Anthropology 100 Archaeology Exam 2 UW Madison

Archaeology

The reconstruction of past human behavior from the scientific study of its material remains

Oldowon Tools

1.8 mya

Primarily choppers: cobble stones with one flaked side used to chop things up

Not Symmetrical

BIG

Australopithecus

Acheulean Tools

1.76-0.3 mya

Always hand axes!!

Symmetrical

Homo heidlebergensis and homo erectus

Both Oldowan and Acheulean:

Lasted very long and lower Paleolithic

Mousterian Tools

Middle Paleolithic!

200,000 years ago

Flakes made into tools: side scrappers, spear points, 63 additional tool types

SMALL

Neandertals

Upper Paleolithic tools

33,000-21,000 years ago

Made with thought/planning

Pressure flaking: pushing, not hitting

Elongated blades, burins to make bone tools, points on ends of spears, spear throwers, bow and arrow

Homo sapiens

MNI/MNE

MNI: Minimum Number of Individuals

MNE: Minimum Number of Evidence

Kill site

(HADZA)

Flakes only (not many stone tools), not many animal remains (usually just one animal, not much meat on them), cut marks on bones

Base camp

(HADZA)

Array of animal species (smaller animals), stone tools

Behaviors of Hadza people

Foragers, divided labor, transported their food from kill site, shared their food

Gender roles

Women gathered food from vegetation, men hunted and brought back limbs, shared their food

Baobab Trees

Provided nutrients, provided nesting sites for bees, which Hadza used for honey, they were too big for elephants to knock over

Hadza acted based on seasons

Wet seasons: there was food in the plants that grew around them

Dry seasons: they had to camp near water sources

Hadza Sites

Base camps

Hunting Blinds

Kill/Butchery Sites

Snack Sites

Cache Sites

Hunting blind camps

Tuber lunch sites

Each site had a special purpose for the Hadza

Patterns on the ground showed their tendencies

Large animal acquisition

Types of hunting

1. Find them dead first, before competition

2. Passive

3. Aggressive

4. Hunting

Finding a dead animal before competition

An accident, get whole dead animal

Passive hunting

Marginal scavenging from large carnivore kills

Wait for lions to be done eating, then take what you can before anyone else does

Aggressive hunting

Let lions make the kill, then go in and take it from them, get whole or almost whole dead animal

Hunting naturally

Killing the animal themselves

Getting 100% of animal

Agriculture

cultural activities associated with planting, herding, and processing domesticated species; farming

Hoes, sickles: break up dirt to plant seeds

Domestication

A state of interdependence between humans and selected plant or animal species. Intense selection activity induces permanent genetic change, enhancing a species' value to humans

Cultivation: watering, tending, caring for living things

Taphonomy

The scientific study of how organisms decay, become buried, and are preserved in the fossil or archaeological record:

Burns: dark spots/marks on bones

Cut marks: made by stone tools, produce V shape under microscope

Large carnivore chewing: produce U shape under microscope

South African taphonomy

Bob Brain

Variety of processes affecting bones

Examples: Carnivores, rodents, raptors, human influence, water action, physical and chemical disintegration

How did the hominids end up in the caves?

They believed that the hominids had civilized burials in the caves and lived there

The hominids of Upper Paleolithic time would draw on the walls of the caves

Taung Child

Raymond Dart declared it hominid: Australopithecus africanus

Taphonomy showed that baby was murdered by eagle

Roughly 3-2.5 mya

Triangle Graphs

Specimens are assigned to one of three age classes: young, prime, and old. Vertical axis represents % of old individuals. The right corner represents 100% prime domination. The left corner represents 100% juvenile domination.

Osteodontokeratic Hypothesis

Bone-Tooth-Horn

Disproportion in bones that were found which proves that early homo was moving bones from one site to another

Used for eating and for tools and weapons: bone tools, showed that they were violent and predatory

FLK

1.84 mya, Mary Leakey

MNI = 48 animals and stone tools

Meat and marrow: butchery on animal, taphonomy = the animals were not a product of scavenging for lions

Early homo was already producing things that showed a hunter-gatherer camp site

Out of Africa I

Homo erectus expansion began around 1.8 million years ago

Homo sapiens expansions began around 100,000 years ago (replaced all homo erectus)

No gene flow (bottlenecking?)

Multiregional

Homo erectus may have evolved into Homo sapiens while intermingling with one another

Capable of interbreeding and producing viable offspring

Once homo erectus is in Africa, Europe, and Asia, homo erectus then evolved into archaic Homo sapiens

Gene flow! (why we have small proportions of Neandertal genes today)

Out of Africa II

Homo sapiens only evolved in Africa and fossil and genetic evidence show dates of 300,000 or 250,000 years ago of when this happened in Africa

Homo erectus evolved first in Africa and only in Africa

Assimilation Theory

Archaic Homo sapiens evolved into modern Homo sapiens only in Africa

Led to modern homos moving out of Africa around 100,000 years ago and then sweeping through Europe through Asia and encountering non-modern hominins

Close enough to interbreed still

Explains that Neandertals disappeared

South African caves

Dolomite, Breccia, Taung, Sterkfontein, Makapan, Swartkrans

Dolomite

Very similar to limestone, forms caves

Caves had stalagmites. Open hole in the ground can fill with sediments, boulders, bones, plants

