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C Asting the N E T W JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/7/11 9:22 AM Page v C ASTINGTHE N ET W IDE PAPERSIN HONOROF GLYNN ISAAC AND HIS APPROACH TO HUMAN ORIGINS RESEARCH Edited by Jeanne Sept and David Pilbeam Oxbow Books Oxford and Oakville JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/7/11 9:22 AM Page vi Published by Oxbow Books on behalf of the American School of Prehistoric Research. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. © Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2011 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Casting the net wide : papers in honor of Glynn Isaac and his approach to human origins research / edited by Jeanne Sept and David Pilbeam. -- 1st ed. p. cm. -- (American school of prehistoric research monograph series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-84217-454-8 1. Human beings--Origin. 2. Human evolution. 3. Isaac, Glynn Llywelyn, 1937-1985. I. Sept, Jeanne. II. Pilbeam, David R. GN281.C377 2011 599.9--dc23 2011041965 TYPESET AND PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/7/11 9:22 AM Page vii Contents Dedication iii Preface by David Pilbeam ix Acknowledgments xi Contributor List xiii List of Figures and Tables xv 1 Olorgesailie – Retrospective and Current Synthesis: Contribution 1 to the Commemorative Volume in Honor of Glynn Isaac Richard Potts 2 Conversations with Glynn’s Ghost: The Evolution of Paleolandscape 21 Research at East Turkana Anna K. Behrensmeyer 3 Glynn Llywelyn Isaac: A Recollection and Retrospective Assessment 41 Diane Gifford-Gonzalez 4 Factors Affecting Variability in Early Stone Age Lithic Assemblages: 53 Personal Observations from Actualistic Studies Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick 5 Archaeology of Human Origins: The Contribution of West 75 Turkana (Kenya) Hélène Roche 6 The Empire of the Acheulean Strikes Back 93 John A. J. Gowlett 7 The Diet of Early Humans: A Summary of the Critical Arguments 115 40 Years after Isaac’s Initial Insights Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo 8 Glynn Isaac: Memories and Tribute 133 John D. Speth 9 Honey and Fire in Human Evolution 149 Richard W. Wrangham JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/7/11 9:22 AM Page viii viii Casting the Net Wide 10 A Worm’s Eye View of Primate Behavior 169 Jeanne Sept 11 A Geographic Overview of Neanderthal-Modern Human Encounters 193 Ofer Bar-Yosef 12 Sorting Out the Muddle in the Middle East: Glynn Isaac’s Method 213 of ‘Multiple Working Hypotheses’ Applied to Theories of Human Evolution in the Late Pleistocene Levant John J. Shea 13 Scatters between the Sites – Farm Shelters, Hunting and Gathering 231 and the Farming Cycle in West Africa: Lessons for Archaeological Distributions Merrick Posnansky 14 In Pursuit of the Past: A Consideration of Emergent Issues in 241 African Archaeology in the Last Fifty Years Francis B. Musonda 15 The Tortoise and the Ostrich Egg: Projecting the Home Base 255 Hypothesis into the 21st Century Brian A. Stewart, John Parkington, and John W. Fisher, Jr. 16 A Very Particular Kind of Archaeologist 279 Bernard Wood JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/7/11 9:22 AM Page xiii Contributor List Editors Jeanne Sept David Pilbeam Department of Anthropology Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Indiana University Peabody Museum 701 East Kirkwood Ave. Harvard University Bloomington IN 47405-7100, USA Cambridge, MA 02138, USA E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Contributors Ofer Bar-Yosef John A. J. Gowlett Department of Anthropology School of Archaeology, Classics and Peabody Museum Egyptology (SACE) Harvard University University of Liverpool Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Liverpool L69 3GS, UK E-mail: [email protected] Francis B. Musonda Anna K. Behrensmeyer Senior Lecturer, Department of History Department of Paleobiology School of Humanities and Social Sciences National Museum of Natural History, MRC 121 University of Zambia Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC P.O. Box 32379 20013 USA Lusaka, Zambia [email protected] John W. Fisher, Jr. Department of Sociology and Anthropology John Parkington Montana State University Department of Archaeology Bozeman, Montana 59717, USA University of Cape Town Email: [email protected] Private Bag Rondebosch 7701, South Africa Diane Gifford-Gonzalez Email: [email protected] Department of Anthropology University of California, Santa Cruz Merrick Posnansky 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA Professor Emeritus, Anthropology and History E-mail: [email protected] University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA E-mail: [email protected] JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/7/11 9:22 AM Page xiv xiv Casting the Net Wide Richard Potts Brian A. Stewart Human Origins Program McDonald Institute for Archaeological National Museum of Natural History, Research Smithsonian Institution University of