Scratching the Surface(s): Examining the complexity of geological contexts for the Palaeolithic of the Sonar Basin, Madhya Pradesh

The Sonar River Valley is centrally located in Madhya Pradesh, flanked by rich Palaeolithic and fossiliferous localities in the Son and Narmada Valleys and has historically been overlooked in favour of the latter rivers, that tend to preserve well stratified Quaternary formations along varying portions of their length. Here an attempt is made to look at the Sonar basin through a broader lens, examining the various landforms found in the district of Damoh through which the Sonar flows before joining the Ken. The objective of this paper is threefold: to bring together the geomorphology of the area both in association with and as a result of fluvial action but also as a product of other geomorphic processes; to understand the consequence these processes have on the visibility of the prehistoric archaeological record within the region; and to look at this geoarchaeological relationship in the wider context of some of the major river basins in Madhya Pradesh, notably the Son and Narmada. Secondary sources on geology and geoarchaeology have been integrated with preliminary fieldwork in Districts Damoh and Narsinghpur, and to a smaller extent in Sagar, Chhatarpur and Panna. This work demonstrates the complexity of the South Asian Palaeolithic record that stretches beyond fluvial contexts, in turn helping to spatially expand our understanding of hominin behaviour beyond narrow riverine corridors.

New evidence on the tool-assisted hunting exhibited by chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes verus ) in a savannah habitat at Fongoli, Sénégal

For anthropologists, meat eating by primates like chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) warrants examination given the emphasis on hunting in human evolutionary history. As referential models, apes provide insight into the evolution of hominin hunting, given their phylogenetic relatedness and challenges reconstructing extinct hominin behaviour from palaeoanthropological evidence. Among chimpanzees, adult males are usually the main hunters, capturing vertebrate prey by hand. Savannah chimpanzees ( P. t. verus ) at Fongoli, Sénégal are the only known non-human population that systematically hunts vertebrate prey with tools, making them an important source for hypotheses of early hominin behaviour based on analogy. Here, we test the hypothesis that sex and age patterns in tool-assisted hunting ( n =308 cases) at Fongoli occur and differ from chimpanzees elsewhere, and we compare tool-assisted hunting to the overall hunting pattern. Males accounted for 70% of all captures but hunted with tools less than expected based on their representation on hunting days. Females accounted for most tool-assisted hunting. We propose that social tolerance at Fongoli, along with the tool-assisted hunting method, permits individuals other than adult males to capture and retain control of prey, which is uncommon for chimpanzees. We assert that tool-assisted hunting could have similarly been important for early hominins.