively long arms

–    long, curved fingers & toes

–    highly dimorphic in size (females 3.5-4 ft; males up to 5 ft)

 

 

Lifestyle of Earliest Hominids Uncertain

•      With exception of bipedalism, hominids predating 2.5 mya bear more similarity to their hominoid ancestors than to later Australopithecines

•      No evidence for those behavioral traits once assumed to make bipedalism advantageous (e.g., hunting, sophisticated tool use, provisioning)

•      Significance of bipedalism still uncertain

 

 

More Derived Features after 2.5 mya

•      After 2.5 mya, the Australopithecines diverge in both east and south Africa populations

–    a line of so-called “gracile” forms (A. africanus)

–    and a line of so-called “robust” forms (A. ethiopicus, A. robustus, A. boisei)

 

 

Gracile Form

•      A. africanus

–    all finds from South Africa

–    ca. 2.5 mya

–    compared to robusts, faces are more lightly built and dished-out

–    lacks sagittal crest

–    smaller molars

–    reduced canines, but still dimorphic

–    cranial capacity of  ca. 450 cc

 

 

Hypervegetarians

•      The robust forms display a variety of derived features that suggest a diet of hard, tough foods, thus open habitat

–    sagittal crest

–    massive cheek bones

–    large palate

–    massive molars

–    thick enamel

•      Other features

–    cranial capacity of ca. 520 cc

–    A. boisei persisted in east Africa with members of genus Homo until 1.2 mya

 

 

 

Prey, Not Predator

•      South African finds, including seemingly modified bone, were inspiration for hypothesis by Dart that early hominids walked upright to wield tools and weapons

•      In study of taphonomy (i.e., process of fossil assemblage formation), C. K. Brain determined that South African finds accumulated in caves from carnivores

•      no evidence for hunting or killing by hominids

 

 

Other Purported Hunting

•      Olduvai Gorge, East Africa

–    beds of bone, stone tools, and hominid fossils assumed to reflect remains of  base camps, where game was butchered and eaten

–    detailed analysis seems to show otherwise

 

 

Scavengers, not Hunters

•      Close examination of bones shows that bones likely reflect scavenging rather than hunting:

–    IF bones accumulated from hunting by hominids:

–    cut marks should occur on meat-bearing portions and at joints, indicating butchering

–    any additional marks inflicted by carnivores or scavengers should be OVER marks made by hominids (i.e., humans got to it first)

 

 

“Scavenger Hunt”

 

•      Pat Shipman found:

–    cut marks not concentrated at joints or meat-bearing places

–    tool cut marks were OVER carnivore marks

–    conclusion: hominids scavenged carnivore kills (getting hide, tendons, bone marrow)

 

 

And Base Camps….?

•      Other taphonomists have examined alternatives for the accumulation of bones at places like Olduvai

–    bones accumulate at carnivore kill sites

–    certain critters, like porcupines, collect bones

–    stone tools at kill locations may have been cached to enable quick scavenging by hominids (competitive edge over other scavengers)

 

 

Man the Provider?

•      Other inferences about early hominid behavior can be traced to cultural biases of investigators, some androcentric

•      If advantage of bipedalism was that it enabled provisioning of some members of groups by others, who provisioned whom?

•      Why necessarily men providing for women and children?

•      With no evidence for hunting and no base camps, male provisioning not likely

 

 

What’s Left?

•      Emergence of bipedalism becoming increasingly tied to forested habitat, not savanna

•      No good evidence for base camps, hunting, and food provisioning during first one million+ years of bipedalism

•      Food provisioning theory is culturally biased; need to consider alternatives

•      Long-distance foraging a likely selective factor for early hominids (helps explain widespread occurrence and gene flow in Africa)

•      Good evidence for hunting, base camps, and sophisticated tool using comes with subsequent genus, Homo

 

 

Origins of Humans and Culture

 

 

Prey, Not Predator

No evidence for those behavioral traits once assumed to make bipedalism advantageous (e.g., hunting, sophisticated tool use, defense)

•      South African finds, including seemingly modified bone, were inspiration for hypothesis by Dart that early hominids walked upright to wield tools and weapons

•      In study of taphonomy (i.e., process of fossil assemblage formation), C. K. Brain determined that South African finds accumulated in caves from carnivores

•      no evidence for hunting or killing by hominids

 

 

Other Purported Hunting

•      Olduvai Gorge, East Africa

–    beds of bone, stone tools, and hominid fossils assumed to reflect remains of  base camps, where game was butchered and eaten

–    detailed analysis seems to show otherwise

 

 

Scavengers, not Hunters

•      Close examination of bones shows that bones likely reflect scavenging rather than hunting:

–    IF bones accumulated from hunting by hominids:

–    cut marks should occur on meat-bearing portions and at joints, indicating butchering

–    any additional marks inflicted by carnivores or scavengers should be OVER marks made by hominids (i.e., humans got to it first)

 

 

“Scavenger Hunt”

 

•      Pat Shipman found:

–    cut marks not concentrated at joints or meat-bearing places

–    tool cut marks were OVER carnivore marks

–    conclusion: hominids scavenged carnivore kills (getting hide, tendons, bone marrow)

 

 

 

And Base Camps….?

•      Other taphonomists have examined alternatives for the accumulation of bones at places like Olduvai

–    bones accumulate at carnivore kill sites

–    certain critters, like porcupines, collect bones

–    stone tools at kill locations may have been cached to enable quick scavenging by hominids (competitive edge over other scavengers)

 

 

What’s Left?

•      Emergence of bipedalism becoming increasingly tied to forested habitat, not savanna

•      No good evidence for base camps, hunting, and food provisioning during first one million+ years of bipedalism

•      Long-distance foraging a likely selective factor for early hominids (helps explain widespread occurrence and gene flow in Africa)

•      Good evidence for hunting, base camps, and sophisticated tool using comes with subsequent genus, Homo

 

 

Homo habilis

 

•      Homo habilis (handy-man), first member of genus Homo

 

•      Largely in East Africa, few in South Africa

 

•      2.4 to 1.8 mya

 

 

Homo habilis

•      Larger cranial capacity than Australopithecines

–    631 cc average (500-800 cc range) compared to 520 cc for robust and 442 cc for gracile Australopithecus

•      larger front teeth, somewhat smaller molars than Australopithecines

•      evolved alongside, but as separate line from, robust Australopithecus in east Africa

•      L. Leakey regarded Homo as toolmaker in Olduvai deposits (1.85-1.6 mya)

 

 

•      Earliest evidence for Homo fossils comes from east Africa

–    recent dating of skull fragment from central Kenya push beginnings back to 2.4 mya

•      This is roughly same time robust Australopithecus appeared

•      Diversity reflects divergent adaptations

 

 

 

Robust Australopithecus vs. Homo

•     Clearly two separate adaptations

–   robust Australopithecus fitting hypervegetarian niche

–   Homo habilis fitting niche of meat scavenging, foraging omnivore

 

 

But How Many Species of Early Homo?

