Hunter-gatherer Sites Research Articles

Mesolithic Ulna “daggers” from Dąbki Site 9 – on the track of their function

So-called “bone daggers” made from ulna bones of Cervidae are commonly found at Late Mesolithic hunter-gatherer sites of the western circum-Baltic area. The main objective of this paper is to showcase the results of the technological and functional analysis conducted on three tools found at the Dąbki 9 site in northern Poland. During the traceological analysis, technological traces facilitated the reconstruction of the chaîne opératoire of the tools’ production process. The use-wear also points to the probable function of the artefacts. The results presented in this work are discussed in the context of other artefacts of a similar type known from various prehistoric contexts.

Loose human bones as evidence of the multi-step burial rite: Case study of the Stone Age hunter-gatherer sites at Dudka and Szczepanki, Masuria (northeastern Poland)

Loose human bones as evidence of the multi-step burial rite: Case study of the Stone Age hunter-gatherer sites at Dudka and Szczepanki, Masuria (northeastern Poland)

Changing Settlement Organization in the Late Pleistocene of the Wadi al-Hasa, West-Central Jordan

Since the 1980s, surveys in Jordan’s Wadi al-Hasa document dozens of Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherer sites, some of them tested or partly excavated. To track landscape-scale forager mobility and settlement patterns over time, we examine 26 levels from 13 sites dated to the Middle, Upper, and Epipaleolithic using aspects of Barton’s whole assemblage behavioral indicators research protocol, a collection of methods designed to extract patterns from archeological palimpsests. Because forager ethnographies document adaptive strategies that do not map onto the discrete site types employed by archeologists, we evaluate the utility of the latter so far as behavioral inferences are concerned. We show that discrete bimodal contrasts like “curated” and “expedient” and their archeological correlates fail to capture the much more complex reality. Only by using these methods in conjunction with these analytical contrasts can a realistic picture of forager mobility and land use approximating that known from ethnography be attained.

Human and birds

The paper presents the study of avifauna from the hunter-gatherer sites at the Dnieper-Dvina basin spanning time period from the 6th to 3rd millennia BC. A total of 669 bird bones were identified and attributed to 46 different bird taxa, representing resident and migrant birds. They belong to four habitat groups: waterfowl, forest, woodside and meadow-steppe. The dominance of waterfowl birds follows the common strategy of aquatic resources exploitation. Changes in the procurement strategies, use and symbolic meanings of birds can be envisaged. Reconstructed regional mean temperature fluctuations suggest a particular influence on breeding biology and migration patterns of different species.

Ecological drivers of hunter-gatherer lithic technology from the Middle and Later Stone Age in Central Africa

Central Africa is a key region for examining patterns of hunter-gatherer inhabitation and engagement with ecological diversity and environmental change. In contrast to adjacent regions, however, the archaeological record of prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations in Central Africa is underrepresented in studies of recent human evolution. This limited engagement with Central African archaeological records in part stems from the complexities of identifying, excavating, and dating hunter-gatherer sites in what are today often heavily forested environments, a focus on named stone tool industries from undated sites to structure the record, and highly limited means to associate dated hunter-gatherer occupations with proxy records of environmental conditions. Here, we present a novel synthesis of prehistoric hunter-gatherer stone tool assemblages from dated Central African sites and use climate model datasets to illuminate the environmental and ecological landscapes in which they were deployed. Our results suggest a significant ecological shift occurred from 14,000 years ago onwards, associated with a greater engagement with broadleaf forests. We examine the extent to which a range of geographic and paleoclimatic drivers can explain patterns of gross assemblage composition and the appearance of individual lithic technologies highlighting the significant role of changes in altitude, precipitation, seasonality, and ecology. Notably, considerable continuity can be observed between the habitat ranges of contemporary hunter-gatherer populations in Central Africa and prehistoric occupations that significantly precede the appearance of farming lifeways in the region.

Human occupation, site formation, and chronostratigraphy of a mid-Holocene archaeological site at the eastern Pampa-Patagonia transition, Argentina

AbstractIntense aeolian processes in arid and semi-arid environments play an essential role in the preservation and destruction of archeological sites. This is especially the case in the lower basin of the Colorado River at the eastern Pampa-Patagonia Transition of Argentina, as is illustrated by geoarchaeological and chronostratigraphic studies at a mid-Holocene hunter-gatherer site, La Modesta, where aeolian processes strongly influence the archeological record in dune sediments. At La Modesta, surface archaeological materials are numerous and well preserved, although the stratigraphic record is incomplete. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of sediments that contain cultural material provides a chronology dating from ca. 8.2 ka but shows one or more hiatuses from ca. 6–2 ka in the sedimentary succession. Intense morphogenesis related to arid climates likely caused gaps in sedimentation, affecting the integrity and resolution of the archaeological record. This study helps explain mid-Holocene archaeological discontinuities throughout central Argentina and highlights the importance of considering taphonomic and geologic biases when dealing with the absence or reduction of the archaeological record in dryland regions.

