John McNabb

The large cutting tools from the South African Acheulean and the question of social traditions

Handaxes and cleavers are the keystone of the Acheulean, a stone‐tool‐making phenomenon which was made for over a million years (ca. < 1.7 to < 0.25 million years). These large cutting tools are considered a product of social learning within cooperating groups of Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergensis in Africa and Europe. This paper concetrates on data from the Cave of Hearths and six other South African late Early Pleistocene and Middle Pleistocene sites. It argues that the influence of strong social learning which imposes communally sanctioned practices in manufacture and end product is absent. Individuals reproduce what they are already habituated to, but there is no cultural requirement of form or practice—this is negotiated by individuals. Many of the criteria used by archaeologists to identify benchmarks in hominin cognitive development, such as symmetry, need to be reassessed in the context of assemblage‐based understandings.

Contemporaneity of Clactonian and Acheulian flint industries at Barnham, Suffolk

New field evidence challenges an old-established fundamental of the Lower Palaeolithic sequence in Britain.

Hominins and the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition: evolution, culture and climate in Africa and Europe

Abstract Some of the more important evidence is reviewed for the archaeology of hominin colonization associated with the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition. This is done by reference to the nature of migration ‘out of Africa’ before the interval of transition, across the transition itself, and then after it. Technologically assisted behaviour may not have been so important in the colonization process, behaviour and biology being the primary factors that led to the success of a migrating species. While climate change and especially shifts in local aridity would have been experienced and possibly remembered by localized hominin groups, the Acheulean behavioural repertoire did not change much across Africa and Europe over a million years of time. It merely adapted to local conditions. The Acheulean was a generalized hand-held processing technology for a generalized hominin.

More from the cutting edge : further discoveries of Clactonian bifaces

An important step in our knowledge of the British Lower Palaeolithic has been the finding that its two recognized components, ‘Clactonian’ and ‘Acheulean’, are not ranged into a simple sequence; the exact relationship between the two is the subject of much debate. What does this do to interpretations of Swanscombe, classic site of the Lower Thames Valley, which has been studied in terms of stratigraphic succession?

Sticks and stones: a possible experimental solution to the question of how the Clacton spear point was made

Unretouched flakes, Clactonian notches, true notches and a unifacial chopper were all used in a series of experiments on staves of yew wood. The aim of the experiments was to see which of the various Clactonian tool types could best reproduce the sharp, straight-sided taper of the Clacton spear point. Because of the hardness of the wood the experimenter was forced to begin close to the end of the wooden staves. The unretouched flakes when used in an outward whittling motion tended to produce point profiles with rounded tips; these resemble the point of the Lehringen lance. The Clactonian notch, better suited to an inward scraping motion, reproduced the same profile as the Clacton spear point. The experiments were repeated on four softer woods than yew in order to see how far the nature of the raw material affected the results. Irrespective of the hardness of the wood, rapid inward scraping consistently produced a point profile resembling the Clacton spear point using both an unretouched flake and Clactonian notches. The sharp, straight-sided taper of the Clacton spear point is therefore interpreted as being a result of the motion and technique of manufacture. Observations were taken on the efficiency and best ways of using the various stone tools used in the experiments. The most efficient of the tool types used for replicating the profile of the Clacton spear point using rapid scraping in an inward motion was the Clactonian notch.

Choppers and the Clactonian: A Reinvestigation

Choppers and chopping tools have long been associated with the Clactonian industries of Britain. They have either been dismissed as cores, or often described as woodworking tools, but have rarely been studied from a functional perspective. The purpose of this paper is to publish the results of a series of experiments which has been carried out to investigate the functional efficiency of choppers or chopping tools as compared to other alternative tools. These results are then reviewed in the light of the archaeological information from Clactonian and other Lower and Middle Pleistocene sites. Due to the problems of definition, for the purposes of the experiments both chopping tools and choppers have been taken to be small nodules of pebbles which have had several flakes removed bifacially along at least one edge. The morphology of the working edge is identical to that found on the edges of many of the Clactonian cores. For this reason, chopping tools, choppers and cores are regarded as artefacts with potentially an identical function. In the experiments they are termed simply as chopping tools.