•      Does apparemt variation among early Homo fossils represent sexual dimorphism or different species?

•      If sexual dimorphism, then variation between sexes is greater in early Homo than in modern gorillas

•      Proposals for new species have been made, but nothing agreed on yet

•      This is critical issue as regards interpretation of social life of early Homo

 

 

Oldowan Pebble Tools

•      Simple percussion-flaked stone tools; 1.85 mya strata at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

•      Developed Oldowan in slightly younger strata

•      Acheulian (hand-axe) technology at ca. 1.6 mya

•      Acheulian and Developed Oldowan together at Olduvai for some hundreds of thousands of years

•      big-brains did not create tool-using, tool use prompted big-brains?

 

 

Major Themes

•     Divergence of Australopithecines and early Homo as early as 2.4 mya in east Africa

•     Robust Australopithecus extinct at 1.2 mya

•     Evolution of brain and cultural behaviors within Homo lineage

•     After 1.8 mya, new species of genus Homo (H. erectus) spreads geographically, evolves behaviors for sophisticated tool making, and eventually hunting and fire control

•     Asian and African Homo erectus populations diverge

 

 

Homo erectus

East Turkana, Kenya

•      ER 3733, almost complete H. erectus

•      cranial capacity of 848 cc

•      est. 1.9-1.6 mya, among oldest

•      earliest form sometimes called H. ergaster

 

 

Homo erectus milestones

•     First hominid to spread out of Africa

•     First hominid to make and use systematic stone tools

•     First hominid associated with probable evidence for hunting

•     First hominid associated with probable evidence for controlled use of fire

•     First hominid associated with possible evidence for use of base camps

 

 

Brain and Body Size of erectus

•      Cranial capacity = 1000 cc (range of 750 to 1250 cc)

•      apparently significant increase over habilis (but was early Homo two or more species, some with larger brain size?)

•      differences in body size effects comparisons of relative brain size - relative brain size perhaps not so pronounced

•      Homo erectus clearly taller and more robust than habilis

 

 

West Turkana, Kenya

•      WT 15,000 - most complete H. erectus skeleton (1984-85)

•      est. at 1.6 mya

•      12-year-old boy about  5 ft. 3 in.; likely more than 6 ft. at maturity

•      postcranial remains very similar to modern humans

•      cranial capacity of 880 cc; likely over 900 at maturity

•      subsequent changes in cranial not post-cranial anatomy

•     change

 

•      General cranial features

–    low forehead

–    “football” shaped cranial vault

–    thick cranial bone

–    fairly large posterior teeth

–    supraorbital torus (browridge)

 

    Widest near base

 

 

The Defining Technology

•      Acheulian

–    bifacial hand-axes, cleavers, and other tools used for over one million years

–    two-stage process

•    blank preparation

•    shaping and thinning

–    required good raw material, foresight, and planning

–    reflects (symbolic?) communication of method and form

–    found throughout Africa and late in Europe, but not among classic Asian fossils (where “simple” choppers are typical)

 

 

“Erectus Rising”

•      Old Story: Homo erectus appeared in Africa some 1.8 mya, developed Acheulian technology at 1.5 mya, and used it to colonize rest of Europe and Asia by about 1.0 mya or soon thereafter

•      New data:  Advances in potassium-argon dating have been applied to finds in Java

–   now dates as old as early African dates

•      Helps explain lack of Acheulian technology in Asia -- they got there before it appeared in Africa

•      also suggests a rapid radiation of H. erectus out of Africa before 1.8 mya (earliest African finds are about 1.9 mya)

 

 

Homo erectus Hunting?

•      Olorgesailie, Kenya

–    Acheulian hand axes found in direct association with remains of large animals

–    dates to ca. 800,000 BP

•      Other sites have yielded reasonable associations of tools with butchered bone

–    Ambrona and Torralba, Spain

–    butchered elephants at 200,000 to 400,000

•      Schoningen, Germany

–    spears at 400,000

 

 

Control of Fire?

•      Evidence often ambiguous

–    natural fires easily misinterpreted as human

–     Chesowanja, Kenya (1.4 mya)

•    burned clay with stone tools

–    Zhoukoudian Cave, China (.5 mya)

•    possible layers of ash

•      nevertheless, the presence of H. erectus in cold regions of Europe and Asia  suggests use of fire, and perhaps clothing and shelter

•      no definitive evidence of controlled use of fire (fire hearths) until Neandertal times

 

 

Archaic Homo sapiens

•      Swanscombe skull

–   two parietals and occipital

–   estimated 1325 cc cranial capacity

–   thick skull bones like erectus

–   but higher cranial width

 

 

 

From Homo erectus to sapiens

Recognizing Fully Modern Humans

•     Cranial features

large brain (1350 cc average)

vertical forehead

relatively small browridges

pyramidal mastoid process

relatively small teeth

definite chin

 

 

Archaic Homo sapiens

•      “Transitional” forms between H. erectus and H. sapiens, dating 400,000-130,000 B.P.

•      Africa, Asia, Europe

•      generally show:

–    brain expansion

–    increased parietal breadth

–    decrease in molars

–    mixture of erectus and sapiens trait

•      Steinheim skull:

•    1100 cc cranial capacity

•    pronounced brow ridge

•    rounded occipital, wide parietals

 

•      Problems:

•      few H. erectus fossils; dating often uncertain

•      early archaic forms resemble H. erectus elsewhere

•      later archaic forms (i.e, after 200,000 B.P.) resemble Neanderthals

 

 

African Archaics

•      Broken Hill, Zambia:

–    large brow ridge, like erectus

–    low vault, like erectus

–    occipital torus, like erectus

–    but, thin skull bones...

–    and essentially modern base of skull

–    dates to 150,000-125,000 B.P.

