The complexity of Neanderthal technology

Abstract

A fundamental irony of Paleolithic (or “Old Stone” Age) archaeology is that it concerns a period of human history when most artifacts probably were made from wood. This is suggested by the heavy use of wood as raw material among recent or ethnographic hunter-gatherers (1) and supported by the repeated discovery of microscopic traces of wood-working on the edges of Paleolithic stone tools (2, 3). The technological significance of wood is further amplified in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic by limited use of bone, antler, and ivory (relative to the Upper Paleolithic and recent hunter-gatherers). Aranguren et al. (4) report a set of wooden artifacts from a 170,000-y-old Middle Paleolithic occupation in central Italy. The artifacts, which were preserved in calcareous mudstone deposited along a lake margin, include roughly 40 pieces of modified boxwood ( Buxus sempervirens ), interpreted as “digging sticks.” They are associated with some unmodified pieces of wood, about 200 stone artifacts, and the remains of large mammals, primarily an extinct elephant. No human remains were found at the site (Poggetti Vecchi), but it is confidently attributed to the Neanderthals based on the dating (electron spin resonance and U-series minimum dates). Until the 1990s, wooden artifacts recovered from Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites were so rare that they existed more as curiosities than objects of study. The most widely known examples were sharpened pieces of Taxus or yew from Clacton-on-Sea in southeast England and Lehringen in northern Germany, both interpreted as spears (5, 6), and several objects, including a possible digging stick, from Kalambo Falls in Zambia (7). In 1992, traces or “pseudomorphs” of wood fragments, including some possible modified pieces, were reported from a late Middle Paleolithic context at Abric Romani near Barcelona (8). Three years later, several remarkably well-preserved wooden spears were found at … [↵][1]1Email: John.Hoffecker{at}colorado.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1