DOCSLIB.ORG

Biomechanical Strategies During Oldowan and Acheulean Stone Tool Production

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Biomechanical Strategies during Oldowan and Acheulean Stone Tool Production by Erin Marie S. Williams B.A. in Anthropology, 2000, Grinnell College M.A. in Anthropology, 2007, The George Washington University M.Phil in Hominid Paleobiology, 2008, The George Washington University A dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 15, 2011 Dissertation directed by Alison S. Brooks Professor of Anthropology and Brian G. Richmond Associate Professor of Anthropology The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Erin Marie S. Williams has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of February 28, 2011. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Biomechanical Strategies during Oldowan and Acheulean Stone Tool Production Erin Marie S. Williams Dissertation Research Committee: Alison S. Brooks, Professor of Anthropology, Dissertation Co-Director Brian G. Richmond, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dissertation Co-Director Peter W. Lucas, Professor of Anthropology, Committee Member Adam D. Gordon, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University at Albany—SUNY , Committee Member ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to three sets of educators: To my teachers and professors, starting with Geneva Ballard and Anne Miller in the nursery school at church, for my formal education, To Bella-Boo, Charlie-Choo, John-J, Greggy-Goo and ‘Ria-Roo Sprenkel and C-Bear, Anna-Banana, Katie-Did, and ‘Tuffer Gass, for my informal education, and To my mom and dad, Sara Lou and David Williams, for teaching me most of what resides in between the two. iii Acknowledgements I would like to begin by thanking my primary graduate school advisor, Dr. Alison S. Brooks. Alison’s Paleolithic Archaeology class was the first class I took in graduate school, and her early assistance and support gave me the confidence to apply to the Hominid Paleobiology Doctoral Program. To me, Alison is the consummate scientist and role model. She cares a great deal for all of her students and treats everyone in the scientific community with dignity and respect. Alison has walked me through a number of joyful and trying experiences while I have been at GWU, and I do not think it is unwarranted to say that I would have not made it this far, or perhaps even into the program, without Alison’s guidance. I would also like to thank Dr. Brian G. Richmond, who may have been surprised when he realized that I’d snuck in and stuck myself among his students, as well. Brian is one of the best teachers I have ever had the privilege to study with and I know that he has exercised enormous patient teaching me about biomechanics, anatomy, and physics during my time at GWU, for which I am very grateful. I would also like to thank Brian for always cushioning his critiques with at least one positive statement before getting to the “issues,” and for talking me back from the cliff’s edge when I thought that I had erased NPR’s FTP site and possibly taken down their website, as well. Dr. Peter W. Lucas served as the third adviser in my advisory trifecta. Peter helped me look at things from unique perspectives and challenged me to investigate the underlying causes governing why systems work as they do. He has consistently been a source of iv encouragement and support and he is the only academic I know that gets as excited about experiments as my father does about life in general. I was sad to see Peter pick up and move to another continent and I will miss his sly jokes and watching him doodle on his tablet. Dr. Adam D. Gordon has also acted as one of my main advisors since the collection of my pilot data. Adam has an amazing ability to take the most difficult concepts and slice them up into manageable pieces that make sense to me. He also has a mysterious way of guiding students to craft better experiments without dictating protocol from on high, which helped me learn far more than I would have otherwise. I am grateful for the enormous amount of the time he dedicated towards my education and dissertation. I also appreciate Adam’s good humor and his continual reminders that THIS IS FUN! The four people listed above formed the core of researchers that helped guide me through the dissertation process. They all read multiple drafts of grants and manuscripts, listened to dozens of podium and poster presentations, and let me find the right answers on my own time. I have been lucky to learn from them and their help has meant a great deal to me. I would also like to thank Dr. Daniel Schmitt, who served as one of my external committee members. Dan is another teacher that manages to make difficult concepts less intimidating. He has been supportive of me and my research from the early stages, and his excitement made me more excited. Dan has been willing to discuss my questions and to loan me rather expensive equipment on what has turned out to be a long term basis. I am grateful for all that Dan has done for me. v Dr. Dietrich Stout also served as an external committee member, and helped usher me through the final stages of the process. I am grateful for Dietrich’s thoughtful comments and discussions of my research. I am also grateful to Dr. Bernard Wood, first and foremost for all of his hard work over the years as the Director of the Hominid Paleobiology Doctoral Program. Bernard is not one to mince words or to leave Ts uncrossed, which means that manuscripts that pass across his desk come out cleaner (notwithstanding the abundance of red ink) and presentations that he previews paint a coherent picture and are free from spelling and grammatical errors. I appreciate the time he takes with all of us making sure that we are “stage ready.” I am particularly grateful for his help in securing the postdoc I received and for his help at the end of my dissertation process. I am endlessly grateful to the faculty and students of The Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology and I am proud to be counted as one of their peers. The people that make up our department support one another personally and professionally in a variety of ways, and they made the long hours far more enjoyable than one may imagine they would be. I would like to thank our faculty and postdocs for all of the instruction they gave me and for making graduate school comfortable and fun, including: Dr. Robin Bernstein, Dr. Shannon McFarlin, Dr. Chet Sherwood, Dr. Muhammad Spoc(ter), and Dr. Erin Vogel. I would particularly like to thank Chet and Erin for their helpful discussions regarding cognition and statistics, respectively. I would also like to thank all of my fellow Hom/Pal students, past and present, for creating an atmosphere free from competition and full of mutual support and respect, including: Jen Baker, Iowa Bauernfeind, Kallista Bernal, Serena Bianchi, soon-to-be Dr. J-9 Chalk, Habiba Chirchir, Dr. Piz-aul Constantino, vi double-Dr. Rui Diogo, Du-Du Du, Dr. T Faith, soon-to-be Dr. Felicia Gomez, Dr. Deej Green, Kevin Hatala, Dr. Amanda Henry, Dr. Griff, Dr. Lisa Nevell, Liz Renner, Kestopher Schroer, Cheryl Stimpson, Dr. Robin Teague, Dr. Matt Skinner and Andrew Zipkin. Thanks are due in particular to Amy, Kevin, and Tyler for their assistance in all things related to cognition (Amy) and statistical help (Kevin and Tyler), respectively. I am grateful to Deej, J-9, Amanda, and X-tyna for their help in avoiding holiday moments, and acknowledge that many sticky situations were avoided with the help of their proof reading and editing. J, you are clever and have lovely brown eyes. Before entering the PhD program, I was a Masters student in the Anthropology department at GWU. A number of people made that experience easier and more enjoyable and I thank them for their help and support during that time. They include: Dr. Kitty Allen, Dr. Robin Bernstein, Dr. Alison Brooks, Dr. Richard Grinker, and Dr. Stephen Lubkemann. I would particularly like to thank Alison and Robin for their constant support and encouragement and for writing the references that helped me get into the PhD program. Dr. Rick Potts and Jenny Clark at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History were also extremely kind and supportive while I worked towards my MA, and I appreciate all of their help, from the job (and air mattress) they gave me to their tolerance of my odd working hours. Our program functions as well as it does in large part because we have a lot of support from the larger GWU community. Within the Anthropology department I am grateful to the entire administrative staff, particularly Jonathan Higman, Savannah Fetterolf, Goby Mann, and Amanda Warner. Hom/Pal students also receive an additional helping hand from the CASHP Administrator, and I feel lucky to have received a great deal vii of help from the four that worked in this position while I was a student in the program:, Kayla Jarvis, Gaby-Baby Mallozzi, Phillip Williams, and Sophie Thibodeau. In the larger GWU community, I am grateful to Iva Beatty and Geri Rypkema for all of the administrative help they have given me over the years. I am also extremely grateful to Dr. Tara Wallace and the GW chapter of the Edward A.
Recommended publications
  • Early Members of the Genus Homo -. EXPLORATIONS: an OPEN INVITATION to BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

