Ground Stone Axes Research Articles

Human occupation of the Kimberley coast of northwest Australia 50,000 years ago

The peopling of Sahul (the combined landmass of New Guinea and Australia) is a topic of much debate. The Kimberley region of Western Australia holds many of Australia's oldest known archaeological sites. Here, we review the chronological and archaeological data available for the Kimberley from early Marine Isotope Stage 3 to the present, linking episodes of site establishment and the appearance of new technologies with periods of climatic and sea-level change. We report optical ages showing human occupation of Widgingarri 1, a rockshelter located on the Kimberley coast of northwest Australia, as early as 50,000 years ago, when the site was located more than 100 km from the Late Pleistocene coastline. We also present the first detailed analysis of the stone artefacts, including flakes from ground stone axes, grinding stones and ground haematite recovered from the deepest excavated layer. The high proportion of flakes from ground axe production and resharpening in the earliest occupation phase emphasises the importance of this complex technology in the first peopling of northern Sahul. Artefact analyses indicate changes in settlement patterns through time, with an increase in mobility in the terminal Pleistocene and a shift to lower mobility during the late Holocene. The optical ages for Widgingarri 1 mean that the Kimberley now contains the greatest number of sites in Sahul with earliest occupation dated to more than 46,000 years ago, overlapping with the time of initial occupation of sites in other regions across the continent.

Macroscopic Chop Mark Identification on Archaeological Bone: An Experimental Study of Chipped Stone, Ground Stone, Copper, and Bronze Axe Heads on Bone

This paper presents a new macroscopic method for identifying chop marks on archaeological faunal assemblages and highlights the major differences in the morphology of chop marks created by stone and metal axes. The method provides macroscopic criteria that aid in the identification of both complete and incomplete chop mark types as well as the raw material of the axe. Experiments with modern stone (chipped and ground) and metal (copper and bronze) axes found that the degree of fragmentation within a chop mark is related to both the width and sharpness of the axe and can be classed on a scale from 1–5 using a variety of criteria. The experiments demonstrate that sharp chipped stone axes are fragile (often break upon impact) and do not create clean and well-defined chop marks. Ground stone axes are more durable but tend to create very fragmented chop marks without a clean cut (sheared) surface. Unalloyed copper metal axes can create sheared chopped surfaces; however, the relatively soft metal creates more crushing at the point of entry than bronze axes. In contrast, bronze axes are durable and create chop marks with exceptionally low rates of fragmentation resulting in a clean-cut sheared surface that extends into the bone for more than 3 mm. The method is applied to the faunal assemblage from the Early Bronze Age site of Göltepe, Turkey to determine whether the chop marks on bones were made by stone or metal axes at this early metal processing settlement. The results suggest that many of the chop marks were made by metal implements (e.g., axes). Hence, this method provides another means to monitor the adoption rates of new raw materials at a time when both metal and stone axes coexisted.

An Archaeological Study of Early Farming Settlements on Iresi Hills

Recent Investigation of an archaeological site in southwest Nigeria during the Late Stone Age revealed additional information about the cultural development of the area. On Iresi Hills two rock shelters (Ajaye and Cherubim & Seraphim) were investigated in two seasons from 2017 to 2018 during which pottery, ground stone axes and microlithics were excavated. Although there is no clear break in the stratigraphy, the findings show clear demarcation between two cultural layers. The upper layer contains pottery, microlithics and ground stone axes, and ochre while the lower layer is characterized by microlithics only. The site presented a date of about Cal 5653 BP which coincides with a short dry period in the area. Tis paper reports the occupation in Iresi, in southwest Nigeria with a view to fill the gap in the chronology and to interrogate the evidence for Late Stone Age in terms of the culture that existed in between 12000YBP of Iwo Eleru and 2000YBP of Itaakpa and the influence of a change in environment of southwest Nigeria and West Africa in general.