•      Unlike European finds, later archaics resemble fully modern humans, not Neandertals

 

 

Anatomically Modern Humans

•      Strongest fossil evidence for emergence of fully modern humans comes from southern Africa

–    Klasies River Mouth

–    Border Cave

 

•      derived features like the chin are indicative of moderns

•      Dating to 120-80,000 BP

•      More advanced “punch” lithic technology to produce blades

 

 

Eve, Out of Africa

•      Mitochondrial DNA analysis suggests that entire population of the world can be traced to a single African lineage (Africa has greatest genetic diversity)

•      popular press seized the opportunity to refer to this common female ancestor as “Eve”

•      “Molecular clock” places “Eve” at ca. 200,000 BP

•      Thereafter, humans spread out and replaced all other hominids without significant interbreeding

•      see Fagan p. 84;

 

 

The Neanderthals

•      Group of archaic Homo sapiens with distinctive biological and cultural features

•      date from 130,000 to 35,000 B.P.

•      primarily from Europe, but also western Asia

•      “classic” Neanderthals from western Europe, coincide roughly with last glaciation (75,000-10,000 B.P)

 

 

Homo antecessor

•      Newest suggested hominid species, many do not recognize fossils as separate species

•      Gran Dolina cave, Spain

•      780,000 years ago

•      Possible common ancestor to H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and modern humans

•      Skulls seem transitional between erectus and archaic Homo

 

 

Homo heidelbergensis

•      400,000 – 100,000 years ago

•      Widespread geographically

•      Possible ancestor of H. neanderthalensis

•      Both it an antecessor are big-brained, with primitive skull features

•      Thus, six possible species of Homo in Pleistocene: H. ergaster, erectus, antecessor, heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and sapiens

 

 

Stop Acting Like a Neanderthal!

•      Ever since their discovery in the Neander Valley of Germany in 1856, Neanderthals have been a misunderstood lot

 

•      Discovered before more primitive hominids like H. erectus or Australopithecines, so differences between Neanderthals and moderns emphasized over similarities

 

•      Neanderthals regarded as slumped-over,  brutish and dull-minded

 

 

Images of the ‘Savage’

American Museum, 1921

 

 

La Chapelle-aux-Saints

•      One of the chief sources of biased perspective on Neanderthals

•      nearly complete skeleton in shallow grave

•      description became generalized:

•      But had misshapen spine from osteoarthritis, thus being bent-over or hunched, and was old and highly degenerated

•      individual was hardly representative of greater (I.e., younger and healthier) population

 

•      Classic Neanderthals of western Europe display robust post-cranial features, perhaps due to adaptation to cold environment

•      Neanderthals in western Asia not so robust, perhaps reflecting slightly warmer conditions

 

•      Classic Neandertal cranial features

large brains (1520 cc average)

low forehead

arched browridges

projected midportion of face

large front teeth

space behind molars

lack of chin

occipital torus

 

 

 

Mousterian Industry

•      Prepared core technique begun before Neanderthals, but elaborated on by them

–    core trimmed around edges to produce disk shape

–    then large flake struck from one face (known as Levallois technique)

–    flakes then shaped into number of specialized tools

 

•     Relatively simple bifacial tools of earlier populations continue, although the diagnostic Acheulian hand-axes become increasingly less popular, in favor of smaller flake and core tools

 

By late Mousterian a variety of fairly finely worked stone tools were being used by Neanderthal populations

 

 

•      Many aspects of advanced technology, such as worked blades, typically associated with later Upper Paleolithic (H. sapiens sapiens) groups are present in Mousterian and related industries

 

 

Subsistence

•      Emphasis on hunting game

–    animal bones abundant at sites

–    teeth, musculature of chewing show adaptation to meat, hide processing

–    helps explain some unusual cranial features, such as occipital torus and browridge

–    wear on teeth reflect use as “vice”

 

 

Hard Times!

•      Without long-distance projectile technology, hunting game may have involved dangerous confrontations

•      other evidence for trauma and degenerative problems abound

 

 

Mortuary Ceremonialism

•      Evidence from burials shows that Neanderthals accommodated the sick and injured in life and treated the dead with honor and ritual

•      La Chapelle, Shanidar, and Tabun skeletons all came from graves

•      Grave goods sometimes included

 

 

Ritual Life

•      Elaborate mortuary ritual shows, for the first time in human history, clear evidence of religion and belief in an afterlife.

•      Cave-bear cult once suggested from caves in central  Europe now widely rejected

 

Neanderthal Welfare

•      Also, sites like Shanidar cave, Iraq, where this old man whose skull was crushed, was carefully laid to rest, shows great caring for dead

•      Likewise, some living individuals were in very bad physical condition requiring care by others: although La Chapelle not as disabled as once thought, evidence of blind and maimed individual from Shanidar

 

•      Strongest fossil evidence for emergence of fully modern humans comes from Africa, dating to 120,000-80,000 B.P.

•      derived features like the chin are indicative of moderns

•      also very early evidence from Middle East, by ca. 115,000 or soon thereafter

 

Middle Eastern Caves

•      Until recently, moderns with somewhat primitive traits have long-been regarded as lineal descendants of Neanderthals at places like Skhul and Qafzeh caves

•      We now know these sites date to 115,000-100,000 B.P.,

•      Neanderthals and moderns perhaps lived virtually side-by-side for a long time

•      (Note: Neanderthal caves close to Skhul occupied from 120,000 to at least 60,000 B.P.)

 

•      How could Neandertals and moderns coexist so long without one replacing the other?

 

•      Perhaps they occupied entirely different niches?

–   Seasonally distinct patterns?

–   Different resource selection?

–   Did moderns apply cultural innovations (such as blade cores, spear throwers, bone working, art) that enabled use of resources inaccessible to Neandertal?

•      These and other hypotheses are subject of ongoing investigation

Did Neandertals Contribute to the Gene Pool of Fully Modern Humans?

 

 

Traditional Models

 

Multiregional Hypothesis

•      several (but not all!) regional populations of archaic sapiens evolved into moderns

•      Gene flow enough to preclude speciation, but not enough to erase regional differences that are evident to this day among human populations

•      Model can also accommodate “partial replacement” of certain archaics by moderns, but not complete replacement

•      opposing “Out-of-Africa” model suggests that modern humans evolved in Africa and spread to other areas, replacing other archaic populations

 

 

Eve, Out of Africa

•      DNA analysis suggests that entire population of the world can be traced to a single African lineage (Africa has greatest genetic diversity)

•      popular press seized the opportunity to refer to this common female ancestor as “Eve”

•      “Molecular clock” places “Eve” at ca. 200,000 BP

•      Thereafter, humans spread out and replaced all other hominids without significant interbreeding

 

 

The Last Neanderthals

•      Sites in southern Spain, the UK, and other “marginal” areas of Europe have yielded some very late Neandertal finds

–    at 29,000 B.P., the latest is Zafarraya in so. Spain

–    St. Cesaire, in SW France, dates to 35,000 B.P.