    Early Members of the Genus Homo -. EXPLORATIONS: an OPEN INVITATION to BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

    EXPLORATIONS: AN OPEN INVITATION TO BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Editors: Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera and Lara Braff American Anthropological Association Arlington, VA 2019 Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. ISBN – 978-1-931303-63-7 www.explorations.americananthro.org 10. Early Members of the Genus Homo Bonnie Yoshida-Levine Ph.D., Grossmont College Learning Objectives • Describe how early Pleistocene climate change influenced the evolution of the genus Homo. • Identify the characteristics that define the genus Homo. • Describe the skeletal anatomy of Homo habilis and Homo erectus based on the fossil evidence. • Assess opposing points of view about how early Homo should be classified. Describe what is known about the adaptive strategies of early members of the Homo genus, including tool technologies, diet, migration patterns, and other behavioral trends.The boy was no older than 9 when he perished by the swampy shores of the lake. After death, his slender, long-limbed body sank into the mud of the lake shallows. His bones fossilized and lay undisturbed for 1.5 million years. In the 1980s, fossil hunter Kimoya Kimeu, working on the western shore of Lake Turkana, Kenya, glimpsed a dark colored piece of bone eroding in a hillside. This small skull fragment led to the discovery of what is arguably the world’s most complete early hominin fossil—a youth identified as a member of the species Homo erectus. Now known as Nariokotome Boy, after the nearby lake village, the skeleton has provided a wealth of information about the early evolution of our own genus, Homo (see Figure 10.1).
  • The Dates of the Discovery of the First Peking Man Fossil Teeth