The Northern Way: Graves and Funerary Practices in Corded Ware Finland

AbstractThe Corded Ware complex represents an archaeologically defined culture whose people inhabited large areas of Europe during the third millennium BC. Although Corded Ware graves are known also from Finnish territory – the northernmost area of Corded Ware expansion – these graves represent a special challenge and methodological problem for archaeological research. This is because unburnt bone material is generally not preserved in the acidic soils of Finland, and Finnish Corded Ware complex graves have typically been recognized mainly due to the occurrence of a Corded Ware assemblage (i. e. complete pottery vessels, adzes and ground-stone axes). Furthermore, since most Finnish Corded Ware grave discoveries have been made during the early and mid-20th century, they generally lack good-quality archaeological documentation. Despite these challenges, new insights into Finnish Corded Ware burials can be gained by thoroughly investigating the region’s burial customs and material culture as an entity and comparing them to the Corded Ware complex of the eastern Baltic region and beyond. Finnish Corded Ware graves not only follow the standard material culture and burial customs of the Central European Corded Ware complex but show additional evidence of wooden chambers and laid-out furs, and they may have occasionally even possessed small mounds. However, even though the material culture of the Finnish graves follows traditions present in the central European Corded Ware complex, the grave custom is far from uniform. Hence, Finnish Corded Ware graves represent a melting pot of ideas, ideologies and connections, likely reflecting differing origins of relocating people. Aside from being influenced by the Corded Ware populations of nearby regions, a close link to contemporary local hunter-gatherers seems to have been present, too.

Ground-stone axes in the Upper Paleolithic of Japan

Ground-stone axes in the Upper Paleolithic of Japan

«Mámoa 87 de Serra Faladora» : un túmulo megalítico del Norte de Galicia

The outstanding work of survey and digging accomplished by the late F. Maciñeira ¡n the first decades of the present century was unfortunately not continuad until recent years, when new excavations with a modern methodology, together with a reappraisal of the materials recovered by IViaciñeira are throwing new light to the characteristics of the megalithic burial in the far North of Galicia. In this paper we are dealing with the analysis of the artefacts found in the mound 87th of Serra Faladora, which in spite of its ruinous condition at the time of Maciñeira's discovery might be possibly ciassified under the iabel of passage grave, though with some remarkable features like the extreme eccentricity of the chamber and the presence of a pit dug into the bedrock under the mound and filled with stones and earth with traces of fire (fig. 2A). The material items found in the disturbed chamber are very much in agreement with the typical set of Galician megalithic grave goods: ground stone axes, flint blades and pottery with simple forms and no decoration (figs. 3-6). However, the mound 87th detaches itself from the local pattern because of the number and variety of goods which is larger than usual. At the same time, other features, like the absence of arrowheads, are in full agreement with the pattern in the northern área of Galicia. In all, the mound 87th seems to reflect, with some local traits, the spread of more elabórate forms of megalithic burial in vast áreas of the Northwest of the Iberian penisula around the middie of the 3"^ millenium b.C.

Prehistoric Occupation of Loloata Island Papua New Guinea

Loloata Island is a small island lying immediately to the south of Motupore Island in Bootless Bay, 15 km southeast of Port Moresby. Like Motupore Island it is elongated, steep and narrow, being an extension of the same mainland strike ridge which was truncated during the postglacial rise in sea level about 6000 years ago (Swadling and Pain l980:62). While a considerable amount of research has been carried out on the prehistory and archaeology of Motupore Island, (Allen 1977a and b, 1984; Groube and Sassoon 1984), little attention has been paid to the archaeology of Loloata Island. This is partly because much of any pre- existing midden would have been removed for the building of a holiday resort complex on the island, and the likely inference that the midden on Loloata was a smaller replica of that on Motupore. In 1976 during the launching of a double hulled canoe built on the island, three human skeletons were uncovered. These were excavated by P. Swadling and her colleagues from the Papua New Guinea National Museum (National Museum Site ANT file.) More recently a small collection was made of ground stone axes found as a deflation layer on a section of the island's gravelly coastline (Worthing and White 1986). Worthing and White commented that the pottery on Loloata Island appeared to be similar to that on Motupore, but this comment presumably referred to the abundant water-worn pottery fragments found on the beach and sand spit. They noted however (p. 98) that despite the nature of the pottery, ethnohistorical evidence pointed to links between Loloata Island and the nearby mainland village of Tubusereia, and animosity between the inhabitants of Motupore and Loloata Islands. Oral history reported by Oram (1977) is equivocal on this matter, suggesting that the Western Motuan inhabitants of Motupore Island were forced, by people of Tubusereia, to flee their island about 250 years ago, and that this invasion came via Loloata Island. The role of any Loloata Island inhabitants at that time is however unclear.

A Reassessment of the Stone Bowl Cultures of the Rift Valley, Kenya

Summary During 1968 and 1969 the author undertook a reinvestigation of the stone bowl cultures, including a restudy of available collections, and a survey of all known sites. Test excavations at the Prospect Farm site and at Keringet Cave provided a series of carbon samples which verified a first millenium B.C. date for stone bowl assemblages of the Njoro Cave type. The excavation at Prospect Farm also provided evidence of the association of ground stone axes and of domestic cattle with this complex. The author was unable to find any evidence to support the contention that the Gumban A and Gumban B pottery styles were associated with stone bowls.