University of Groningen Early Artefacts from Pakistan? Some Questions for the Excavators Hemingway, Martin F; Stapert, Dick; Dennell, R W Published in: Current Anthropology IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 1989 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Hemingway, M. F., Stapert, D., & Dennell, R. W. (1989). Early Artefacts from Pakistan? Some Questions for the Excavators. Current Anthropology, 30(3), 317-322. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). 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Dennell Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Jun., 1989), pp. 317-322 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2743525 Accessed: 29-10-2018 11:07 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, The University of Chicago Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology This content downloaded from 129.125.148.19 on Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:07:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Discussion and Criticism1 Early Artefacts from Pakistan? are very doubtful. A claim for stone tools dating before 2 million years from this area such as that of Dennell, Some Questions for the Rendell, and Hailwood (CA 29:495-98; see also Ren- dell and Dennell I987, Rendell, Hailwood, and Dennell Excavators I987) must be evaluated more stringently than an equiv- alent report from East Africa. From this demanding per- MARTIN F. HEMINGWAY spective Riwat comes out poorly: (i) The pieces do not Department of Archaeological Sciences, University of occur in a concentration of probably worked pieces but Bradford, Bradford, U.K. 17 VII 88 were extracted from blocks of conglomerate, some more than Io m2, scattered for an undisclosed distance along a From the sediments associated with Tertiary rifting in gully. The worked pieces represent an undisclosed pro- East Africa have come hominid remains and acceptable portion of similar-sized pieces from the locality (Car- concentrations of stone artefacts dating before i.5 mil- mona [Bordes and Viguier 19711 in Spain is comparably lion years. Fruitful localities occur from Barogali in Dji- dubious). (2) The sites occur in a conglomerate in which, bouti in the north (Chavaillon et al. I987) via the Hadar according to Dennell et al., they are not out of sedimen- (Johanson and Edey I98I), Omo (Merrick and Merrick tary context. (3) The sites are not associated with any 1976, Coppens 1977), East and West Turkana (Leakey other evidence of the presence of hominids. and Leakey 1978, Brown et al. I985, Harris et al. I988), In the absence of the three criteria that facilitate ac- Senga V (Harris et al. I987), Olduvai (Leakey I97I), ceptance of the East African localities, Dennell et al. fall Chesowanja (Gowlett et al. I98I), Peninj (Isaac and Cur- back on criteria of technique (cortex as percentage of tis 1974), and Laetoli (Leakey and Harris 1987) to the probable original surface, number of flakes removed, Chiwondo Beds of Malawi (Kaufulu and Stem I987) in number of flaking directions, presence of bulbs of per- the south. The footprints from Laetoli and and the cussion, and subjective evaluation), using these to grade hominid remains from several of these sites are clear the artefacts they have initially extracted from an un- testimony to the presence of bipedal hominids, and scat- known sample. These criteria were established not by ters of stone artefacts at all except Laetoli bear witness study of accepted collections of very early material but to their tool-making ability. by study of other pieces collected in Pakistan from The stone artefacts fulfill several criteria that permit Lower Pleistocene horizons and regarded as ranging from us to accept them as such: (i) Pieces that appear worked "the extremely convincing to the almost certainly natu- occur in concentrations (floors). (2) The claimed worked ral." The use of such a comparative collection will inevi- pieces occur out of sedimentary context in finer-grained tably lead to circularity in attribution. The authors have fluvial and lacustrine sediments, contexts to which they also failed to test their criteria by studying a sample could not have been carried by any natural processes collected from an active high-energy fluvial environ- that can be considered to have been operating at the ment such as can be provided-quite convincingly if one time. (3) The pieces occur in clear association with other wants to be convinced-by the beds of most Pyrenean clear evidence of hominid presence: butchered bone, mountain streams. Without such tests, the criteria em- hominid fossils, probable structures. ployed cannot be accepted as defining a distinct early Because these sites and these associations exist it is hominid conceptual or manipulative set. Some artefacts easier to accept new claimed early occurrences from the from Olduvai would fail on the combination of criteria region, although each must be expected to justify itself. used (see Leakey 1971:26, 36, 74-78), while the major- Beyond sub-Saharan Africa there is no clear evidence ity are much more complex. for any hominids earlier than Homo erectus and no site The Riwat "artefacts," failing on the three external that fulfills the three criteria earlier than i million years criteria, cannot be justified by the use of a priori and b.p., at 'Ubeidiya (Stekelis I966, Stekelis, Bar-Yosef, and untested technological criteria. Schick I969) and Isernia (Salvatori I984), for example. Finally, the evidence cited indicates that the sedi- Other sites in the time range or perhaps earlier, for ex- ments had been subjected to folding and erosion before ample, Vallonnet (de Lumley et al. I963) and Soleilhac i.6 million years, and a date of 2.1-I.9 million years for (Bonifay I986), may fulfill one or two of them, but most the folding event may well be acceptable. Even so, the accumulation of the conglomerate must have pre- i. Permission to reprint items in this section may be obtained only ceded not only the folding event but also the accumula- from their authors. tion of the 65 m of overlying sediments. The normal 3I7 This content downloaded from 129.125.148.19 on Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:07:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 318 | CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY event beneath the conglomerate is not Other in types itself of evidence dated, crucial so for establishing the one must suppose a date for the conglomerate artificial character that of "flaked not stones" are not presented, only predates 2 million years but may for example,predate data iton flakecon- angles (between the ventral siderably. face and the striking-platform remnant or, in the case of The Riwat pieces fail to satisfy the test requirements "cores," between the flake negatives and the striking employed here, and unless such requirements can be platform). Geological processes may produce flakes with satisfied, in the absence of any evidence of hominid pres- angles less than or more than go9, while in man-made ence in Asia so early, the claim that they are artefacts flakes these angles are always greater than go9 (often must be doubted. I00-I 30). Do the striking-platform remnants on flakes show signs of preparation, and what are their metrical attributes? If several flake scars are present on the same DICK STAPERT core (several examples of this are mentioned), what are Biological-Archaeological Institute, Groningen State their metrical attributes? Are they similar in dimen- University, Poststraat 6, 97I2 ER Groningen, The sions and form, as is often the case with Palaeolithic Netherlands. 25 x 88 cores? Do they all have the same surface modifications, proving that they originated at the same time? Dennell, Rendell, and Hailwood present some data to "Ripple marks" are also mentioned as indicating a support their view that five or six unambiguous quartz- hominid origin, but these marks can also be produced ite artefacts dating to ca. 2 million years B.P.