•      Moderns were apparently in these areas by then

•      Some technological crossover is evident in the some Naenderthal industries

 

 

 

Upper Paleolithic

Europe

•     40-30,000 BP

•     Same as Africa’s LSA

•     Increased use of bone, antler etc. for tools

•     Non-utilitarian objects

 

 

Cro-Magnon = Anatomically Modern Humans

•     Cro-Magnon Rock Shelter in SW France

–   First Found in 1868

–   5 People Associated with Bones of Mammoth, Lion, and Reindeer

–   Perforated Shells and Animal Teeth

–   Radiocarbon Dated in the 1950s, Dates to 30,000 B.P.

Differences Between Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic Technology

•     Upper Paleolithic Represents a Dramatic Change from the Mousterian

–   Emphasis on Blades, Microliths, Endscrapers,  Burins, and Bow and Arrow (circa 15,000 B.P.)

–   Worked Bone, Ivory, and Antler into Tools and Art Objects

–   Increase in Number of Sites (esp. after 25,000 B.P.)

–   Larger and Denser Populations

–   Bird and Fish (Salmon?) Bones More Common

–   Not the First to Bury their Dead, but the First to Contain Multiple Burials

Internal Diversity of the Upper Paleolithic

•      Industries (From Older to Younger)

–   Aurignacian Tradition

–   (33-27,000 B.P.)

•   Western and Southern Europe

•   Somewhat warmer than during the Mousterian

•   Earliest Blade Technology, Bone Points with Split Base for Hafting

•   Earliest Art - Oldest Dated Rock Art-Chauvet Cave-31,000 B.P.

•   Advances in Stone Technology which facilitated the working of decorative objects such as perforated objects (ivory, bone, stone, fossil wood beads, animal teeth, and shells

 

 

Upper
Paleolithic Technology

Blade technology

-30 feet of cutting edge

 

 

Gravettian Tradition

–   Time Period (27-21,000 B.P.)

•   France, Spain, Central Europe, Italy

•   Increasing Cold

•   Smaller Blades

•   Cave Art Increases (circa 24,000 B.P.)

•   Venus Figurines

•   Strong regional variation among the Cultural Traditions of Central Europe

Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov Sites in Czechoslovakia

•     Evidence of Nets

–   Hares, Arctic Fox, Red F

–   fox =46% at Pavlov

•     Evidence of Plants from Pollen

•     Evidence of Plants in the Hearths (Edible Roots, Berries)

 

 

 

 

Dolni Vestonice Burials

•     27,000 B.P.

•     Ivory Beads, Teeth of Wolf and Arctic Fox

•     The Left Hand Reaches Towards Red Ochre

•     Evidence of Fire Lit Over their Bodies

 

 

Clothing

Scrapers

Venus Figurines & Gender

•     Ice Age Erotica

•     Pregnancy & Population

•     Female Fertility Rites

•     Long Distance Contact

 

 

Venus Figurines

String Revolution

skirts

headgear

 

Solutrean Tradition

•     Time Period (21-16,000 B.P.)

•     France and Spain

•     Peak of Last Glaciation: Very Cold

•     Leaf Shaped Spear Points

•     Pressure Flaking and Heat Treatment of Stone Tools

•     Bas-Relief Art

 

 

Base Relief Sculptures

 

                            Paleolithic          Rock Art

 

•      Majority found in  France and Spain (90 percent)

•      80 percent created between 17-12,000 B.P.

•      Settled Way of Life / Aggregation

•      Hunting Magic (Trophyism)

•      Insure the Balance of Nature

•      Totemism, Shamanism

•      Reinforcement of Group Identity/Solidarity

•      Symbols of Male/Female

•      Puberty Rites

 

Hall of Bulls-Lascaux, France

Zoomorphic (Animal)
Figurines

 

APOLLO 11, NAMIBIA

•      AFRICAN LATER STONE AGE:

•      OLDEST DATED ROCK ART IN AFRICA =27,500 B.P.

•      7 PAINTED STONES

•      ROCK ART (PAINTED AND ENGRAVED)

•      DELIBERATE BURIAL OF THE DEAD IN FORMAL GRAVES

•      MICROLITHS (25 MM)

•      ORGANIC MATERIALS (STRING, LEATHER, AND WOOD

•      BOWS AND ARROWS

•      DECORATIVE ITEMS (OSTRICH EGGSHELL)

 

 

African
Jewelry

African Art
Possibly 30,000 Sites


Matopos Hills, Zimbabwe

 

Movements into Asia

 

Habitation of Australia

•     30 million years separated from mainland

•     Sunda to Sahul

•     40,000 years ago

 

 

Australian Technology

•     East Asian Chopper Complex

•     Bone tools-spear points, awls, fleshing tools

•     Stone tools- scrapers, waisted-hatchets, grindstones

 

 

Lake Mungo, Australia

•     26,000 BP (24,000 B.C.)

•     3 anatomically modern human burials

•     Hearths, middens, earth ovens

•     shellfish, fish, marsupials

 

 

Colonizing of Tasmania

•      35-11,000 B.P.

•      Southernmost Appearance of Humans on the planet at this time.

•      Upland as well as Coastal, Lake, and River Environments

•      Upland site: Extensive Amounts of Food Remains indicating seasonal occupation (late winter and early spring)

•      Rock art of hand stencils

•      Evidence of making clothes (26,000 B.P.)

 

 

Megafauna extinction

•     Marsupials

•     Coexistence for 10,000 years

•     Man the Mighty Predator

•     Absence of Kill Sites

•     Ecological Changes

 

 

Australian Elaboration

•     Shell Beads

•     Ochre pigment in burials

•     Rock Art

•     Koonalda Cave, South Central Australia-Oldest Rock Art, 36,000 B.P. and 43,000 B.P. Dated from Vegetable Matter

•     Somewhat Controversial

 

 

Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia

•      Eastern Gravettian, 28-8,000 B.C.

–    industries similar to early Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) in Western Europe continue very late in central/eastern Eurasia

–    evidence of focused big-game hunting, such as elephant bone houses (Mezhirich), but appears to be broad spectrum temperate through arctic adaptations

•      Siberia: Mal’ta and Afontova-Gora, by 20,000 B.C.

–    Apparently focused on periglacial steppe mammals

•      Far NE: D’uktai Cave, by 16,000 B.C.

