Continuity and change in the lithic industries of the Jurreru Valley, India, before and after the Toba eruption

Abstract

Lithic assemblage variability is synthesized and discussed for seven open sites and one rockshelter from the Jurreru Valley in the Kurnool district of southern India. The sites span the last c.77,000 years and provide an invaluable record of cultural change spanning the Toba Super-eruption, 74 thousand years ago (ka), as well as the transition to the microlithic. Lithic evidence documents long-term continuities before and after the eruption that indicates the Toba eruption had a minimal impact on the underlying system of flake production in the valley. The analysis also indicates that many cores from above and below the Toba ash are technologically extremely similar to those from early modern human sites in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia and Australia, suggesting modern humans may have entered India before the Toba eruption as part of an early eastward dispersal from Africa.