scholarly journals Jejak Budaya Paleolitik di Pulau Seram: Kajian Migrasi Manusia Awal di Wilayah Indonesia Timur

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Nfn Jatmiko ◽  
Muhammad Al Mujabuddawat
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Pleistocene Period ◽  
Strategic Role

The province of Maluku is consists of number of islands (including Seram island)  is served  as of the areas in the eastern part of Indonesia that have a key role for study of life in the past. Geographically position as the bordered area between Australia and Irian island has played a strategic role as the routes for human and faunal migration. An indication for ancient human occupation in this areas has been shwoed by the presence of cultural remains of Palaeolithic tools. Palaeolithic culture (palaeo=ancient; lithic/lithos=stone) is stone tools used by Homo erectus from the Pleistocene period. The Palaeolithic cultural remains from Seram island is very limitedly known; and the results of archaeological researches by Puslit Arkenas (National Research Centre for Archaeology) in 2012 has been found of Palaeolithic tools on this areas. This fact proves that Seram island has interesting for migration routes of human ancient occupation and their culture in the eastern part of Indonesia. Study of palaeolithic culture used by comparative-exsplorative methods (contextual) and technologic overview. Provinsi Maluku yang terdiri beberapa kepulauan (salah satunya Pulau Seram) merupakan salah satu wilayah di Indonesia Timur yang mempunyai peranan penting dalam mengungkap sejarah kehidupan masa lalu. Secara geografis, posisi keletakannya yang sangat strategis di antara Pulau Irian dan benua Australia merupakan jalur lintasan migrasi bagi manusia dan fauna. Salah satu tujuan untuk mengetahui proses kedatangan awal manusia di wilayah ini adalah melalui tinggalan budayanya, yaitu alat-alat Paleolitik. Budaya Paleolitik (paleo = tua; litik/lithos = batu) adalah perkakas dari batu yang diduga digunakan oleh manusia awal (Homo erectus) sejak munculnya di muka bumi pada Kala Pleistosen. Tinggalan budaya Paleolitik di Pulau Seram selama ini sangat jarang sekali informasinya, namun hasil penelitian yang dilakukan oleh Puslit Arkenas pada tahun 2012 telah membuktikan adanya temuan alat-alat batu tua di wilayah ini. Bukti-bukti temuan ini menunjukkan bahwa Pulau Seram mempunyai peranan yang penting sebagai jalur migrasi manusia awal dan budayanya di wilayah Indonesia Timur. Kajian budaya paleolitik ini mempergunakan metode eksploratif-komparatif (kontekstual) dan pengamatan teknologis.

scholarly journals An Introduction to Cognitive Archaeology

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 386-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Coolidge ◽  
Thomas Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Cognitive Evolution ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cognitive Archaeology ◽  
Cave Art

Cognitive archaeology studies human cognitive evolution by applying cognitive-science theories and concepts to archaeological remains of the prehistoric past. After reviewing the basic epistemological stance of cognitive archaeology, this article illustrates this interdisciplinary endeavor through an examination of two of the most important transitions in hominin cognitive evolution—the appearance of Homo erectus about 2 million years ago, and the recent enhancement of working-memory capacity within the past 200,000 years. Although intentionally created stone tools date to about 3.3 million years ago, Homo erectus produced a bifacial, symmetrical handaxe whose design then persisted for nearly the next 2 million years. An enhancement in working-memory capacity may have been responsible for the relative explosion of culture within the past 50,000 years, which included personal ornamentation, highly ritualized burials, bow-and-arrow technology, depictive cave art, and artistic figurines.

scholarly journals Dental tissue proportions in fossil orangutans from mainland Asia and Indonesia

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. e1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya M. Smith ◽  
Anne-Marie Bacon ◽  
Fabrice Demeter ◽  
Ottmar Kullmer ◽  
Kim Thuy Nguyen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Dental Tissue ◽  
Developmental Constraints ◽  
Enamel Thickness ◽  
Selective Pressures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Geometric Scaling ◽  
Dental Reduction