PERSERVES STUFF WELL

Breccia

Mixed up deposits. Rock fragments, fossilized bones, remains of stone/bone tools

NOT USEFUL FOR HUMAN EVOLUTION

Taung

Taung baby, handed to Raymond Dart. Declared Australopithecus africanus

Bipedal

Sterkfontein

Differences in the foramen magnum (spine attaches to head), determined A. africanus is bipedal, not quadruped, H. erectus & A. robustus: robustus has a flatter and wider skull, Erectus has a larger brain > almost human

Makapan

Mostly antelope bones

Lots of mandibles, limbs, humorous bones

Swartkrans

Vertical entrance to cave

Hundreds of animals

Juvenile canine marks on skull

Leopard killed and brought up, where it then fell into cave

Small tools, Paranthropus robust remains found with other hominins

Ubeidiya, Israel

1.4 mya

Made Acheulean tools

Fossil rich sites, convincing evidence that MOVED ON DRY LAND THROUGH MIDDLE EAST

Island of Java

Homo erectus. Carl Swisher thought it was a human, used rocks on Java that were found recently but the fossils were found 100+ years ago

Dmanisi, Georgia

East of Black Sea 1.8 mya

Choppers and flakes as tools

Males much larger than females, sexual dimorphism

Movius Line

The separation between areas of the Old World in which Acheulean technology occurs and those in which it does not; named by archaeologist Hallam Movius.

Zhoukoudian, China site

500,000-200,000 years ago

Limestone cave system

Largest samples of H. erectus fossils!!! Over 40 individuals = MNI

Evidence of campfires

Northern China

Nihewan Basin ~ 1.6 mya

Early excavations produced concentrations of choppers, flakes, fossilized animal bones

Early Homo erectus

Torraba/Ambrona, Spain

400,000 years ago

Clark Howell

Acheulean tools, burnt wood

Several dozen elephants in swampy deposits

Cut marks on bones confirm that hominins killed them

Rising Star Cave, South Africa

Homo naledi remains deep in cave ~0.2 mya

Intentional "disposal of the dead"?

La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France

Used to characterize the anatomy of Neandertals

BAD CHOICE

This individual had arthritis = made people think Neandertals weren't fully bipedal (even though they were)

La Ferrassie, France

Half a dozen skeletons of males, females, and children in a row in pits = family burials

Healthy individual

Short, muscular, cold-adapted

Many healed fractures: showed that Neandertals cared for each other when injured

Shanidar Cave, Iraq

Possible flower burial

9 Neandertal burials

One is blanketed with half a dozen species of flowers

Skhul Cave, Israel

Anatomically modern Homo sapiens

92,000 years ago

Le Solutre, France

MNI of 100,000 horses!!

Scared horses towards the edge of cliff, killing them as they fell off

Mezhirich, Ukraine

Mammoth bone hut

95 mandibles

Circular arrangement of mammoth bones

Sungir, Russia

Children head to head burials of material and cultural items that represented an afterlife

Thousands of bone and ivory beads on leather clothing elaborate burials

Chauvet Cave, France

Mineral paints used to paint dangerous animal images on cave walls

Chauvet Cave, France

Mineral paints used to paint dangerous animal images on cave walls

Lascaux Cave, France

Drawings of dangerous animals, hunting scenes

Artists expressed themselves

Bering Land Bridge

connected Asia and North America

Long intervals when lowered sea levels exposed the floor of the shallow Bering Sea, creating a wide "land bridge"

How people made it to America

Bering Strait

50 miles of ocean separating Northeastern Asia and northwestern North America

Pacific Coastal Route

migration theory that early people traveled by boat along the coast of the Americas

Solutrean points

Spear points, some over 6 inches long

Made with pressure flaking, very delicate and detailed

All have single shoulder points

bone buttons

made from reindeer scapula

Venus figurines

Paleolithic carvings of the female form, often with exaggerated breasts, buttocks, hips, and stomachs, which may have had religious significance or fertility

Upper Paleolithic Music

Made out of bird bones to make flutes or whistles

Horse and hand stencils

Used natural edge of a rock, saw it as the silhouette of horse head and then drew the body of the horse on the surface of rock

Hand = signature

Raymond Dart hypothesis

He believed that the cave sites in South Africa were actual living sites or camp sites of A. africanus

Olduvai Gorge

Early stone tools (shape them by hitting at an acute angle): cores (choppers) and flakes, FLK

Olduvai Gorge BEDS

1.0 mya: Bed IV & Bed III = rivers/streams

1.2 mya: Bed II = LAKE

1.79 mya: Bed I = LAKE

Mary Leaky

FLK, FLKN6, DK

Found mostly choppers and flakes

The advantages of stone tools

Added efficiency with existing food resources: now can bring meat back to home base camp

New foraging opportunities: butchery for meat of large animals

FLK animal remains

1.84 mya

Waterbuck distal humerus: deflecting cut marks, occur on over 200 bones at FLK, systematic butchery for meat and marrow

Antelope radius: more deflecting cuts

AT LEAST 48 DEAD ANIMALS=MNI

home-base/food-sharing model

A model developed by Glynn Isaac that sees the sharing of meat at base camps as a fundamental part of the lives of early hominins.