Francis Wenban-Smith

The role of expertise in tool use: skill differences in functional action adaptations to task constraints.

Tool use can be considered a particularly useful model to understand the nature of functional actions. In 3 experiments, tool-use actions typified by stone knapping were investigated. Participants had to detach stone flakes from a flint core through a conchoidal fracture. Successful flake detachment requires controlling various functional parameters simultaneously. Accordingly, our goals were twofold: (a) to examine the regulation of kinetic energy by varying the properties of the hammers and the goal, and (b) to characterize the difference in action regulation across skill levels. All groups were able to modify their actions according to changes in task goals, but only experts displayed fine-tuning to functional parameters (i.e., regulate actions according to changes in hammer weight in a manner that left kinetic energy unchanged). Expertise is considered to depend on the identification of the interactions between functional parameters.

The use of canonical variates for determination of biface manufacturing technology at boxgrove lower palaeolithic site and the behavioural implications of this technology

Abstract The application of canonical variates analysis to experimentally produced biface reduction sequences and subsequent analysis of archaeological flint debitage indicate that most of the archaeological debitage was knapped with a bone or an antler percussor. This soft percussor was used after minimal nodule preparation. The use of bone or antler as a percussor suggests both planning in the activities of the people at Boxgrove and a degree of curative behaviour. Two new statistics for the analysis of debitage are introduced, and the results suggest that debitage struck by a soft-stone hammer can be distinguished from debitage struck by a bone or antler hammer.

Boxgrove, West Sussex : Rescue excavations of a lower Palaeolithic landsurface (Boxgrove project B, 1989-91)

In 1988 an area of 12,000 m 2 in Quarry 2 at Boxgrove, West Sussex, was identified as being under threat front gravel and sand extraction. It was decided to sample the threatened area in 1989 with a series of 6 m 2 test pits. The results of this survey identified two areas that merited further investigation, and area excavations were carried out at Quarry 2/C and Quarry 2/D in 1990 and 1991 respectively. These concentrated on the main Pleistocene landsurface (Unit 4c) and revealed spreads of knapping debris associated with the production of flint handaxes. Two test pits and area Q2/C produced handaxes, over 90% of which had tranchet sharpening at the distal end. A small amount of core reduction and only a few flake tools were found: these were all from Quarry 2/C. Faunal remains were located in the northern part of the excavations where Unit 4c had a calcareous cover. In Quarry 2/C the bones of C. elaphus and Bison sp. exhibited traces of human modification. The project employed two methods of artefact retrieval: direct excavation in metre squares and bulk sieving of units within them. Comparison of the results from these methods suggests that, when on-site time is limited, the integration of these methods is a valid technique in both qualitative and quantitative terms for data recovery. The excavated areas are interpreted as a tool-sharpening and butchery site that may have been a fixed and known locale in the landscape (Q2/C), and a location on the periphery of an area of intensive knapping reduction (Q2/D). Sedimentological and microfaunal analyses demonstrate that Unit 4c was formed as a soil in the top of a marine-lagoonal silt, the pedogenic processes being similar to those observed after draining Dutch polder lakes. The palaeoenvironment is interpreted as an area of open grassland with some shrub and bush vegetation. In places the surface of the soil supported small ephemeral pools and flashes. This area of grassland is seen as a corridor for herds of ungulates moving east and west between the sea to the south and the relict cliff and wooded downland block to the north. Within this corridor these herds were preyed upon by various carnivores, and hominids. The temperate sediments at Boxgrove were deposited in the later part of the Cromerian Complex and immediately pre-date the Anglian Cold Stage; they are therefore around 500,000 years old. The archaeological material from these and overlying cold stage deposits is broadly contemporary with that at High Lodge, Suffolk and Waverley Wood, Warwickshire.

The Lower Palaeolithic Site at Red Barns, Portchester, Hampshire: Bifacial Technology, Raw Material Quality, and the Organisation of Archaic Behaviour.

The site at Red Barns was excavated in 1975, but the large lithic collection remained unstudied following preliminary examination. This paper reports on further analysis of the lithic material from the site, together with a reappraisal of the faunal remains and original mineralogical analyses, and the results of processing sediment samples from the 1975 excavation. An abundant molluscan assemblage was recovered from the deposits covering the main archaeological horizon, allowing climatic/environmental reconstruction and amino acid dating. The synthesis of these data indicates the site to be older than previously thought, dating to between 425,000 and 200,000 BP. Analysis of the lithic material has suggested that the site is an undisturbed palimpsest of flint tools and debitage. The poor, severely frost-fractured nature of the raw material used for knapping, together with the location of the site on a Chalk outcrop, have enabled investigation of some assumptions about the influences upon knapping technology of i) poor quality raw material and ii) local availability of flint fresh from Chalk bedrock. The persistent manufacture of finely worked plano-convex handaxes suggests that, even in an area where fresh Chalk flint must have been abundant, the immediately available poor quality flint source was not a bar to formation of an assemblage dominated by handaxe production. Secondly, the emphasis on carefully shaped pointed plano-convex handaxes suggests that this shape was both deliberately imposed and not dictated by a lack of local availability of flint fresh from the Chalk. Behaviour at the site was investigated by analysis of the organisation of the lithic production and it was demonstrated that, while some handaxes and flake-tools were abandoned at the site and some flake core reduction also took place there, the dominant pattern was for handaxes to be made at the site and then removed and abandoned elsewhere.