–    unique micro-blade and biface technologies

–    possible connections with New World

 

 

Northern Asia/Russian

•     35,000-20,000 BP

•     Sungir Burials (22,000 BP)

–   Clothing

–   Beads

 

 

MAMMOTH STRUCTURES

•     Mezin, Ukraine

•     Elaborate design

•     Ritual construction:  4 Structures - All Different in Design (Mezhirich, SE Kiev 70 tons of mammoth bones from 200 animals

•     Seasonal occupation)

 

 

Scavenged or Hunted?

•     Body Proportions

•     Age Profiles

–   Many Juveniles

–   Small # of Adult Females

–   Very Few Adult Males

•     Movement from Eastern Europe

 

 

Later Stone Age and Upper Paleolithic Culture

•     Blade, Burins, Scrapers, and Microliths

•     Composite Tools (Harpoons and Atlatl)

•     Exploiting marine and plant resources

•     Expanded use of different materials for tools (bone, antler, wood)

•     Presence of non-utilitarian objects (beads and figurines)

•     Rock art

 

 

 

Changes in Society

•      Diverse subsistence: clear use of big-game, mammal herds, small animals, and a wide variety of plants

•      Large social groupings

–    large sites (like La Madeleine) near seasonally abundant resources (e.g., reindeer and salmon)

–    fixed seasonal rounds and seasonal population aggregates

•      Trade

–    raw materials from great distances (exotic stone, ivory)

•      Focus on art and ritual

–    by Magdalenian times well-developed cave painting, bone, antler, and ivory sculpture, increase in quantity of non-utilitarian objects and elaborate burial rituals (such as more common use of grave goods)

•      Ornamentation

–    also considerable increase in artifacts of personal adornment, perhaps indicating emergent social differentiation, both within and between groups

 

 

Changes in Society

•      Diverse subsistence: clear use of big-game, mammal herds, small animals, and a wide variety of plants

•      Large social groupings

–    large sites (like La Madeleine) near seasonally abundant resources (e.g., reindeer and salmon)

–    fixed seasonal rounds and seasonal population aggregates

•      Trade

–    raw materials from great distances (exotic stone, ivory)

•      Focus on art and ritual

–    by Magdalenian times well-developed cave painting, bone, antler, and ivory sculpture, increase in quantity of non-utilitarian objects and elaborate burial rituals (such as more common use of grave goods)

•      Ornamentation

–    also considerable increase in artifacts of personal adornment, perhaps indicating emergent social differentiation, both within and between groups

 

Walking to the Americas

Bering Land Bridge

28,000-13,000 BP

 

 

Clovis First?

¨    For many decades Clovis was considered the first culture of the New World. This view is changing

¨    Point of origin presumed to be Siberia, with passage into Alaska at ca. 14,000 B.P. via Bering Land Bridge

¨    Migration into the New World via Ice Free Corridor at ca. 12,000 B.P.

¨    This presumed baseline for human origins has been referred to as the “Clovis Barrier” . . .

•      . . . and claims for earlier peoples referred to as “Pre-Clovis”

 

 

Clovis

 

–    Paleoindian Culture(s)

•    type site in New Mexico (Blackwater Draw) Found Bison and Mammoth with Clovis Points

–    Technological Tradition

•    oldest of series of fluted point types in America

–    Archaeological Horizon

•    occurs over a relatively short time across much of North America, especially in the Southwest and Great Plains

–    Late Pleistocene Megafauna Hunting Adaptation

•    mammoth and extinct bison

 

 

 

Clovis Timing

•      Association with megafauna established Pleistocene age, but C14 dating since 1950s has secured this

•      11,500 - 10,900 rcybp

•      Most dates and all early dates from western U.S.; a few from northeast U.S.

•      post-Clovis fluted and unfluted Paleoindian traditions through 10,250 rcybp

 

 

 

Bluefish Cave Complex, Yukon

 

•     12,000 BP

•     Mammoth,horse caribou, bison

•     Microblades and flakes

 

 

 

Sailing to the Americas

•     Monte Verde, Chili

•     13,000 B.P. (Fagan = 10,850-10,350 B.C.)

•     Hafted tools, points

•     Wood and Ivory tools

•     Footprints

•     Habitation site!

 

Kennewick man

9,300 B.P.

NAGPRA = North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

•     The return of cultural items to Native American Nations if there is cultural affiliation.

 

 

Monte Verde, Chile

•      The most well established Pre-Clovis Site

J     9 C14 dates 13,565 to 11,790 B.P. (average about 12,500 B.P.)

•      Some Evidence for Earlier Stratum with Split Pebble Tools Dating to ca. 33,000 B.P.

•      Excellent Preservation - Located in a Peat Bog

•      No Projectile Points but evidence of Bola Stones

•      12 Dwellings, Made of wood

•      Preserved Animal Hide, Clay Basins for Fireplaces

•      Reliance on Plants (42 Species-Mostly Tubers and Roots) and Large Animals (Mastodon)

•      Indicating we have relied too much on the hunting adaptation

 

 

Meadowcroft Rockshelter, PA

J     Deeply stratified rockshelter deposit with 11 strata dated by over 70 C14 dates

J     Stratum IIa has seven “basal” dates ranging from 19,600 to 13,230 B.P.

J     An average of of the 6 dates associated with cultural materials = 14,555-13,955 B.P.

J     Associated with unfluted lanceolate point and prismatic blades

J     Growing acceptance as legitimate pre-Clovis site

 

Lingering Doubts

J    Groundwater penetrating Stratum IIa contained soluble humic acids from a coal seam; this contaminated dated samples

J    Strata mixed by rock fall and other disturbances

J    Adovasio counters that a 2-3000 extension  is not a “radical extension of the 11,5000 B.P. baseline”

J    No Pleistocene fauna;  in fact, assemblage looks postglacial-Adovasio counters that the site was in more of a temperate environment

J    No Clovis stratum above IIa

 

 

Caverna da Pedra Pintada, Brazil

J     Painted Cave Wall and lumps of red pigment

J     Sandstone cave with 2.25-m-deep stratigraphy

J     Sealed Paleoindian strata, with sterile sand above and below

J     Paleoindian strata contained carbonized plant remains, lithics, pigment, and rare faunal remains

J     Tropical Rain Forest when site was occupied

J     Dates from 11,200 to 10,000 B.P.

J     Adaptation is one of generalized forest and river foraging (Brazil nuts, tree fruits, fish, rodents, mollusks, birds, turtles, mammals)

J     Distinct from Clovis, so unlikely to be derived from it

 

 

Daisy Cave, Southern California

•     Channel Island

•     Found Projectile Points, Shell Beads, Basketry and Cordage

•     Carbon Dates = 10,500 B.P.