Orangutans (Pongo) are the only great ape genus with a substantial Pleistocene and Holocene fossil record, demonstrating a much larger geographic range than extant populations. In addition to having an extensive fossil record, Pongo shows several convergent morphological similarities with Homo, including a trend of dental reduction during the past million years. While studies have documented variation in dental tissue proportions among species of Homo, little is known about variation in enamel thickness within fossil orangutans. Here we assess dental tissue proportions, including conventional enamel thickness indices, in a large sample of fossil orangutan postcanine teeth from mainland Asia and Indonesia. We find few differences between regions, except for significantly lower average enamel thickness (AET) values in Indonesian mandibular first molars. Differences between fossil and extant orangutans are more marked, with fossil Pongo showing higher AET in most postcanine teeth. These differences are significant for maxillary and mandibular first molars. Fossil orangutans show higher AET than extant Pongo due to greater enamel cap areas, which exceed increases in enamel-dentine junction length (due to geometric scaling of areas and lengths for the AET index calculation). We also find greater dentine areas in fossil orangutans, but relative enamel thickness indices do not differ between fossil and extant taxa. When changes in dental tissue proportions between fossil and extant orangutans are compared with fossil and recent Homo sapiens, Pongo appears to show isometric reduction in enamel and dentine, while crown reduction in H. sapiens appears to be due to preferential loss of dentine. Disparate selective pressures or developmental constraints may underlie these patterns. Finally, the finding of moderately thick molar enamel in fossil orangutans may represent an additional convergent dental similarity with Homo erectus, complicating attempts to distinguish these taxa in mixed Asian faunas. 

scholarly journals How Rocks Die: Changing Patterns of Discard and Re-Use of Ground Stone Tools in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 8869
Author(s):  
Andrew McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

Cultural objects are thought to have a lifespan. From selection, through construction, use, destruction, and discard, materials do not normally last forever, transforming through stages of life, eventually leading to their death. The materiality of stone objects, however, can defy the inevitable demise of an object, especially durable ground stone tools that can outlive generations of human lifespans. How groups of people deal with the relative permanence of stone tools depends on their own relationship with the past, and whether they venerate it or reject its influence on the present. A case study from the long-lived site of Prasteio-Mesorotsos in Cyprus demonstrates a shifting attitude toward ground stone objects, from the socially conservative habit of ritually killing of objects and burying them, to one of more casual re-use and reinterpretation of ground stone. This shift in attitude coincides with a socio-political change that eventually led to the ultimate rejection of the past: complete abandonment of the settlement.

scholarly journals Rock Art at Kel Lein Site, Kaimear Islands, Maluku

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Lucas Wattimena ◽  
Marlyn J Salhuteru ◽  
Godlief A Peseletehaha
Keyword(s):  
Field Survey ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Data Recording ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kei Islands ◽  
Art Analysis ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
Migration Pathways

Situs Kel Lein di Pulau Kaimear, Kepulauan Kei, adalah salah satu situs gambar cadas yang baru ditemukan. Situs ini dilaporkan pada 2018 dan dilanjutkan dengan perekaman data intensif pada tahun berikutnya. Berbagai motif seni cadas yang tersebar di sepanjang teras, dinding, dan atap ceruk gua dibagi menjadi tujuh panel. Pendekatan dalam penelitian ini menggunakan deskriptif kualitatif. Data yang dikumpulkan dari survei lapangan pada tahun 2018, ditambah data terbaru yang diperoleh pada tahun 2019. Analisis gambar cadas dibagi menjadi beberapa panel di dalam ceruk, terdiri dari tujuh panel. Penelitian ini mencatat 488 motif, yang dikelompokkan menjadi motif figur manusia atau antropomorfik, perahu, alat batu, cap tangan (negatif), jejak kaki, geometris, lingkaran, garis vertikal dan horizontal, wajah atau topeng manusia, ayam atau hewan, tempayan (tembikar), jaring ikan, matahari, bulan, dan panah. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa banyak motif gambar cadas di Situs Kel Lein mengandung berbagai makna. Salah satunya adalah aktivitas manusia yang digambarkan dalam bentuk figuratif. Keragaman motif di Situs Kel Lein menempatkan situs ini pada posisi penting dalam kajian jalur migrasi manusia. Diperkirakan situs ini adalah salah satu lokasi yang cukup ramai disinggahi pada masa lalu. The Kel Lein Site in Kaimear Island, Kei Islands, is a recently discovered rock art site. This site was reported in 2018 and continued with intensive data recording the following year. Various rock art motifs scattered along the terrace, walls, and roof of the niche are divided into seven panels. The approach in this research uses descriptive qualitative. The data collected from a field survey in 2018, plus the latest data obtained in 2019. The rock art analysis is divided into several panels inside the niche, comprising seven panels. This research recorded 488 motifs, grouped into human or anthropomorphic figure, boats, stone tools, hand stencils (negative), footprints, geometric, circles, vertical and horizontal lines, human faces or masks, chickens, jars (pottery), fishing nets, sun, moon, and arrowheads. This research shows that many rock art motifs on the Kel Lein Site show various purposes. One of which is human activity depicted in a figurative form. The diversity of motifs at the Kel Lein Site places this site in a vital position in studying human migration pathways. It is estimated that this site is one of the most visited posts in the past.