The Acheulian Site at Rodafnidia, Lisvori, on Lesbos, Greece: 2010–2012

Rodafnidia is an Acheulian site on Lesbos Island, in the north-east Aegean Sea. This chapter presents the model that guided Paleolithic investigations on the island, the history of research, and the results of the 2012 expedition of systematic work in the field, which consisted of surface survey and excavation. The typology and technology of lithic artifacts from the surface and the uppermost Unit 1, as well as the first cluster of luminescence dates, firmly place the early component of the site in the Middle Pleistocene. The Acheulian industry derives from fluvio-lacustrine deposits at a locale with abundant fresh-water and lithic resources. Situated in the north-east Mediterranean Basin, an area where research on early hominin prehistory is intensifying, Rodafnidia holds the potential to contribute to Eurasian Lower Paleolithic archaeology and fill the gap in our understanding of early hominin presence and activity where Asia meets Europe.

The lying stones of Sussex: an investigation into the role of the flint tools in the development of the Piltdown forgery

The Piltdown forgery was an attempt to fabricate an ancient human ancestor, as well as the world that it came from. An important part of substantiating that world was to fabricate the material culture of Eoanthropus dawsoni, the Piltdown Man. This paper looks at the flint tools from the Piltdown site. They reveal important clues as to how the forger perpetrated the hoax, and why certain types of artefact were included, while others were omitted. This is the first time the lithics from the hoax have been comprehensively examined since the exposure of the forgery.

On tools and traditions. Author's reply

We agree with McNabb et al. (CA 45: 653–77) that a focus on the relationship between tradition and the manufacture of stone tools is the key to finding the “holy grail of lithic studies” (p. 67). However, along with White (p. 671), we question whether “the evidence presented justifies dismissing the presence of knapping traditions.” To resolve this debate, we propose an alternative approach to the meaning of social traditions. McNabb et al. set up the following alternatives for stone tool manufacture (p. 654): either strong lines of social learning with direct imposition or sanctioning of “standardized values” or “individualized memic constructs,” the product of “habituated” manufacture through “a highly developed capacity for routine” (p. 667). We suggest that their definition of “social tradition” (“any regularity that arises from the pressure inherent in living within a tightly bounded social group, whether or not it takes a group-specific form”) (p. 654) has an obvious flaw, namely, that it requires the existence of “a tightly bounded social group.” Social traditions exist despite good evidence from human foragers indicating that localized gatherings of humans are fluid and fuzzy, not tightly bounded (Palmer and Wright 1996, Palmer, Frederickson, and Tilley 1997, Marlowe 2004). Further, anthropologists not only talk as if the world were carved into tightly bounded “cultures” or “societies” but also reify these abstract entities by attributing to them the ability to do such things as exert pressure on individuals in order to create regularity in their behavior (e.g., tool manufacture). However, the identifiable reality, as Murdock (1971) made clear, is one in which individuals influence the behavior of others. Fortunately, the word “tradition” (including “social tradition” and “cultural tradition”) can be defined in terms of individuals’ influencing others. Specifically, traditions are behavior copied from ancestors (usually

The archaeology of persistent places: The Palaeolithic case of la Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey

Abstract Excavations at the Middle Pleistocene site of La Cotte de St Brelade, on the island of Jersey in the English Channel, have revealed a long sequence of occupation. The continued use of the site by Neanderthals throughout an extended period of changing climate and environment reveals how, despite changes in the types of behaviour recorded at the site, La Cotte emerged as a persistent place in the memory and landscape of its early hominin inhabitants. The sites status as a persistent place for these people suggests a level of social and cognitive development permitting reference to and knowledge of places distant in time and space as long ago as at least MIS 7.