•     Oldest Site Ever Found on the Pacific Coast of North America

 

 

 

MEGAFAUNAL EXTINCTION

•      Extinct Before 10,000 B.P.

•      Upper Paleolithic/Paleoindian Overkill

–   Didn’t Occur during other Glacial Periods

•      Inability to adapt to Environmental Changes

–    Extinct Species Never Found at Kill Sites (Giant Sloth or Giant Beaver)

–    Arid during the End of the Pleistocene

–    Larger Animals need more space and breed more slowly

•      Combination of the two

•      New Theory Suggests a Virus

 

 

Olsen-Chubbuck Paleo-Indian Bison Kill Site

•     Ca. 9000 B.P.

•     ~ 200 Buffaloes

•     Flakes, Scraping Tools, Knives

•     Calves indicate that the date of the kill = Late May or Early June

 

 

EARLY HOLOCENE =diverse array of
new environments

rainforest

EARLY HOLOCENE
 

Paleolithic Ø Mesolithic

(Europe, Asia, Africa)

 

 

Paleoindian Ø Archaic

( North, Central, South America)

 

 

MESOLITHIC / ARCHAIC
TWO MAJOR HUNTER/GATHERER STRATEGIES

•     1. Diversification (Broad Spectrum)

–  Greater exploitation of available resources (fish, small game, plant foods)

–  mixed hunting economy

–  increased utilization of water resources

 

 

SEDENTISM

•     Thick Midden Deposits indicated Resource Rich Foods

•     Greater Diversity of Artifacts Found

•     Presence of Seasonal Foods

•     Increase in Heavy Artifacts such as Grinding Tools

•     Storage Pits

•     Cemeteries

 

Pottery Vessels and Ground Stone Tools = New Mesolithic / Archaic Technology
Hunting and Gathering

 

•     Winter=hunted land mammals

•     Summer= fish, mollusk, sea mammals

 

 

Oldest  Ceramic Technology
ca. 12,000 B.P.
Jamon=cordmarking

MESOLITHIC (Aqualithic) 
EARLY KHARTOUM, Sudan
ca. 9000 B.P.

Grinding Equipment,
Ostrich Eggshell Beads

KHARTOUM MESOLITHIC FISHING

Nile Perch - Largest Freshwater Fish in the World

 

 

 

SEDENTISM DURING THE ARCHAIC IN N. AMERICA

•     Seasonal Basecamps Along Major Rivers Before 6500 B.P.

•     Eventual Yearlong Settlements After 6500 B.P.

•     Examples of Sedentary Sites in N. America

–   Koster Site in Illinois

–   Black Earth Site at Carrier Mills, Southern Illinois

 

 

ARCHAIC
Black Earth Site,
Carrier Mills, Illinois
6-5,000 B.P.

 

•      Intensification

–   collecting or hunting of specific wild food resources

–   sedentary; permanent shelters

–   higher population densities, larger settlements,

–   increased social complexity-differences in grave goods

–   Experimentation with alternate methods of obtaining food (domestication)

 

 

MESOLITHIC INTENSIFICATION IN SOUTHWESTERN ASIA

NATUFIAN CULTURE
CA. 11,000 B.P.=
Mesolithic Culture of Israel and Palestine showing
Intensification

MESOLITHIC
INTENSIFICATION
Ain Mellaha, Israel
11,000- 9,000 BC

GRINDSTONES & SICKLES

ARCHAIC INTENSIFICATION
Guila Naquitz Cave,Mexico
   8750-6670 B.C.

 

FEATURES
MESOLITHIC/ARCHAIC

•     Ceramics, grindstones, sickles

•     Burials with grave goods

•     More permanent structures

•     Larger habitation sites

•     Diversification and Intensification

 

 

 

MESOLITHIC/ARCHAIC
CULTURES OF INTENSIFICATION
AND SEDENTISM

Set the stage for Domestication of Plants and Animals =
FOOD PRODUCTION

Food Production

•      Domestication began as by-product of exploiting natural resources in several areas

•      once established likely diffused rapidly to other areas through trade

 

 

Late Pleistocene/Holocene Transition

•     Climate changes: warmer, wetter conditions

•     Settling-in to diverse environments

•     Increased regional diversification of populations in most areas

•     More diverse and broad spectrum subsistence (less focus on hunting?)

•     Economic intensification, more permanent settlements and larger social groups

 

 

Neolithic Revolution

•     Early views portrayed the origins of agriculture as a revolution and assumed that:

–  Humans became better able to control nature

–  Increased productivity created more free time

–  Greater time available for cultural innovations, that is to create “civilization” (writing, art, wheel, monumental architecture, etc.)

 

 

Domestication

•      Early assumptions not supported by current data, but clearly food production did have critical effect on the course of human history

•      Domestication=production of new species of plant and animals that owe their existence to human intervention

–    Active interference in the life cycles of plants and animals by humans such that subsequent generations are of greater utility for and in more intimate contact with humans

–    For species, domestication demands increased dependence on humans

–    Domesticate defined as new species, having undergone some morphological change from wild species, but domestication as process more complicated than this

 

 

Domestication as Process

•     Domestication was not an event or invention, but the end point of a gradual process

•     Foraging and unintentional influence on diversity, frequency, and distribution of wild plants and animals

•     Plant/animal management (Intentional influence): cultivation, domestication, intensified food production

 

 

Foraging and Unintentional Consequences

•     Process began as byproduct of exploitation

•     Selective harvesting of species whose range of genetic variation includes individuals of great value to humans (selects for certain individuals and skews genetics)

•     Or, transplanting selected individuals into habitat not conducive to natural reproduction

•     Also, altering habitat to promote certain plants or certain traits of plants

 

 

Cultivation

•     “deliberate care afforded the propagation of a species” (Ford 1985)

•     Weeding, pruning, watering, protecting from predators

•     A step further with deliberate transplanting

•     Next step: sowing

•     Cultivation helped to concentrate harvest and provide a more reliable seasonal supplement, but not a high-yield, storable resource

 

 

Plant Domestication

•     Final stage: intentional selection for useful traits leads to plant species dependent on humans for survival and reproduction

•     Higher-yield, storable

•     Early Centers in the Old World:

–   Near-Middle East: wheat and barley

–   Far East: rice and millet

 

 

Evidence of Early Plant Domestication

•      Wild cereal grasses, such as wheat, barley, and corn, have fragile (brittle) stems (rachis)

•      Under natural conditions, grasses have brittle rachis and seeds fall off easily and are widely scattered for effective reproduction

•      Domesticated grasses have a tough rachis and seeds stay on, facilitating harvesting