scholarly journals THE DISCOVERY OF A BIFACIAL INDUSTRY IN VIETNAM

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
A. P. Derevianko ◽  
A. V. Kandyba ◽  
Khac Su Nguyen ◽  
S. A. Gladyshev ◽  
Gia Doi Nguyen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Convergent Evolution ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Lower Paleolithic ◽  
Primary Reduction ◽  
The Town

This study deals with the origin of bifacial industry in the Lower Paleolithic of Southeast Asia. We describe stone tools from the stratifi ed sites of Goda and Rocktyng near the town of Ankhe, Vietnam. The lithics represent a homogeneous industry characterized by uniform Lower Paleolithic techniques of primary and secondary reduction. Cores and tools were made of pebbles, and some tools were manufactured on fl akes. The tool-kit includes bifaces, pics, becs, carinate end-scrapers, various types of side-scrapers, choppers and chopping tools, denticulate and notched pieces. Bifaces and pics are the principal types. Primary reduction was aimed at manufacturing simple pebble cores with cortex striking platforms, whereas radial and orthogonal cores are less frequent. Tektites found with the lithics were dated by 40K/38Ar-method to 806±22 and 782±20 ka BP. We propose to name this industry the Ankhe culture. It likely emerged by convergent evolution of the pebble-fl ake industry associated with the fi rst wave of Homo erectus migration from Africa 1.8–1.6 million years BP, and is unrelated to the Acheulean tradition introduced by the second migration wave from Africa.

Swanscombe: A Standard Stone-Age Sequence for Britain?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Apparent Loss ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Age Sequence

In the early twentieth century, Palaeolithic research seemed to be flourishing on the Continent. Commont was carrying out groundbreaking work in the Somme, and rich hauls were being recovered from the reindeer-caves of France and Spain. France could also boast a research centre: the Institute of Human Palaeontology, where Boule, Breuil, and Obermaier held posts. Britain, though, was weighed down by nostalgia: unfavourable contrasts were being drawn between current research and the glorious decades of the past when Evans and Prestwich had brought such renown to British investigations. This apparent loss of impetus was noted abroad. Boule considered the British to have sunk into insularity after 1875, never to regain their early brilliance; in 1912, Breuil remarked at a luncheon party in Cambridge that no one in England knew anything about prehistory. The British Museum’s Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, published in 1911 at the height of Commont’s work, declared: ‘the French system has now been revised in the light of recent discoveries, and is the basis of all Continental classifications’. It was regretted that the English river drifts had still not received any systematic excavations, and that the implements in these sediments still lay in confusion. This Guide was produced by Reginald Smith of the British Museum under the direction of Charles Hercules Read (1857–1929). In 1912, the same year that Breuil made his disparaging comment, Read arranged for Smith to excavate in one of the most productive Palaeolithic localities of the Thames Valley: Swanscombe village. Smith was assisted by Henry Dewey (1876–1965) of the Geological Survey, but the negotiations that gained Dewey’s help would also reveal differences of opinion between their two respective institutions about the value of Palaeolithic research. The connections drawn by Smith to the Continental sequence after working at Swanscombe would lift the gloom about British backwardness. These connections would also help draw the Palaeolithic and geological sequences closer together.