Two Types of Ritual Space at the Poverty Point Site 16WC5

AbstractTwo types of features at the Late Archaic period Poverty Point site in Louisiana—large timber post circles and repetitively used activity surfaces later covered by mounding—are examined as spaces that were the products of historical event sequences involving their construction, their entwined but differing ritual uses, and their final deconstruction or removal. This approach is a particularizing, historicizing way of approaching the features of this monumental hunter-gatherer site, an alternative to a more generalizing view in which its totality as a site or “place” is seen as the interrelated product of many historical acts over time or as a mosaic of historically created and used “spaces.” Analysis of these feature types suggests that spaces of ritual activity in the larger site were used differently, involving different types of events and serving different functions in a developing, perhaps shifting, larger ritual landscape.

The Soils of Early Farmers and Their Neighbors in the Southern Buh Catchment (Ukraine): Micromorphology and Archaeological Context

The problems regarding hunter-gatherer/early farmer interactions are quite an important topic in southeast European archaeology. According to the available data, the two economic subsistence systems have coexisted for some 2000 years during the 6th–4th millennia cal BC (Telegin 1985; Lillie et al., 2001). In some areas, hunter-gatherer and early farmer sites are located just a few kilometers apart. The Southern Buh River valley has yielded evidence of Linear Pottery culture, early Trypillia and Trypillia B1 Neolithic settlements as well as hunter-gatherer sites with pottery attributable to the so-called sub-Neolithic or para-Neolithic (Haskevych et al., 2019; Kiosak et al., 2021). Trial-trenches have been opened within some of these sites, which have been radiocarbon-dated from Bern University laboratory (LARA). Soil samples for micromorphological analysis have been collected from these sites to interpret their paleogenetic formation. The soil development is attested since, at least, the beginning of the 5th mill BC, followed by the developed of chernozem soils, which was interrupted by an erosional episode in the end of 5th millennium BC. The available data show that the soils of early farmers arable as are the present day ones. The early farmers were able to exploit relatively heavy soils to cultivate wheat and barley as early as 5250–5050 cal BC. In contrast, the sites of ceramic hunter-gatherers were often located on the soils which formed under wet conditions along seasonally flooded riverbanks, which were almost unsuitable for agricultural practices.

Pierced antlers in the Southern Cone: Late Holocene hunter-gatherer groups of the low Paraná wetland

Pierced antlers, traditionally known as bâtons de commandement, are commonly found in many Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites in Europe. Despite their original association to symbolic uses, their function is in constant debate, having as many hypotheses as contexts of finding. Predominance of symbolic use was replaced by the emphasis of antler mechanical properties chosen to perform this type of artefact. In America, pierced antlers are practically absent, however, a large number of antlers with short branches and a central perforation were found in the Low Paraná wetland. They were recovered from hunter-gatherer sites dated in the Late Holocene. In this paper, we analyse their chronological and spatial distribution, the material association and the morphometrical and physical properties of the assemblages to discuss the functional significance of these items in the local contexts. Antlers with and without perforation are considered. As a result, we note that the assemblage under analysis is morphologically different from the European's ones with symmetrical branches, despite the same material properties being maintained in the selection of deer antler as raw material. In our case, antlers without perforation are interpreted as discarded from the manufacturing processes that involve other types of tools besides there is a different proposal for a near area as the República Oriental del Uruguay. Pierced antlers show fractures and use-wear patterns like those described in the international literature. Even if no functional identification can be confirmed, high stress and domestic activity can be proposed.

Getting to the root of the problem: new evidence for the use of plant root foods in Mesolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence in Europe

This paper presents new evidence for the harvesting of edible plant roots and tubers at Northton, a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer site on Harris, in the Western Isles of Scotland, in the north-west corner of Europe. The excavations uncovered abundant root tuber remains of Ficaria verna Huds. (lesser celandine), an excellent high energy and carbohydrate-rich food source, and produced the first evidence for the use of tubers of Lathyrus linifolius (Reichard) Bässler (bitter-vetch) at a hunter-gatherer site in Europe. Here we report on the analysis of the charred root and tuber remains and other charred plant macrofossils from the site and consider the significance of these results within the wider context of European hunter-gatherer subsistence. The wide range of root and tuber taxa recovered from European hunter-gatherer sites and the importance of appropriate sampling on hunter-gatherer sites are highlighted.