•      It also increases the dependency of the plant on human intervention to reproduce

 

 

Origins of Agriculture: Near East

•     The “Fertile Crescent”

•     Arc of territory from the Jordan Valley and eastern Mediterranean to lower Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates Rivers)

•     Agriculture began as by-product of exploiting wild grasses in late Pleistocene

•     “Cradle of Civilization”: 6,000 years ago the first state-level civilization, Sumer, evolved after 4,000 year process of plant domestication

 

 

Natufian Hunters-Gatherers

•     From 13,000-10,000 BP, hunters-gatherers known as Natufian culture collected wild wheat and barley for food

•     Mobile settlement, using wild plant resources seasonally (not focused on any resource though)

•     Shift from simple to complex foraging

 

 

Limiting Properties of Wild Wheat and Barley

•      Brittle rachis – portion to which kernel was attached became brittle when ripe for seed dispersal, so had to be there at precise moment

•      Thick husks – difficult to remove edible kernel (required roasting or soaking, then winnowing)

•      Only two-row kernels, not a lot of food potential per plant

•      Dispersed occurrence – scattered distribution of wild plants limited yield

 

 

Intensification

•      Despite shortcomings, wild plants formed a significant and important resource

•      Populations sought the densest stands of wheat and barley and came up with innovations to improve returns

•      Sickles and containers for harvesting, storage facilities, grinding basins, plant roasting pits

 

•     Wild wheat (left) from Mureybat, Syria compared to domesticated variety from Greece some 2-3,000 years later

 

 

Childe’s Oasis Theory

•      As Pleistocene glaciers melted, world’s climate became hotter and drier

•      In desert areas, the few well watered areas became oases

•      People, animals, and plants became more densely concentrated near oases and desert streams

•      Forced association led to greater intimacy, even symbiotic relationships, between humans and plants/animals

 

 

Jericho, Jordan Valley (Israel)

•      Kathleen Kenyon tested Childe’s model at Jericho, an early permanent settlement in Israel, in the 1950s

•      Natufian camp located adjacent spring at c. 10,500 BP

•      Farming village appears soon afterwards (so-called pre-pottery Neolithic)

•      Massive walled settlement much larger than anything before

 

 

Jericho, once again

•      Proto-neolithic (11,000 BP) - Natufian

•      PPNA: domesticated wheat and barley dominate, sheep and goat use increased - 5 acres of closely spaced circular mud-brick houses (2,000 people) with huge enclosing wall

•      PPNB- larger settlement, square houses, sheep and goats constituted vast majority of animal bones (80%)

•      Pottery Neolithic: pottery appears ca. 6000 BP

 

 

Domesticated Animals

•      Diagnostic changes in horns, teeth, and other skeletal features enable identification of domesticated animals, although transitional forms, between clearly wild and clearly domest. often difficult to recognize

•      SW Asia: sheep (slightly earlier), goat, cattle,

 

 

Natural Habitat Zone Model

•     Peake-Fleure model (1927) also argued that late Pleistocene climatic change prompted agriculture

•     Suggests that it occurred first in areas of natural distribution of wild plants suitable for domestication (in this case, wild wheat and barley; wild cattle and goats also available in these areas)

•     Restricting geography forced people to change their local adaptation rather than move elsewhere with existing pattern

•     People became more focused on wild grasses due to climatic change

 

 

Braidwood’s Hilly Flanks Theory

•     Hilly flanks of Zagros Mountains, Iraq: rich natural habitat for wild grasses

•     No evidence of dramatic post-Pleistocene dessication

•     Agriculture was logical outcome of cultural experimentation and elaboration as hunters-gatherers settled-in in those areas where wild grasses were present

•     Like Childe’s model, assumes agriculture is logical outcome of humanity seeking to improve its condition

 

 

Jarmo, Zagros Mountains (Iraq)

•     Braidwood set out (soon after WW II) to look for the earliest domestication and settled villages in the hilly flanks of Zagros

•     Early work focused on site of Jarmo, a well established farming village; 80% of food from crops and herds (sheep, goats, cows)

•     Battle raged between Jericho and Jarmo, pre-C14, ultimately Jericho is older

 

 

Settled village life and ceramics

•     Ceramics in Near East (earliest in Japan ca. 10,000 BP), by about ca. 8,000 BP

•     relationship between ceramics, farming, and sedentism (original definition of Neolithic)

 

 

Farming Towns

•     Clearly food production and more sedentary ways of life resulted in growth in settlement size and provided foundation for numerous cultural innovations outside of subsistence

 

 

Thomas Malthus

•      An essay on the principle of population as it affects the future improvement of society (1798)

•      Relationship between demography and resource base

•      Population naturally grows until something dramatic occurs

•      Population growth kept in check through mortality (misery, war, famine, epidemics)

•      Neo-Malthusian premise: population growth is dependent variable, determined by preceding changes in subsistence potential

•      as population reaches critical threshold, or “carrying capacity,” population growth is checked (held in place) by some cultural or natural factor (contraception, infanticide, disease, famine)

 

•      Neo-Mathusian

–   People naturally seek to improve themselves (progress, evolutionary), and agriculture is a cultural improvement

–   Demography held in check, through natural and cultural mechanisms, until a new invention appears that increases carrying capacity

•      Oasis Theory (Childe/Kenyon; Jericho, Israel)

•      Hilly Flanks (Braidwood; Jarmo, Iraq): natural habitat zone

•      Problems: domestication, agriculture, sedentism and related changes appear to be more unintentional consequences of exploitation or result of responses to specific stresses than the result of populations striving to “better” themselves

•      Populations do not exhibit uniform rates of growth

 

 

Agriculture and Settled Village Life

•      In the Near East, the use of domesticated plants and animals appears at roughly the same time:  evidence of permanent (sedentary) villages in areas of natural distribution of wild cereals and earliest domesticates

•      seemed to support neo-Mathusian interpretation that food production provided technological base for population growth

•      now seems that settled villages appear slightly earlier than domesticated plants and animals: indicates a more complicated process of technological change

 

 

Ester Boserup

•      Made population growth the independent variable

•      Technology will respond when population growth approaches carrying capacity

•      Agriculture, for instance, emerges due to population pressure (demographic stress) and the need to technologically increase carrying capacity

 

 

Binford’s Marginal Zone Model

•     Early settled villages emerged in areas of rich maritime resources, populations “settled-in” to these areas

•     Inevitable population growth forced some groups to move to more marginal areas

•     We should expect to find the earliest evidence of agriculture not in prime areas but in marginal areas where people had to expand their “diet breadth” – in prime areas existing technology/diet were adequate

