Insights into early Middle Palaeolithic tool use and hafting in Western Europe. The functional analysis of level IIa of the early Middle Palaeolithic site of Biache-Saint-Vaast (France)
Human light-producing technology (i.e. the controlled use of fire) evolved during the Palaeolithic. Among its more obvious advantages to survival (heat, cooking, protection), fire-provided light in the form of hearths and lamps probably had considerable evolutionary significance. As human symbolic systems spread with the late Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic in Eurasia, it became a constituent component of European cave art. After reviewing the biological basis of human perception in low-light situations, we examine the existing evidence for the evolution of controlled use of fire (light production), and focus on its use in the performance of Upper Palaeolithic art and other activities in the deep caves of Western Europe.
There are functional differences related to the peculiarities of each settlement. The material used to manufacture tools is one of the key factors in the analysis of use-wear traces in traceological studies. An experiment was conducted to test the development of these functional traces in two types of flints found at two Middle Palaeolithic settlements: Neogene flint, from the Fuente Mudarra open-air site Sierra de Atapuerca, and Cretaceous flint, from the Prado Vargas cave site, Ojo Guareña. After reviewing the characteristic of each type of flint, they were compared to previous archaeological studies in order to check the reliability of the analysis of these settlements.
This special issue contains a selection of papers presented at the Fifth Biennial International Conference on Information Integration Theory and Functional Measurement held in Acre, Israel, on June 8-10, 2015. This conference gathered together more than twenty researchers from Israel and Western Europe. The studies reported in the papers they presented were applications of Information Integration Theory and Functional Measurement (IIT/FM, Anderson, 2008, 2012, 2013) to very diverse settings, ranging from neuropsychology (functional analysis of patterns of cortical activation in an integration task using pairs of emotional faces) to political science (functional analysis of emotional and behavioral responses to a terrorist plot against commercial flights).
AbstractA Late Prehistoric period buffalo kill and butchering site in northern Wyoming (Site 48 JO 312) produced a large number of stone tools. Flakes removed in sharpening stone tools provided much of the interpretation of the activity that occurred at the site and in addition gave a number of ideas concerning tool use and sharpening.
Functional analysis of Middle Palaeolithic flint tools through experimental use wear analysis: the case of Prado Vargas (Cornejo) and Fuente Mudarra (Atapuerca), northern Spain