    The Dates of the Discovery of the First Peking Man Fossil Teeth

    The Dates of the Discovery of the First Peking Man Fossil Teeth Qian WANG,LiSUN, and Jan Ove R. EBBESTAD ABSTRACT Four teeth of Peking Man from Zhoukoudian, excavated by Otto Zdansky in 1921 and 1923 and currently housed in the Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University, are among the most treasured finds in palaeoanthropology, not only because of their scientific value but also for their important historical and cultural significance. It is generally acknowledged that the first fossil evidence of Peking Man was two teeth unearthed by Zdansky during his excavations at Zhoukoudian in 1921 and 1923. However, the exact dates and details of their collection and identification have been documented inconsistently in the literature. We reexamine this matter and find that, due to incompleteness and ambiguity of early documentation of the discovery of the first Peking Man teeth, the facts surrounding their collection and identification remain uncertain. Had Zdansky documented and revealed his findings on the earliest occasion, the early history of Zhoukoudian and discoveries of first Peking Man fossils would have been more precisely known and the development of the field of palaeoanthropology in early twentieth century China would have been different. KEYWORDS: Peking Man, Zhoukoudian, tooth, Uppsala University. INTRODUCTION FOUR FOSSIL TEETH IDENTIFIED AS COMING FROM PEKING MAN were excavated by palaeontologist Otto Zdansky in 1921 and 1923 from Zhoukoudian deposits. They have been housed in the Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University in Sweden ever since. These four teeth are among the most treasured finds in palaeoanthropology, not only because of their scientific value but also for their historical and cultural significance.
  • The Early Paleolithic of China1) HUANG Weiwen2)

    The Early Paleolithic of China1) HUANG Weiwen2)

    第 四 紀 研 究 (The Quaternary Research) 28 (4) p. 237-242 Nov. 1989 The Early Paleolithic of China1) HUANG Weiwen2) spread widely and existed for a long time. The Introduction deposits contained very rich fossils of mammal. 1. Geographic Distribution and the Types of The fauna exisiting in the stage from the early Deposits to the middle Pleistocene can be at least divided Before the 1940's, only one locality of the into three groups, which have their own Early Paleolithic period was discovered in characteristics and sequence: Nihewan fauna of China. That is Zhoukoudian near Beijing early Pleistocene, Gongwangling (Lantian Man) City (the site of Peking Man). Since the 1950's fauna of the latest stage of early Pleistocene many new localities have been found, of which or the earliest stage of middle Pleistocene and no less than fifteen are relatively important. Zhoukoudian (Peking Man) fauna of the middle These localities spread in North, South and Pleistocene. In the recent years, some scholars Northeast China covering a range from 23°35' to have suggested that locations of Dali and 40°15'N and from 101°58' to 124°8'E which Dingcun which originally recognized as be- includes two climate zones, namely, the sub- longing to the early stage of late Pleistocene tropical zone and warm temperate zone in the should place in the middle Pleistocene, as the eastern part of today's Asia (Fig. 1). latest stage of this epoch (LIU and DING,1984). The localities include three types of deposit: There also existed fluviatile and fluviol- 1) Fluviatile deposit: acustrine deposits of Pleistocene in South Xihoudu (Shanxi), Kehe (Shanxi), Lantian China.
  • Stone Age Technology

