April Nowell

Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language, Symbolism, and Music—An Alternative Multidisciplinary Perspective

In recent years, there has been a tendency to correlate the origin of modern culture and language with that of anatomically modern humans. Here we discuss this correlation in the light of results provided by our first hand analysis of ancient and recently discovered relevant archaeological and paleontological material from Africa and Europe. We focus in particular on the evolutionary significance of lithic and bone technology, the emergence of symbolism, Neandertal behavioral patterns, the identification of early mortuary practices, the anatomical evidence for the acquisition of language, the development of conscious symbolic storage, the emergence of musical traditions, and the archaeological evidence for the diversification of languages during the Upper Paleolithic. This critical reappraisal contradicts the hypothesis of a symbolic revolution coinciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago, but also highlights inconsistencies in the anatomically–culturally modern equation and the potential contribution of anatomically “pre-modern” human populations to the emergence of these abilities. No firm evidence of conscious symbolic storage and musical traditions are found before the Upper Paleolithic. However, the oldest known European objects that testify to these practices already show a high degree of complexity and geographic variability suggestive of possible earlier, and still unrecorded, phases of development.

The early neolithic site of Ayn Abu Nukhayla, southern Jordan

Three seasons of research at the Middle PPNB site of Ayn Abū Nukhayla indicate that it experienced intermittent, seasonal occupations spanning a period of ca. 200 years, centered on 8500 b. p. Despite being located in a hyperarid setting in southern Jordan, the site displays extensive architecture and other evidence of intensive occupation. Settlement of the site appears to have been triggered by a moist pulse that produced sufficient upland run-off to generate ponding in a nearby mudflat. This supported cereal cultivation that in turn produced a chaff subsidy which allowed for seasonal herding of sheep and goats in a pasture-poor region. By following a pattern of transhumance in which foraging, herding, and farming were interwoven within a complex subsistence strategy, groups were able to establish long-term, seasonal occupations in this marginal setting.

Working Memory and the Speed of Life

Hominin evolution is the result of complex interactions of biology and behavior within particular physical, social, and cultural environments. While evolution takes place at the species level, species are made up of individuals engaging in a social world. Extensive research into topics such as theory of mind and social intelligence have highlighted the importance of sociality and social factors in understanding the evolution of the hominin brain. The hominin brain has trebled in size throughout our evolution and has undergone significant reorganization. These changes have associated life‐history costs and benefits and can be understood only in the context of alterations in hominin ranging behavior, locomotion, diet, energetic requirements, subsistence strategies, childbirth, ontological development, demography, communication/play, and technology. Many of the significant changes in these variables, as well as in cranial development, coincide with the emergence of Homo erectus. It is with this species that we see a clear movement away from pongid life‐history patterns toward a pattern that we would eventually recognize as human. I discuss key changes in hominin life history that can reasonably be associated with H. erectus and the cognitive implications of these changes for an early enhancement of working memory away from ape‐grade abilities.

A question of style: reconsidering the stylistic approach to dating Palaeolithic parietal art in France

The authors deconstruct the basis for dating the Palaeolithic cave paintings of France and find it wanting. Only five per cent are directly dated and the remainder belong to a stylistic framework that has grown organically, and with much circularity, as new paintings were brought to light. Following a constructive bouleversement, the authors recommend a new chronometric foundation based on chains of evidence anchored by radiocarbon dates. The story so far is striking: it brings many of the themes and techniques thought typical of the later painters into the repertoire of their much earlier predecessors.

Childhood, Play and the Evolution of Cultural Capacity in Neanderthals and Modern Humans

The life history pattern of modern humans is characterized by the insertion of childhood and adolescent stages into the typical primate pattern. It is widely recognized that this slowing of the maturational process provides humans with additional years to learn, transmit, practice and modify cultural behaviors. In both human and non-human primates a significant amount of their respective dependency periods are spent in play. In contrast to modern humans, Neanderthals experienced shorter childhoods. This is significant as there is extensive psychological and neurobiological evidence that it is during infancy, childhood and adolescence that milestones in social and cognitive learning are reached and that play and play deprivation have a direct impact on this development. Faster maturation rates and thus shorter childhoods relative to modern humans lessen the impact of learning through play on the connectivity of the brain. In the context of play behavior, humans are unique in that adult humans play more than adults of any other species and they alone engage in fantasy play. Fantasy play is part of a package of symbol-based cognitive abilities that includes self-awareness, language, and theory of mind. Its benefits include creativity, behavioral plasticity, imagination, apprenticeship and planning. Differences in the nature of symbolic material culture of Neanderthals and modern humans suggest that Neanderthals were not capable of engaging in human-grade fantasy play.

Learning to See and Seeing to Learn: Children, Communities of Practice and Pleistocene Visual Cultures

During the Late Pleistocene, children in southwest France and northern Spain grew up engaging with the world around them through the lenses of locally and historically situated pictorial cultures. This particular period and region is not the site of the earliest example of symbolic behaviour, nor is it the only example of the production of imagery during the Pleistocene but the rich record of Franco-Cantabrian visual material culture provides a unique opportunity to explore how children learned to decode and transform the world around them through imagery. In this paper, focusing on parietal art, I consider the biological, cognitive and social underpinnings of the uniquely human ability to move between two and three dimensional worlds and to perceive a fourth dimension—time—through the perception of motion from still images. These abilities, which can be traced through the archaeological record, allowed children and the adults they became new ways of imagining and acting in the world.