 

 

Flannery’s Test in Deh Luran

•     Following Binford’s predictions, Flannery felt that, in the Near East, “optimal” maritime habitats should have been centers of population growth with out-migration to marginal areas

•     Change in diet not due to climate but overuse of prime areas

•     Demand for previously ignored foods, such as plants, would have increased in marginal areas

•     Worked at Ali Kosh (c. 9000 BP) near mouth of Tigris River in Deh Luran plain in Iran

 

 

Edge Zone Effect

•      Groups moved into areas that were marginal for the natural propagation of wild wheat and barley, transporting kernels from seasonal harvests

•      Created genetic drift effect by introducing only kernels with tough rachis

•      Also, exposed plant to new conditions, new selective factors

•      Eventually people recognized favorable traits and began cultivating and ultimately sowing

 

 

 

The Food Crisis in Prehistory

•      Mark Cohen’s overt population pressure theory:

•      Question: why would successful hunters-gatherers decide to become agricultural, and why do many people around the world acquire agriculture at about the same time

•      Answer: around 15,000 in Old World and 10,000 in New World human populations had spread across the globe exhausting all available strategies for H+G lifestyles (creating population pressure since people could no longer move as populations grew)

•      Quality of life deteriorated as populations were forced to change from first choice (game and select plants) to secondary resources (grains and tubers): change in diet breadth

•      Increasing intensity of exploitation of most productive plant species resulted in domestication and agriculture

 

 

Abu Hureya, Syria

•      Early hunter-gatherer village founded around 11,500-10,000 BP (plant gathering, gazelle hunting, small huts) – warmer, wetter environment = rich resources, population grew

•      Then abandoned, perhaps due to drier conditions

•      Later re-occupied (c. 9700-9000 BP), larger village with mud-brick houses, at first hunting-gathering predominant, but increased use of wild and early domesticated plants,

•      Hunting-gathering increasingly replaced by focus on domesticated plants and herding of sheep and goats (after c. 8500 BP)

 

 

 

Abu Hureyra

•      Shows transition well from H+G to food production, both in terms of plants and animals

•      Clear evidence of domesticated plants (farming) by ca. 10,000 BP

•      at 10,000 BP hunted gazelles, wild cattle, pigs, goats, and other species

•      domest. sheep and goats replaced gazelles at ca. 9,000 BP

•      cattle and pigs also subject to greater human control

•      at ca. 8500 BP gazelles depleted and domest. sheep/goats constitute some 60% of diet

 

 

Netiv Hagdud, Israel

•     Very early evidence of domesticated plant use, between c. 9800-9500 BP

•     Hunting gazelle, fish, waterfowl, 50 species of wild plants, especially wild cereal grasses harvested with sickles

•     Mud-houses, cereals stored in bins

•     Cereal seeds included  a semi-tough rachis,  two-row domesticated barley – supplementary food

 

 

Mesoamerica

•      One of two major areas of pristine plant domestication in New World (Peru being the other; lowland South America and North America also areas of domestication but on apparently smaller scale)

•      Few domesticated animals (other than dog), but several important domesticated crops: maize, beans, and squash, in particular

•      maize is the only significant wild cereal grass domesticated

 

 

Tehuacan Valley

•     Central Mexico, studied by Richard MacNeish beginning in the 1960s

•     found maize cobs dating to ca. 3000 BP

•     not until he began excavating at Coxcatlan rockshelter did he find anything like teosinte, the wild grass widely spread throughout Mesoamerica thought to be likely ancestor of maize

 

 

Tehuacan Sequence

•      Ajuereado phase (10-7,000 BC): small, family (microband) occupations of H+Gs

•      El Riego (7-5,000 BC): increasing dependence on wild plants (squash, chili, beans, etc.)

•      Coxcatlan (5-3,400 BC): seasonal macroband settlements; possible domesticates?

•      Abejas (3,400-2,300 BC): first appearance of domesticated plants; larger semi-permanent villages

•      Purron (2,300-1,500 BC): initial pottery

•      Ajalpan (1,500 - 850 BC): establishment of settled villages and increased focus on domesticated plants

 

 

•      Corn from wild ancestor teosinte

•      Gradual process of morphological change

•      Increasing emphasis on maize sped up changes in plant

•      Increasing changes in plant stimulated changes in use

 

 

•      9-5,400 BP: increase in plant use and focus on select plants – process of domestication

•      5,400-4,300: limited focus on domesticates

•      4,300-3,500: increased inventory and dependence on domesticates

•      After, 3,500: domesticates, especially corn, become dominant in diet

 

 

Oaxaca Valley, Mexico

•     Kent Flannery began work in the Oaxaca Valley of south-central Mexico in late 1960s after working at Ali Kosh in Iraq

•     Studied numerous sites from late Pleistocene until European contact period (Monte Alban/Zapotec state)

•     Focused on origins of agriculture, social ranking, and the state

 

 

Guila Naquitz Rockshelter

•     10,750-8,670 BP (late Pleistocene to early Holocene)

•     Utilization of cultivated plant resources from 9,000 BP onward

•     Environment apparently not much different than today

•     Transition to food production in youngest preceramic levels

 

 

Hunting-gathering at Guila Naquitz

•     Plants dominated the diet (especially acorns, mesquite pods and seeds, and agave), particularly in later levels

•     Grinding stones present and cultigens appear early on (ca. 9,000 BP) and increase in frequency over time

•     Apparently a small micro-band camp (family size)

 

 

Transition to Food Production

•     Variability in year to year productivity, over time improvements occurred in resource extraction to buffer “bad-years”

•     When the system reached a level of efficiency that could scarcely be improved, adopted agriculture

•     Adoption of agriculture results in fundamental changes and restarts the process (I.e., improvements in existing technology ultimately leading to technological changes)

 

 

Mesoamerica

Maize (Corn)
Tomatoes
Sweet potatoes
Chili Peppers
Tobacco
Beans
Squash

 Dog
Turkey

 

Guila Naquitz Rock Shelter, Mexico

 

•    ~ 10,000 B.P. first domesticate (squash)

•    ~ 7,000 B.P. first domesticated maize

•    but hunting/gathering remained major form of economy until 4000 B.P.

•    Kent Flannery: experimentation during periods of environmental stress

 

 

The Early Mesoamerican Village

•     Greater dependence on agriculture demanded less mobile settlement pattern

•     More time spent on food production = more settled life, and vice versa

•     Early settled village life ca. 3500 BP based on corn/beans/squash agriculture

 

 

Implications of Food Production

•     Increased carrying capacity

•