Andrew W. Kandel

Coastal adaptations and the Middle Stone Age lithic assemblages from Hoedjiespunt 1 in the Western Cape, South Africa.

New excavations at the Middle Stone Age (MSA) open-air site of Hoedjiespunt 1 (HDP1) on the west coast of South Africa advance our understanding of the evolution of coastal adaptations in Homo sapiens. The archaeological site of HDP1 dates to the last interglacial and consists of three phases of occupation, each containing abundant lithic artifacts, shellfish, terrestrial fauna, ostrich eggshell and pieces of ground ocher. The site provides an excellent case study to analyze human behavioral adaptations linked to early exploitation of marine resources. Here we reconstruct human activities through a detailed study of the lithic assemblages, combining analyses of the reduction sequences, artifact attributes and quartz fracturing. These methods provide insights into raw material procurement, lithic reduction sequences, site use and mobility patterns, and foster comparison with other MSA coastal sites. The main characteristics of the lithic assemblages remain constant throughout the use of the site. Quartz dominates silcrete and other raw materials by almost four to one. Knappers at HDP1 produced different forms of flakes using multiple core reduction methods. Denticulates represent the most frequent tool type. The assemblages document complete, bipolar and hard hammer reduction sequences for the locally available quartz, but highly truncated reduction sequences with many isolated end products for silcrete, a material with a minimum transport distance of 10-30km. This observation suggests that well provisioned individuals executed planned movements to the shoreline to exploit shellfish. Our excavations at HDP1 furthermore demonstrate the simultaneous occurrence of flexible raw material use, anticipated long-distance transport, systematic gathering of shellfish and use of ground ocher. The HDP1 lithic assemblages document a robust pattern of land-use that we interpret as a stable adaptation of modern humans to coastal landscapes as early as MIS 5e.

SCAVENGING AND PROCESSING OF WHALE MEAT AND BLUBBER BY LATER STONE AGE PEOPLE OF THE GEELBEK DUNES, WESTERN CAPE PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA

Although it has been postulated that the scavenging of beached whales played an important role in the subsistence strategy of Later Stone Age people in southern Africa, there exists limited material evidence to support this hypothesis. At the locality Pottery in the Geelbek Dunes of the Western Cape, new analysis has demonstrated a clear association between 34 pieces of whale barnacle (Coronula diadema) and a roasting platform consisting of burned calcrete. This relationship confirms that LSA people scavenged whales from the shores of southern Africa, while processing the meat and rendering the blubber at inland locations.

MIDDLE STONE AGE SETTLEMENT AND LAND USE AT THE OPEN-AIR SITES OF GEELBEK AND ANYSKOP, SOUTH AFRICA

The analysis of stone artefacts from the open-air localities of Geelbek and Anyskop in the Western Cape of South Africa offers new insight into the behaviour of Middle Stone Age hunters and gatherers. We examined five deflation bays in these mobile dune systems which, in contrast to caves or rockshelters, display large-scale spatial patterning with regard to the distribution of lithic artefacts and faunal remains. The definition of raw material units enabled us to reconstruct the patterns of production, use and discard of stone artefacts. The results reveal that hunters and gatherers, such as those who produced Howiesons Poort stone artefacts, employed diverse planning strategies in terms of raw material exploitation, transport technology and site use. Although the faunal remains are not yet fully evaluated, the presence of stone points and segments suggests that hunting played an important role among the activities documented at Geelbek and Anyskop. The low number and heterogeneity of the stone artefacts suggest that people of the Middle Stone Age were highly mobile. RESUME

Modern wolves trace their origin to a late Pleistocene expansion from Beringia

Grey wolves (Canis lupus) are one of the few large terrestrial carnivores that maintained a wide geographic distribution across the Northern Hemisphere throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Recent genetic studies have suggested that, despite this continuous presence, major demographic changes occurred in wolf populations between the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, and that extant wolves trace their ancestry to a single late Pleistocene population. Both the geographic origin of this ancestral population and how it became widespread remain a mystery. Here we analyzed a large dataset of novel modern and ancient mitochondrial wolf genomes, spanning the last 50,000 years, using a spatially and temporally explicit modeling framework to show that contemporary wolf populations across the globe trace their ancestry to an expansion from Beringia at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum - a process most likely driven by the significant ecological changes that occurred across the Northern Hemisphere during this period. This study provides direct ancient genetic evidence that long-range migration has played an important role in the population history of a large carnivore and provides an insight into how wolves survived the wave of megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last glaciation. Moreover, because late Pleistocene grey wolves were the likely source from which all modern dogs trace their origins, the demographic history described in this study has fundamental implications for understanding the geographical origin of the dog.

The Use of Ochre and Painting During the Upper Paleolithic of the Swabian Jura in the Context of the Development of Ochre Use in Africa and Europe

Abstract While the earliest evidence for ochre use is very sparse, the habitual use of ochre by hominins appeared about 140,000 years ago and accompanied them ever since. Here, we present an overview of archaeological sites in southwestern Germany, which yielded remains of ochre. We focus on the artifacts belonging exclusively to anatomically modern humans who were the inhabitants of the cave sites in the Swabian Jura during the Upper Paleolithic. The painted limestones from the Magdalenian layers of Hohle Fels Cave are a particular focus. We present these artifacts in detail and argue that they represent the beginning of a tradition of painting in Central Europe.

Living on the Edge: The Earliest Modern Human Settlement of the Armenian Highlands in Aghitu-3 Cave

Aghitu-3 Cave is the first stratified Upper Paleolithic (UP) cave site discovered in Armenia. The site is situated at an elevation of 1601 m in the southern Armenian Highlands and has yielded three intact archaeological horizons. The site has an excellent preservation of paleoecological archives, which allow for a comprehensive interpretation of the climate and environment at the time when the first modern humans populated the region.

Sixth annual meeting of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution

The annual conference of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE) took place in Madrid, Spain, convening from September 14-17 at the magnificent Museo Arqueol ogico Regional in Alcal a de Henares. Overall, 86 talks and 139 posters were presented to an audience of 354 people; the society itself includes 320 professional and student members. Poster presentations were accessible throughout the meeting in a dedicated area of the museum. This year, ESHE supported 12 student members with travel grants. The society also awarded two student prizes worth 1,500 euros each. The Pecha Kucha prize was awarded to Helen Fewlass (MPI-EVA) and colleagues for their methodological breakthrough in archeometry, while the poster prize went to Ana Pantoja-P erez (Chamartin) and colleagues for their innovative paleopathological analysis of the Sima de los Huesos skulls. Before the conference, 22 scientists from six countries attended the inaugural meeting of the International Council for Archaeozoology’s Microvertebrate Working Group (mvwg2016.wixsite.com/ mvwg), hosted by Angel Blanco-Lapaz and Sara Rhodes (T€ ubingen). In addition to the presentations and posters, the meeting included an informative discussion panel on manuscript submission supported by the Journal of Human Evolution. The conference concluded with a visit to the archeological sites in Pinilla del Valle.