Palaeolithic archaeology at the Swan Valley community school, Swanscombe, Kent

This paper reports on the recovery of Palaeolithic flint artefacts and faunal remains from fluvial gravels at the base of a sequence of Pleistocene sediments revealed during construction works at two sites to the south of Swanscombe village. Although outside the mapped extent of the Boyn Hill/Orsett Formation, the newly discovered deposits can be firmly correlated with the Middle Gravels and Upper Loam from the Barnfield Pit sequence dating to c. 400,000-380,000 BP. This increases greatly the known extent of these deposits, one horizon of which produced the Swanscombe Skull, and has provided more information on their upper part. Comparison of the lithic assemblages from volume-controlled sieving with those from general monitoring demonstrated that artefact collections formed without controlled methods of recovery, such as form the majority of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic archaeological record, are likely to be disproportionately dominated by larger, more visible and more collectable neatly made handaxes to the detriment of more poorly made, asymmetrical handaxes and cores, flakes and percussors. The lithic assemblage from the fluvial gravel was confirmed as dominated by pointed handaxes, supporting previous studies of artefacts from the equivalent Lower Middle Gravel at Barnfield Pit. The raw material characteristics of the assemblage were investigated, and it was concluded that there was no indication that the preference for pointed shapes could be related to either the shape or source of raw material. This paper also reviews the significance of lithic assemblages from disturbed fluvial contexts, and concludes that, contrary to some current perspectives, they have a valuable role to play complementing less disturbed evidence in developing understanding of the Palaeolithic.

Middle Pleistocene molluscan and ostracod faunas from Allhallows, Kent, UK

Although known from the nineteenth century, the terraces of the Medway have been far less frequently described in the literature than those of the Thames. In particular, the well known fossiliferous occurrences of such sites as Swanscombe, Purfleet and Aveley have no counterpart in the Medway, despite the two rivers forming part of the same basin. Here we describe molluscan and ostracod faunas of Middle Pleistocene age from Allhallows, Kent close to the modern confluence of the two rivers, which begin to allow correlation of the Medway terraces with the better known Thames succession.

Stone Tools and the Linguistic Capabilities of Earlier Hominids

The evolution of human manipulative abilities may be clearly linked to the evolution of speech motor control Both creativity and complexity in vocal and manipulative gestures may be closely linked to a single dimension of brain evolution — the evolution of absolute brain size. Inferring the linguistic capabilities of earlier hominids from their lithic artefacts, however, required us to take account of domain-specific constraints on manipulative skill In this article we report on a pilot flint-knapping experiment designed to identify such constraints ‘in action’.

Settlement, society and cognition in human evolution : landscapes in mind

This volume provides a landscape narrative of early hominin evolution, linking conventional material and geographic aspects of the early archaeological record with wider and more elusive social, cognitive and symbolic landscapes. It seeks to move beyond a limiting notion of early hominin culture and behaviour as dictated solely by the environment to present the early hominin world as the outcome of a dynamic dialogue between the physical environment and its perception and habitation by active agents. This international group of contributors presents theoretically informed yet empirically based perspectives on hominin and human landscapes. Includes 17 contributions by both well-known and up-and-coming scholars of the Palaeolithic and human evolution Recognises, celebrates and builds on the contributions made by Clive Gamble to the study of the Palaeolithic Challenges common assumption that early hominin culture and behaviour was dictated solely by the environment, thus restoring the role of agency in the discussion of early hominin evolution

The Location of Baker's Hole.

A map made by F. N Hayward showing the location of the Lower Palaeolithic site of Bakers Hole, found in the Hayward Archive stored by the British Museum at Franks House, shows that the site was not at the location suggested by modern authors. The new location, near some remnant Pleistocene deposits, opens the possibility of using modern techniques to date the archaeological material recovered from the site in 1909.

What use is the Palaeolithic in promoting new prehistoric narratives

Imagine a situation in which the world and the universe are as old as we know them to be, but in which people came into being in 4004 BC. Let us think for a minute about what implications such a scenario would have for our notions of the historical process. However people came to be (and we might have to invoke some form of divine intervention for such a sudden appearance), it is likely that people would be disengaged from the physical and causal processes of the rest of the universe. With our biological ties severed and the work of Darwin undone for the human realm, culture and human exceptionalism would inevitably loom large. Humans could not be seen as emerging through an evolutionary process in tandem with other organisms, nor would we be linked to the broader history of the universe through the operation of physical or chemical processes as normally understood. The radical discontinuity between people and everything else would require a special explanatory framework for humans. This might in turn lead to a division of knowledge, in some parts of the world at least, between those who study the social, cultural, philosophical, anthropological and historical aspects of people and those interested in the physical and biological worlds. No reputable humanities scholar or social scientist believes that people are 6004 years old. But many act as if this were the case, so that the last few thousand years are when people became interestingly human, started farming for a living, dwelling in cities and commenced mass production and consumption. The rest is history: mass-consuming urbanites demonstrating culture at a level not glimpsed in any other species, the origins of which lie in a control of natural resources from which we are set apart. It is as if the Palaeolithic never happened.