A place in time: Situating Chauvet within the long chronology of symbolic behavioral development

Since the discovery of the Grotte Chauvet (Ardèche, France) in the mid-1990s, there has been a debate regarding the accuracy of assigning this site to the Aurignacian period. The main argument stems from a perceived lack of agreement between the radiocarbon age of the imagery (>32,000 years BP [before present]) and its stylistic complexity and technical sophistication, which some believe are more typical of the later Upper Paleolithic. In this paper we first review the evidence for symbolic behavior among modern humans during the Aurignacian in order to explore the question of whether Chauvets images are anachronistic. Then, using a database of non-figurative signs found in Paleolithic parietal art, we undertake a detailed comparison between Chauvets corpus of signs and those found in other French Upper Paleolithic caves. While we conclude that there is substantial evidence to support an Aurignacian date for Grotte Chauvet, we also suggest that it may be time to revisit some of the cultural boundaries that are currently in use in Paleolithic archaeology.

Children, Metaphorical Thinking and Upper Paleolithic Visual Cultures

Abstract Many children growing up during the Upper Paleolithic lived within rich pictorial cultures. This article explores how these children might have employed metaphorical thinking in the production and decoding of this imagery. Metaphors are said to act as a bridge between different realities, different levels of meaning and different realms of experience. Humans use metaphorical thinking to recognize patterns and create relationships between disparate elements and to imbue these patterns and relationships with meaning. As young children begin to verbalize and engage in fantasy play, they also begin to spontaneously produce metaphors. Through fantasy play, children employ metaphorical thinking to rearrange disparate thoughts, ideas, objects and forms of expression into novel combinations. As they develop both cognitively and socially and their knowledge of their world expands, childrens capacity to generate and understand metaphors similarly expands. Adults continue to use metaphorical thinking to comprehend and communicate their realities and to transform the world around them. It is perhaps not surprising that metaphorical thinking is implicated in many examples of Upper Paleolithic art. If adults produced the majority of these images, it is likely the experiences they garnered in childhood and their expanding competency with metaphorical thinking that allowed them to do so.

Deformable Model Based Shape Analysis Stone Tool Application

This paper introduces a method to measure the average shape of handaxes, and characterize deviations from this average shape by taking into account both internal and external information. In the field of Paleolithic archaeology, standardization and symmetry can be two important concepts. For axially symmetrical shapes such as handaxes, it is possible to introduce a simple appropriate shape representation. We adapt a parameterized deformable model based approach to allow flexibility of shape coverage and analyze the similarity with a few compact parameters. Moreover a hierarchical fitting method ensures stability while measuring global and local shape features step-by-step. Our model incorporates a physics-based framework so as to deform due to forces exerted from boundary data sets.

Professor Harold L. Dibble (July 26, 1951-June 10, 2018)

Harold Dibble was my graduate advisor at the University of Pennsylvania. One afternoon in 1995, we were sitting around chatting in his office as we often did. This time, Harold and I were talking about the influential 1993 volume Tools, Language and Cognition, edited by Kathleen Gibson and Tim Ingold. Because my dissertation was situated within the nascent topic area of cognitive archaeology, he suggested that I consider doing an “updated” version of that book. I thought that was a great idea. I proposed a session titled the “Archaeology of Intelligence” for the SAA meetings in New Orleans the following year. I invited anyone and everyone I had ever wanted to meet at that time. That year, I gave my first conference paper ever in front of people whose work I admired most. Harold sat at the back of the room the entire morning listening to me give my talk and watching me introduce and interact with the other speakers. He later told me that he had been as nervous as a parent watching a child in her first school play. At the end of the long session, when it was all over and we were heading into lunch with the symposium participants, Harold came up to me and looked at me for a long moment. Finally, he said, “Do you remember when I said you should do a new version of Tools, Language and Cognition?” I nodded. “I didn’t mean now.” The papers presented at that session became the foundation of my first edited volume. Harold died of complications related to cancer on June 10, 2018. His sudden passing was a shock to many within and beyond the fields of paleoanthropology and European Paleolithic archaeology in which he specialized. Harold completed his BA (1971) and his Ph.D (1981) at the University of Arizona, the latter under the venerable Arthur Jelinek. He was hired as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in 1982 and became a Full Professor in 1996. Throughout his career he worked extensively in France, with additional projects in Morocco and Egypt. Harold is perhaps best known for his scientific approach to archaeology. He pioneered the use of total stations in the recording of archaeological excavations (something virtually all archaeologists do as a matter of course today) and co-wrote software with his then Ph.D. student, Shannon McPherron, for the entry and spatial analysis of data. These programs (E4 and Newplot) continue to be widely used by researchers all over the world. He turned the misfortune of having a heavily disturbed site (Cagney L’Epinette) into one of the most important methodological papers on taphonomy and site formation processes (Dibble, Chase, McPherron, & Tuffreau, 1997). Harold also made significant contributions in the area of experimental archaeology. Through controlled experiments using glass cores and machines to precisely “knap” those cores, Harold and his students investigated a wide variety of questions related to the technology and morphology of lithic artifacts. More controversially, Harold contributed to debates concerning Neandertal lifeways (e.g. symbolic behavior, mortuary behavior and, most recently, the controlled use of fire). To most people’s minds, he resolved the longstanding “Mousterian debate” that questioned whether variants of the Mousterian were the result of differences in ethnicity or activity. He did this by demonstrating that many of the Bordian types were, in fact, different phases in the use life of a single artifact