    Stone Age Technology

    World’s Early People DIGGING UP DNA STONE AGE TECHNOLOGY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Worlds_Early_People_FC.indd 1 2/7/17 11:22 AM 2 Who Lived in the Stone Age? When you think of “old,” what comes to But they helped hominins to thrive. mind? Last year’s shoes? Life before the The first species to make tools is from the Internet? Try a little earlier – 2.5 million genus (category) we call Homo (human). It years earlier! is known as Homo habilis, or “handy That’s about the time some of the first person.” It most likely lived in Africa 1.5 hominins, or humanlike species that walk to 2.4 million years ago. Homo habilis upright, started making tools from rocks. represented a big change. How big? Big Their tools were simple – mainly stones enough that we call its time the Paleolithic split to form a point or a sharp edge. era, or the Old Stone Age. l THE BRAINS ability to make of Homo habilis and use tools. were about Homo habilis’s half the size of tools and brain- present-day human power helped it brains. However, spread. Over the brains of Homo millennia, it habilis were larger adapted, or made than the brains changes that of the hominins helped it survive, to that came before live in regions that it. This may have earlier species had contributed to its found too harsh. d HOMO ERECTUS, or early as 2.5 million communities, hunt “upright person,” years ago, Homo for food, create art, was probably a lot erectus was at its and control fire like Homo habilis, peak about 1.9 for warmth and but taller and thin- million years ago.
  • Human Origin Sites and the World Heritage Convention in Eurasia

    Human Origin Sites and the World Heritage Convention in Eurasia

    World Heritage papers41 HEADWORLD HERITAGES 4 Human Origin Sites and the World Heritage Convention in Eurasia VOLUME I In support of UNESCO’s 70th Anniversary Celebrations United Nations [ Cultural Organization Human Origin Sites and the World Heritage Convention in Eurasia Nuria Sanz, Editor General Coordinator of HEADS Programme on Human Evolution HEADS 4 VOLUME I Published in 2015 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France and the UNESCO Office in Mexico, Presidente Masaryk 526, Polanco, Miguel Hidalgo, 11550 Ciudad de Mexico, D.F., Mexico. © UNESCO 2015 ISBN 978-92-3-100107-9 This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository (http://www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en). The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. Cover Photos: Top: Hohle Fels excavation. © Harry Vetter bottom (from left to right): Petroglyphs from Sikachi-Alyan rock art site.
  • A Review of the Middle Pleistocene Record in Eurasia

    A Review of the Middle Pleistocene Record in Eurasia

    Was the Emergence of Home Bases and Domestic Fire a Punctuated Event? A Review of the Middle Pleistocene Record in Eurasia NICOLAS ROLLAND THIS SURVEY OF THE EVIDENCE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOMESTIC FIRE and home bases integrates naturalistic factors and culture historical stages and processes into an anthropological theoretical framework. The main focus will be to review fire technology in terms of (1) its characteristics in prehistoric times and its earliest established evidence; (2) the role it played, among other factors, in the appearance of ancient hominid home bases sensu stricto, as part of a key formative stage during the transition from Lower to Middle Paleolithic; and (3) current findings and debates relating to the role of anthropogenic fire and the evidence of a home base occupation at Zhoukoudian (ZKD) Locality 1 in China. It is con­ cluded that, despite complex site formation processes and postdepositional distur­ bances, the sum of direct evidence and off-site context at Zhoukoudian consti­ tutes a record sufficiently compelling for continuing to regard it as a key early hominid home base occurrence in East Asia. This revised verdict has important implications for evaluating and comparing Middle Pleistocene biocultural evolu­ tion and developments. This analysis seeks to avoid both excessive biological or environmental reduc­ tionism, and treating "cultural" behavior as entirely emergent without reference to its natural historical antecedents. Hominids retained a primate omnivorous diet, but added a meat-eating and meat-procurement component that nlOved them up the trophic pyramid to compete with other carnivores. Ground-living hominids also preserved the primate system of living in large local groups for safety and a diurnal lifestyle.
  • April, 28Th 2020 Dear Colleagues, Our 4Th Newsletter Comes in a Slightly Reduced Form with Most of This Year's Conferences

    April, 28Th 2020 Dear Colleagues, Our 4Th Newsletter Comes in a Slightly Reduced Form with Most of This Year's Conferences

