Bone Tools at the Late Pre-Hispanic Site Boyo Paso 2 (Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina)

The aim of the article is to assess the role played by bone tools at Boyo Paso 2 (Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina), an open-air site interpreted as a basecamp seasonally occupied by mobile mixed foraging and farming people c. 900–700 years BP. The results suggest that diverse activities were carried out on-site, including hunting or warfare, tool production, food processing and rituals. Bone tool analysis may enable reconstruction of the technological level, social organization, and cultural attitude towards the environment among people neither wholly foragers nor wholly farmers, a category for which archaeology currently lacks sufficient archaeological understanding and that merits further research.

Selection preferences for animal species used in bone-tool-manufacturing strategies in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Animal symbolism is a prominent feature of many human societies globally. In some cases, these symbolic attributes manifest in the technological domain, influencing the decision to use the bones of certain animals and not others for tool manufacture. In southern Africa, animals feature prominently in the cosmogenic narratives of both hunter-gatherer and Bantu-speaking farmer groups. Whenever these two culturally distinct groups came into contact with each other there would be an assimilation of cosmogenic concepts of power and the adoption of certain symbolically important animals. In this paper, we report on which animals were selected to make bone tools during the first millennium AD contact period in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa, and explore the extent to which this selection may have been influenced by the symbolic associations of specific animals. Our results show selective targeting of specific animals for tool manufacture at some sites, with a narrowing of the range of selected species during the first millennium AD contact period. Certain antelope tribes, such as Aepycerotini, Cephalophini and Antilopini, appear to have been deliberately avoided, thus arguing against opportunistic selection. Nor does the range of selected animals appear to show any obvious mechanical considerations, as has been noted in similar studies. We highlight the potential of ZooMS for understanding the dynamics of animal symbolism in the past.

Using Radiocarbon Dates and Tool Design Principles to Assess the Role of Composite Slotted Bone Tool Technology at the Intersection of Adaptation and Culture-History

Slotted bone tools are an iconic example of composite tool technology in which change in one of the components does not require changing the design of the other parts. Commonly, slotted bone tools are seen through the lens of lithic technology, highlighting organizational aspects related to serial production of insets, reliability and maintainability. In this framework, slotted bone tool technology is associated with risk aversion in demanding environmental settings. Here, we provide the first overview of radiocarbon-dated slotted bone tools in northernmost Europe and the East European Plain, including 17 new direct dates on pitch glue, and show that the Late Pleistocene to Middle Holocene period of inset slotted bone tool use in this area shows marked variation and idiosyncrasy in associated lithic technology against a trend of continuously warming climate. We suggest that historical specificity and path-dependence, rather than convergent evolution, best explain the variability seen in slotted bone tool technology in the studied case, and that slotted bone tools in general formed an organizationally flexible, adaptable and hence likely adaptive technological solution that met a wide variety of cultural and technological demands.

THE ISHANGO BONE: The World's First Known Mathematical Sieve and Table of the Small Prime Numbers

This paper aims to show that the Ishango bone, one of two bones discovered in the1950s buried in ash on the banks of Lake Edward in Democratic Republic of Congo(formerly Zaire), after a nearby volcanic eruption, is the world's first known mathematicalsieve and table of the small prime numbers. The bone is dated approximately 20,000BC.Key to the demonstration of the sieve is the contention that the ancient Stone Agemathematicians of Ishango in Central Africa conceived of doubling or multiplication by 2in a more primitive mode than modern Computer Age humans, as the process of"copying" of a singular record (that is, a mark created by a stone tool as encountered inStone Age people's daily experience). Similarly, the doubling of any number was, bylogical extension, a process of copying of any number of records (marks) denoting aninteger, thereby doubling the exhibited number (marks). Some evidence for this processof "copying" and thus representing numbers as consisting of "copies" of other numbers,is displayed on the bone and can still be found to exist in the number systems ofmodern Africans in the region.Unlike previous speculations on the use of the bone tool by other studies, the ancientmethod of sieving of the small primes suggested here is notable for unifying (making useand explanation of) all columns of the Ishango bone; whilst all numbers exhibited forman essential part of the primitive mathematical sieve described. Furthermore, it is statedthat the middle column (M) of the bone inscriptions houses the calculations of theIshango Sieve. All numbers deduced in the middle calculation column relate to aprocess of elimination of the non-prime numbers from the sequence of numbers1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (although numbers 1 and 2 are omitted). The act of elimination isproven by the display of the numbers deduced in the middle column; namely: 4, 6, 8, 9,and 10 and the subsequent omission of these same numbers from the following listleaving only: 5, 7 at the bottom of column M.This elimination process described above is repeated to obtain the primes 11,13,17,19when eliminating non-primes from the sequence 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20.However, only calculations for the sequence 1 to 10 (for numbers above 2) aredisplayed in column M; as if to exemplify the Ishango Sieve method for the benefit ofposterity.

Howiesons Poort

The Howiesons Poort is a technological tradition within the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa. This technological tradition shows different characteristics, technical and symbolic (the engraving of ostrich eggshell containers, the appearance of engraved ochre, formal bone tool technology, compound adhesives for hafting and a great variability in hunting techniques), which only developed in an extensive manner much later in other parts of the world. Therefore, the African Middle Stone Age through the material of the Howiesons Poort holds some of the oldest symbolic and complex technologies documented in prehistory. For some researchers, the Howiesons Poort still represents an unusual and ephemeral technological development within the Middle Stone Age, probably related to environmental stress, and as such there are numerous hypotheses for it as an environmental adaptation, whereas for others, on the contrary, it implies that complex cognition, deduced from the elaborated technology and symbolic expressions, was fully developed in the Middle Stone Age.

Human Remains in the Central Area of a Bronze Age Multi-layered Settlement at Boconád-Alatka-puszta

In 2014, we had the opportunity to study a Bronze Age multilayered settlement at Boconád-Alatka-puszta within the framework of a KEOP project. The site is located in the southern part of Heves County, northeast of Boconád. On the basis of archaeological research, the examined settlement layers can be connected to the Hatvan culture. In the central part of the settlement, surrounded by a ditch, human bones, i.e. fragments of skeletal bones and skulls of a child and an adult were recovered, concentrated in the same area, at the lowerpart of the plowed layer and the gray layer below it. Shell jewellery and a bone tool observed at the level ofthe bones were presumably the remnants of grave goods. It is certain that, taking advantage of the features of the place, the burials might take place after the abandonment of the settlement. Due to the extent of the disturbance, the results of scientific research may give the answer to who buried here and when.

Pre-Roman and Roman Period flat scrapers made of bone in the territory of Poland

Bone tools are among the least studied artefacts, not only in the Przeworsk culture but in other regions of European Barbaricum as well. In the article, the focus is on one type of bone tool, flat scrapers, which have not as yet been sufficiently analysed. The first conclusion is that this category of finds is more widespread than previously assumed and has often been misinterpreted. One of the most interesting findings presented in the text concerns the function of those tools. Their function is reconstructed here based on the analysis of unpublished specimens recently discovered in Przeworsk culture settlements in the basins of the Nida and Nidzica Rivers, and on analysis of the published materials. Microscopic analysis of micro-traces was conducted in order to examine the proposed hypotheses. As a result, an interpretation of the spread, function, and chronology of scrapers made of bone is proposed.