Mesolithic Sites in the Upper Tobol

The article introduces prehistoric artifacts from the sites of Karasor-5, Karasor-6, and Karasor-7 obtained in 1998. The archaeological site of Karasor is located in the Upper Tobol region, near the town of Lisakovsk. Stone tools, pottery fragments, a ceramic item, and a bronze arrow head were collected from a sand blowout, which had destroyed the cultural layer. The paper gives a detailed description of the pottery. The stone tools were examined using the technical and typological analysis, which featured the primary splitting, the morphological parameters and size of plates, the ratio of blanks, plates, flakes, and finished tools, the secondary processing methods, and the typological composition of the tools. The nature of the raw materials was counted as an independent indicator. The pottery fragments, the bronze arrow head, and the ceramic item belonged to the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The stone industry of the Karasor archeological cluster proved to be a Mesolithic monument of the Turgai Trough. The technical and typological analysis revealed a close similarity with the Mesolithic sites of the Southern and Middle Trans-Urals, as well as the forest-steppe part of the Tobol-Irtysh interfluve. The stone artifacts were dated from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age.

Paleolithic Personal Ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave: The Formation of Early Symbolism and Its Regional Features in Northeast China

This article presents the results of a comparative study of personal ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave in the interregional and regional context of the formation of modern behavior. Xiaogushan is a Paleolithic and Neolithic site in Northeast China. In the Upper Paleolithic layers of the site, apart from tools, personal ornaments were found— pendants made from animal teeth, and a decorated bone disc. The date of the site is a matter of debate; ornaments from layers 2 and 3 date to ~30 ka BP. Like other bone artifacts (harpoon, needles, point), and together with types of stone tools and lithic technology, they mirror the local process of Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. We focus on similarities between the Xiaogushan ornaments and Upper Paleolithic pendants from northern China and Eurasia in general, attesting to modern behavior during the transitional period and being an important marker of the spread of Upper Paleolithic innovations from the centers to the periphery. Xiaogushan is the fi rst Upper Paleolithic industry in Northeast China known to date, and demonstrates skills and symbolic behavior typical of the initial Upper Paleolithic. The Xiaogushan pendants follow the general tendencies, while being specifi c markers of the evolution of symbolic behavior in Eastern Eurasia.

Visual Attention and Cognitive Archaeology: An Eye-Tracking Study of Palaeolithic Stone Tools

The study of lithic technology can provide information on human cultural evolution. This article aims to analyse visual behaviour associated with the exploration of ancient stone artefacts and how this relates to perceptual mechanisms in humans. In Experiment 1, we used eye tracking to record patterns of eye fixations while participants viewed images of stone tools, including examples of worked pebbles and handaxes. The results showed that the focus of gaze was directed more towards the upper regions of worked pebbles and on the basal areas for handaxes. Knapped surfaces also attracted more fixation than natural cortex for both tool types. Fixation distribution was different to that predicted by models that calculate visual salience. Experiment 2 was an online study using a mouse-click attention tracking technique and included images of unworked pebbles and ‘mixed’ images combining the handaxe's outline with the pebble's unworked texture. The pattern of clicks corresponded to that revealed using eye tracking and there were differences between tools and other images. Overall, the findings suggest that visual exploration is directed towards functional aspects of tools. Studies of visual attention and exploration can supply useful information to inform understanding of human cognitive evolution and tool use.

Fossil-bearing Citalang Formation, Sumedang-Majalengka, West Java

The Citalang Formation in Sumedang-Majalengka area comprises of various lithological units, including coarse-grained sandstones to conglomerates, greenish grey to dark grey claystone with sandstone and tuff interbeds, and pumice-bearing tuffaceous sandstones and tuff. All these units occur in the lower part of the formation and the contacts with older, underlying rock units are unconformable in several places.Vertebrate fossil fragments are frequently found in the lowermost part of the formation, especially within the coarse-grained sandstones to conglomerates unit. This unit also holds stone tools artefacts, which were made from different kind of stones and show quite simple or primitive shape. The age of Citalang Formation is not yet resolved and still needs to be researched. Some published literatures suggest Pleistocene while there are others that suggest Pliocene.

Introduction

Between two and three million years ago, our forebears started to make stone tools. Around one and three-quarter million years before the present, their technology had progressed, and they began to fashion the “prehistoric Swiss Army Knife”—the hand-axe. Our hominin ancestors continued to make further improvements, and even before our own species, ...