    April, 28th 2020 Dear Colleagues, Our 4th newsletter comes in a slightly reduced form with most of this year’s conferences cancelled or postponed due to the ongoing global pandemic, including our own UISPP congress (page 2). The XIX UISPP congress, including our two pyroarchaeology sessions, has been postponed to September 2021, but will still take place in Meknes. However, there still have been plenty of new pyroarchaeology papers published in the recent months (pages 2 to 5). We conclude our newsletter with an obituary for Ofer Bar-Yosef, written by one his former PhD students, Carolina Mallol (pages 6-7), and hope to bring you better tidings with our next newsletter. With our best wishes Carolina, Chris and Mareike* Contact us via Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter @pyroarchaeology Visit us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Pyroarchaeology-2265235893709367/ or on our UISPP commission website http://www.uispp.org/pyroarchaeology-0 * responsible for this newsletter Page 1 | 7 4th Newsletter UISPP Pyroarchaeology Commission Conference News Due to the global pandemic most of this year’s conferences have been cancelled, including the Trial by Fire Conference at Liverpool University, and some have plans of going virtual instead (e.g. EAA and ESHE). The XIX UISPP congress in Meknes has been postponed to 2nd to 7th September, 2021, and the abstract submission deadline has also been postponed, to 31st March, 2021. This also means that there will be no meeting of our scientific commission this year. Publication News Allué, E., Mas, B., 2020. The meaning of Pinus sylvestris-type charcoal taphonomic markers in Palaeolithic sites in NE Iberia.
  • A Tale of Four Caves: Esr Dating of Mousterian Layers at Iberian Archaeological Sites

    A Tale of Four Caves: Esr Dating of Mousterian Layers at Iberian Archaeological Sites

    A TALE OF FOUR CAVES A TALE OF FOUR CAVES: ESR DATING OF MOUSTERIAN LAYERS AT IBERIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES BY VITO VOLTERRA, M. A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctorate of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Vito Volterra, May, 2000 . DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY (2000) McMaster University (Anthropology) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: A Tale of Four Caves: ESR Dating of Mousterian Layers at Iberian Archaeological Sites AUTHOR: Vito Volterra, M. A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Professor H. P. Schwarcz NUMBER OF PAGES: xviii, 250 Abstract This study was undertaken to provide supporting evidence for the late presence of Neanderthals in Iberia at the end of the Middle Paleolithic. This period is almost impossible to date accurately by the conventional radiocarbon method. Accordingly electron spin resonance (ESR) was used to obtain ages for four Spanish sites. They were EI Pendo in the Cantabrian north, Carihuela in Andalusia and Gorham's and Vanguard caves at Gibraltar. The sites were chosen to allow the greatest variety in geographic settings, latitudes and sedimentation. They were either under exca­ vation or had been excavated recently following modem techniques. A multidisciplinary approach to dating the archaeological contexts was being proposed for all the sites except EI Pendo whose deposits had been already dated but only on the basis ofsedimentological and faunal analyses. This was the first research program to apply ESR to such a variety ofsites and compare its results with that ofsuch a variety of other archaeometric dating teclmiques. The variety allowed a further dimension to the research that is the opportunity ofappraising first hand the applicability and advantages ofa new dating technique and determining its accuracy as an archaeological dating method incomparison with other techniques.
  • Intensified Foraging and the Roots of Farming in China

    Intensified Foraging and the Roots of Farming in China

    Boise State University ScholarWorks Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations Department of Anthropology Fall 2017 Intensified orF aging and the Roots of Farming in China Shengqian Chen Renmin University of China Pei-Lin Yu Boise State University This document was originally published in the Journal of Anthropological Research by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright restrictions may apply. doi: 10.1086/692660 Intensified Foraging and the Roots of Farming in China SHENGQIAN CHEN, School of History, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China PEI-LIN YU, Department of Anthropology, Boise State University, Boise, ID 83725, USA. Email: [email protected] In an accompanying paper ( Journal of Anthropological Research 73(2):149–80, 2017), the au- thors assess current archaeological and paleobiological evidence for the early Neolithic of China. Emerging trends in archaeological data indicate that early agriculture developed variably: hunt- ing remained important on the Loess Plateau, and aquatic-based foraging and protodomes- tication augmented cereal agriculture in South China. In North China and the Yangtze Basin, semisedentism and seasonal foraging persisted alongside early Neolithic culture traits such as or- ganized villages, large storage structures, ceramic vessels, and polished stone tool assemblages. In this paper, we seek to explain incipient agriculture as a predictable, system-level cultural response of prehistoric foragers through an evolutionary assessment of archaeological evidence for the pre- ceding Paleolithic to Neolithic transition (PNT). We synthesize a broad range of diagnostic ar- tifacts, settlement, site structure, and biological remains to develop a working hypothesis that agriculture was differentially developed or adopted according to “initial conditions” of habitat, resource structure, and cultural organization.
  • On the Earliest Evidence for Habitual Use of Fire in Europe