scholarly journals 4E cognition in the Lower Palaeolithic

2020 ◽  
pp. 105971232096718
Author(s):  
Thomas Wynn ◽  
Karenleigh A Overmann ◽  
Lambros Malafouris
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cognitive Archaeology ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Computational Processes ◽  
Lower Palaeolithic

This essay introduces a special issue focused on 4E cognition (cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) in the Lower Palaeolithic. In it, we review the typological and representational cognitive approaches that have dominated the past 50 years of paleoanthropology. These have assumed that all representations and computations take place only inside the head, which implies that the archaeological record can only be an “external” product or the behavioral trace of “internal” representational and computational processes. In comparison, the 4E approach helps us to overcome this dualist representational logic, allowing us to engage directly with the archaeological record as an integral part of the thinking process, and thus ground a more parsimonious cognitive archaeology. It also treats stone tools, the primary vestiges of hominin thinking, as active participants in mental life. The 4E approach offers a better grounding for understanding hominin technical expertise, a crucially important component of hominin cognitive evolution.

Holocene vegetation history in the Northern Vosges Mountains (NE France): Palynological, geochemical and sedimentological data

The Holocene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 888-904
Author(s):  
Emilie Gouriveau ◽  
Pascale Ruffaldi ◽  
Loïc Duchamp ◽  
Vincent Robin ◽  
Annik Schnitzler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Vegetation History ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Vosges Mountains ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Geochemical Analyses ◽  
Evolution Of Vegetation

Palynological data from the Northern Vosges Mountains (NVM) are very rare, unlike for the Southern and Central Vosges Mountains, where the past vegetation history is relatively well known. As a consequence, the beginning of human activities has never been clearly identified and dated in the NVM. In order to reconstruct the evolution of vegetation in this region, multiproxy studies (pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, sedimentological and geochemical analyses) were conducted in two peatlands. Overall, the results, extending from about 9500 cal. BP to recent times, show a classical vegetation succession with local particularities resulting from human activities. In the La Horn peatland, a strong human impact related to pastoralism is attested from the late Bronze Age onwards. The second phase of human occupation, mainly characterized by crop cultures, begins during the Hallstatt period. The geochemical results (x-ray fluorescence) also highlight the presence of metallic elements, which, combined with significant quantities of carbonized particles, point to potential metal working. In the Kobert-Haut peatland, human occupation began much later (1500 cal. BP), but lasted from the Gallo-Roman period to the beginning of the Modern Period. Unlike for the vegetation history of the rest of the Vosges, Pinus remains a prevailing taxon throughout the Holocene in the NVM. Another particularity is the early establishment of Picea, long before the 18th to 19th century plantations.

scholarly journals ETHNOECOLOGY IN PRE-HISPANIC CENTRAL AMERICA: FOODWAYS AND HUMAN-PLANT INTERFACES

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-553
Author(s):  
Shanti Morell-Hart ◽  
Rosemary A. Joyce ◽  
John S. Henderson ◽  
Rachel Cane
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Central America ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Macrobotanical Remains ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Dynamic Relationship

AbstractIn recent years, researchers in pre-Hispanic Central America have used new approaches that greatly amplify and enhance evidence of plants and their uses. This paper presents a case study from Puerto Escondido, located in the lower Ulúa River valley of Caribbean coastal Honduras. We demonstrate the effectiveness of using multiple methods in concert to interpret ethnobotanical practice in the past. By examining chipped-stone tools, ceramics, sediments from artifact contexts, and macrobotanical remains, we advance complementary inquiries. Here, we address botanical practices “in the home,” such as foodways, medicinal practices, fiber crafting, and ritual activities, and those “close to home,” such as agricultural and horticultural practices, forest management, and other engagements with local and distant ecologies. This presents an opportunity to begin to develop an understanding of ethnoecology at Puerto Escondido, here defined as the dynamic relationship between affordances provided in a botanical landscape and the impacts of human activities on that botanical landscape.

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