Cambridge Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA; and Downing Street Department of Earth Sciences, National Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK Museums of Kenya Email: [email protected] P.O. Box 40658, Nairobi 00100, Kenya E-mail: [email protected] Nicholas Toth Co-Director, The Stone Age Institute Hélène Roche 1392 W. Dittemore Road Directeur de Recherche au CNRS Gosport, IN 47433-9582 USA UMR 7055 Préhistoire et Technologie www.stoneageinstitute.org; CNRS – Université Paris Ouest Nanterre and Maison René Ginouvès, 21 allée de l’Université Department of Anthropology 92023 Nanterre Cedex, France Indiana University Bloomington, IN USA Kathy Schick E-mail: [email protected] Co-Director, The Stone Age Institute 1392 W. Dittemore Road Bernard Wood Gosport, IN 47433-9582 USA University Professor of Human Origins www.stoneageinstitute.org Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid and Paleobiology Department of Anthropology Department of Anthropology, George Indiana University Washington University Bloomington, IN USA 2110 G St. NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA E-mail: [email protected] Richard W. Wrangham John J. Shea Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Anthropology Department and Peabody Museum Turkana Basin Institute Harvard University Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 11794–4364, USA E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] John D. Speth Museum of Anthropology 4013 Museums Building University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1079, USA E-mail: [email protected] JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/6/11 10:36 AM Page 255 15 THE TORTOISE AND THE OSTRICH EGG: PROJECTING THE HOME BASE HYPOTHESIS INTO THE 21ST CENTURY Brian A. Stewart, John Parkington, and John W. Fisher, Jr. Introduction where observations, including aspects of site In the late 1970s Glynn Isaac was promoting a structure, are more densely packed. Kroll and home base with food-sharing model to under- Isaac (1984) explored this possibility in more stand the residual sites of the Plio-Pleistocene of detailed mapping of the spatial patterning of arti- east Africa. The debate was around the compe- facts, features and ‘site furniture’ (Binford 1983), tencies of our early ancestors and how these showing the potential for reading the social from could be accessed through imaginative manipu- the spatial. Dunefield Midden or DFM, a very late lation of the archaeological record (Binford pre-colonial Stone Age site in the Western Cape 1981, 1985; Blumenschine 1986; Bunn 1981; Province of South Africa provides just such an Isaac 1978a, 1978b, 1984; Potts 1984, 1988; opportunity. Because the most persuasive and Sept 1982; Shipman 1983, 1984). The contem- pervasive models are derived from Kalahari porary florescence of ethnographic documents hunter-gatherer observations, this southern on hunter-gatherer sites and spatial layouts was African forager behavioral residue should be an important inspirational platform (Binford amenable to the kind of inspired reconstruction 1978, 1983; Gould 1978, 1980; O’Connell Isaac favored. Here we look at the recognition of 1977, 1987; Yellen 1976, 1977). Many felt that home base structure and sharing through the lens it was a brave, not to say dangerous, leap back- of a large, carefully excavated site with the preser- ward from the 20th century Kalahari to the vation of a wide range of material evidence. 2 million-year-old Turkana Basin. But we share We have chosen to focus on tortoise bones with Glynn and his students the belief that it is and ostrich eggshell fragments because, in addi- the implementation, not the source, of an idea tion to being very common and almost always that matters. We support the view that ‘eureka’ precisely mapped at DFM, they reflect interest- can happen anywhere but it is the excavated ing trajectories of objects brought to the site as record that has the final say. We applaud his food items, partly discarded and partly recycled determination to integrate insights from experi- as artifacts, curated, likely shared among fami- ments, from ethnographies, from excavations lies and ultimately abandoned. As we have and from innovative thinking into reconstruc- shown elsewhere (Fisher and Strickland 1989, tions of what might have happened in the past. 1991), even briefly occupied hunter-gatherer Our feeling is that an important strut in this camps have a life history that compounds the kind of imagining of the distant past comes difficulties of reading behavior from spatially from an application in the recent past where mapped residues. We can try to follow these use- preservation is usually very good, where analo- trajectories through the brief time-span of the gous behaviors are more reliably postulated and DFM occupation(s). We emphasize that DFM JSDP interior Dec052011:Ox template Dec1107 draft 12/6/11 10:36 AM Page 256 256 Casting the Net Wide differs in significant ways from ethnographic 1300–1400.
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