    On the Earliest Evidence for Habitual Use of Fire in Europe

    On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe Wil Roebroeksa,1 and Paola Villab,c,d,1 aFaculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands; bUniversity of Colorado Museum, Boulder, CO 80309-0265; cUnité Mixte de Recherche 5199, de la Préhistoire á l’Actuel: Culture, Environnement, et Anthropologie, Institut de Préhistoire et Géologie du Quaternaire, 33405 Talence, France; and dSchool of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits 2050 Johannesburg, South Africa Edited* by Erik Trinkaus, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, and approved February 8, 2011 (received for review December 4, 2010) The timing of the human control of fire is a hotly debated issue, Results with claims for regular fire use by early hominins in Africa at ∼1.6 Interpreting the Record. For most of prehistory until ∼10,000 y ago, million y ago. These claims are not uncontested, but most archae- hominins all over the world subsisted as hunters and gatherers, ologists would agree that the colonization of areas outside Africa, with a generally highly mobile lifestyle. Until the later phases of especially of regions such as Europe where temperatures at time the Paleolithic, these mobile foragers invested very little in camp dropped below freezing, was indeed tied to the use of fire. Our layout, in dwelling structures, or in the construction of formal review of the European evidence suggests that early hominins hearths (14). The overwhelming majority of their traces consist of moved into northern latitudes without the habitual use of fire. It stone tools, the debris of stone tool production, and often but was only much later, from ∼300,000 to 400,000 y ago onward, that not always food remains.
  • Preliminary Study of a Prehistoric Site in Northern Laos

    Preliminary Study of a Prehistoric Site in Northern Laos

    Tam Hang Rockshelter: Preliminary Study of a Prehistoric Site in Northern Laos FABRICE DEMETER, THONGSA SAYAVONGKHAMDY, ELISE PATOLE-EDOUMBA, ANNE-SOPHIE COUPEY, ANNE-MARIE BACON, JOHN DE VOS, CHRISTELLE TOUGARD, BOUNHEUANG BOUASISENGPASEUTH, PHONEPHANH SICHANTHONGTIP, AND PHILIPPE DURINGER introduction Prehistoric research in mainland Southeast Asia was initiated by the French with the establishment of the Geological Service of Indochina (GSI) in 1897. The GSI began to study the geology of Tonkin, Yunnan, Laos, and south- ern Indochina before 1919, later extending their knowledge to northern Indo- china and Cambodia. In the meantime, several major Homo erectus findings occurred in the region, which contributed to the palaeoanthropological debate that prevailed in the 1930s. These discoveries did not involve French but rather Dutch and German scientists. In 1889, E. Dubois discovered Pithecanthropus erectus on the island of Java in Indonesia (Dubois 1894); then in 1929, W. Z. Pei found Sinanthropus pekinensis at Zhoukoudian in China (Weidenreich 1935), while G.H.R. von Koenigswald discovered additional erectus remainsinJava(vonKoe- nigswald 1936). In response, the GSI refocused on the palaeontology and palaeoanthropology of the region, until the cessation of fieldwork activities in 1945 due to the beginning of the war with Japan. Jacques Fromaget joined the GSI in 1923 and conducted tremendous excava- tions in northern Laos and Vietnam as if motivated by the desire to discover some Indochinese hominid remains. Similar to many of his geologist colleagues around the world, Fromaget was not only interested in soil formations but he was also concerned about prehistory. Along with GSI members, M. Colani, E. Fabrice Demeter is a‰liated with the Unite´ Ecoanthropologie et Ethnobiologie, Muse´ede l’Homme, Paris, France.
  • Life Without the Movius Line: the Structure of the East and Southeast Asian Early Palaeolithic

    Life Without the Movius Line: the Structure of the East and Southeast Asian Early Palaeolithic

    This is a repository copy of Life without the Movius Line: The structure of the East and Southeast Asian Early Palaeolithic. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/100881/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Dennell, R. (2015) Life without the Movius Line: The structure of the East and Southeast Asian Early Palaeolithic. Quaternary International, 400. pp. 14-22. ISSN 1040-6182 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.09.001 Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Elsevier Editorial System(tm) for Quaternary International Manuscript Draft Manuscript Number: Title: Life without the Movius Line: the structure of the East and Southeast Asian Early Palaeolithic Article Type: Peking Man Keywords: Movius Line; Acheulean; Zhoukoudian; China; SE Asia Corresponding Author: Prof.