Materials of the Western Trypillia Culture From the Settlements of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Tatarysky And Kubachivka

This paper presents the results of archaeological surveys at the Western Trypillia culture sites of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Tatarysky and Kubachivka in the 1990s and the 2000s. The article considers the history of research at these settlements from their discovery (in 1926 and 1947 respectively) until the present. The authors have specifically focused upon threats faced by the Kubachivka site, which keeps being destroyed by the eponymous quarry situated nearby. The study analyzes ceramics and flint and stone tools from the settlements. Ceramics from the Kamianets-Podilskyi, Tatarysky (3950—3900 ВСЕ) is represented by table and kitchen pottery. The first is decorated with a monochromic ornamental painting (black and brown colors); the most informative tableware are craters decorated with «face patterns» that are typical for the Mereșeuca local group, Stage BII (as per Taras M. Tkachuk). Tools are made from various raw materials including granitoids, Cenomanian and Turonian flint. The collection includes items related to the production of tools and other products (the attrition mill and the powder-crusher), waste and items of artifacts secondary processing. As far as Kubachivka settlement is concerned, the sample of ceramics materials is rather poor. The most of the items are not sufficiently intact. Upon having analyzed materials, we have been able to confirm the preliminary conclusions of prior researches. Stonework artifacts are also represented in a modest quantity of 9 pcs. These mostly include polished items as well as a hammered stone, plates, and suchlike. In our opinion, the ceramic artifacts discovered thereby should be ascribed to two chronological horizons, specifically: the BI—II and the BII stages. Further investigations will enable more precise chronologies.

Early knapping techniques do not necessitate cultural transmission

Early stone tools are claimed to be the earliest evidence for the cultural transmission of toolmaking techniques, and with it, cumulative culture. This claim has ostensibly been supported by experimental studies wherein modern humans learned stone tool production (knapping) in conditions that provided opportunities for cultural transmission. However, alternative hypotheses propose that individual learning was sufficient for the expression of early knapping techniques. In order to evaluate this possibility, the capacities of individuals to independently re-innovate early knapping techniques need to be determined. For this, individuals must be tested in cultural isolation, i.e., in a test condition in which knapping techniques cannot be culturally transmitted via demonstrations or reverse engineering. Here, we report on the results of this test condition with human participants (N = 28). Naïve individuals spontaneously re-innovated various early knapping techniques, resulting in products resembling the earliest core and flake technologies. These results contradict previous hypotheses and conclusions of earlier experiments that explicitly implicated cultural transmission in Oldowan stone tool production. They suggest instead that knapping techniques among pre-modern hominins could have been individually derived rather than necessitating cultural transmission.

Climate-Driven Dietary Change on the Colorado Plateau, USA, and Implications for Gender-Specific Foraging Patterns

Complementary archaeological and paleoenvironmental datasets from North Creek Shelter (Colorado Plateau, Utah, USA) are analyzed using the diet breadth model, revealing human dietary patterns during the early and middle Holocene. Abundance indices are derived from botanical and faunal datasets and, along with stone tools, are used to test the prediction that increasing aridity caused the decline of high-return resources. This prediction appears valid with respect to botanical resources, given that high-ranked plants drop out of the diet after 9800 cal BP and are replaced with low-ranked, small seeds. The prediction is not met, however, with respect to faunal resources: high-ranked artiodactyls are consistently abundant in the diet. The effects of climate change on dietary choices are also examined. Findings show that increased aridity coincides with greater use of small seeds and ground stone tools but not with increases in low-ranked fauna, such as leporids. The patterns observed from the North Creek Shelter botanical and faunal datasets may reflect different foraging strategies between men and women. This would explain why low-ranked plant resources became increasingly abundant in the diet without a corresponding decrease in abundance of high-ranked artiodactyls. If so, then archaeological records with similar datasets should be reexamined with this perspective.

Matching physical properties of food and tools in three populations of wild capuchin monkeys

Robust capuchin monkeys (Sapajus) are known for accessing mechanically challenging food. Although presenting morphological adaptations to do so, several populations go beyond the body limitations, using tools, mainly stone tools, to expand their food range. Those populations are diverse, some using stones more widely than others. We know stone tool size correlates with the target's resistance within some populations, but we have no detailed comparisons between populations so far. This study described and compared general environmental data, food’s physical properties, and stone tools features on three populations of bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus), including a new site. The differences we observed regarding stone tool use between the new site (CVNP) and the previously studied ones could be partially explained by ecological factors, such as the raw material and resource availability. However, other differences appear to be more related to behavioral traditions, such as the processing of Hymenaea at CVNP, where the monkeys use bigger stones than other populations to process the same kind of food, which present similar physical properties between sites. Possible cultural differences need to be compared within a larger number of areas to better understand capuchin monkey behavioral variability.