Locating Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherer Camps in the Carpathian Basin

The Mesolithic in Eastern Europe was the last time that hunter-gatherer economies thrived there before the spread of agriculture in the second half of the seventh millennium BC. But the period, and the interactions between foragers and the first farmers, are poorly understood in the Carpathian Basin and surrounding areas because few sites are known, and even fewer have been excavated and published. How did site location differ between Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlers? And where should we look for rare Mesolithic sites? Proximity analysis is seldom used for predictive modeling for hunter-gatherer sites at large scales, but in this paper, we argue that it can serve as an important starting point for prospection for rare and poorly understood sites. This study uses proximity analysis to provide quantitative landscape associations of known Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites in the Carpathian Basin to show how Mesolithic people chose attributes of the landscape for camps, and how they differed from the farmers who later settled. We use elevation and slope, rivers, wetlands prior to the twentieth century, and the distribution of lithic raw materials foragers and farmers used for toolmaking to identify key proxies for preferred locations. We then build predictive models for the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic in the Pannonian region to highlight parts of the landscape that have relatively higher probabilities of having Mesolithic sites still undiscovered and contrast them with the settlement patterns of the first farmers in the area. We find that large parts of Pannonia conform to landforms preferred by Mesolithic foragers, but these areas have not been subject to investigation.

Before Rice and the First Rice: Archaeobotanical Study in Ha Long Bay, Northern Vietnam

Mainland Southeast Asia experienced a long, sustained period of foraging economy before rice and millet farming spread into this area prior to 4,000 years BP. Although hundreds of individuals from dense cemeteries are found in several hunter-gatherer sites in Guangxi, Southern China, and Northern Vietnam, dating from the early to middle Holocene (ca. 9,000–4,500 years BP), so far, little has been known about food sources in these pre-farming contexts. In particular, plant food resources have been unclear, although they likely were crucial to supporting rather large populations of hunter-gatherers in this region. To investigate this issue, micro plant remains, including starches and phytoliths, were recovered from stone tools excavated at the Cai Beo site in Ha Long Bay of coastal Northeastern Vietnam, and those findings revealed new understanding of the ancient diet. Examinations of those residues indicated that the hunter-gatherers at Cai Beo as early as 7,000–6,000 years BP exploited a broad spectrum of plants, such as taros, yams, acorns, palms, and more. This study exemplifies how maritime hunter-gatherers interfaced with the local plants and generated population growth from about 7,000 to 4,500 years BP. The results help us to conceptualize the early exploitation, management, and potential cultivation of subtropical and tropical plants over the broad geography of Asia and the Pacific before the arrival of rice and millet farming. In particular, the result validates the significance of roots and tubers in the ancient subsistence economy of Southeast Asia. Moreover, from the archaeological context of 4,500 to 4,000 years BP, the rice discovered in this study represents one of the earliest known in Mainland Southeast Asia.

Life before Stonehenge: The hunter-gatherer occupation and environment of Blick Mead revealed by sedaDNA, pollen and spores.

The Neolithic and Bronze Age construction and habitation of the Stonehenge Landscape has been extensively explored in previous research. However, little is known about the scale of pre-Neolithic activity and the extent to which the later monumental complex occupied an 'empty' landscape. There has been a long-running debate as to whether the monumental archaeology of Stonehenge was created in an uninhabited forested landscape or whether it was constructed in an already partly open area of pre-existing significance to late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. This is of significance to a global discussion about the relationship between incoming farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherer societies that is highly relevant to both Old and New World archaeology. Here we present the results of plant sedaDNA, palynological and geoarchaeological analysis at the Late hunter-gatherer site complex of Blick Mead at the junction of the drylands of Salisbury Plain and the floodplain of the River Avon, on the edge of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. The findings are placed within a chronological framework built on OSL, radiocarbon and relative archaeological dating. We show that Blick Mead existed in a clearing in deciduous woodland, exploited by aurochsen, deer and hunter-gatherers for approximately 4000 years. Given its rich archaeology and longevity this strongly supports the arguments of continuity between the Late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers activity and Neolithic monument builders, and more specifically that this was a partially open environment important to both groups. This study also demonstrates that sediments from low-energy floodplains can provide suitable samples for successful environmental assaying using sedaDNA, provided they are supported by secure dating and complementary environmental proxies.

Does the Locally-Adaptive Model of Archaeological Potential (LAMAP) work for hunter-gatherer sites? A test using data from the Tanana Valley, Alaska.

We report an assessment of the ability of the Locally-Adaptive Model of Archaeological Potential (LAMAP) to estimate archaeological potential in relation to hunter-gatherer sites. The sample comprised 182 known sites in the Tanana Valley, Alaska, which was occupied solely by hunter-gatherers for about 14,500 years. To estimate archaeological potential, we employed physiographic variables such as elevation and slope, rather than variables that are known to vary on short time scales, like vegetation cover. Two tests of LAMAP were carried out. In the first, we used the location of a random selection of 90 sites from all time periods to create a LAMAP model. We then evaluated the model with the remaining 92 sites. In the second test, we built a LAMAP model from 12 sites that pre-date 10,000 cal BP. This model was then tested with sites that post-date 10,000 cal BP. In both analyses, areas predicted to have higher archaeological potential contained higher frequencies of validation sites. The performance of LAMAP in the two tests was comparable to its performance in previous tests using archaeological sites occupied by agricultural societies. Thus, the study extends the use of LAMAP to the task of estimating archaeological potential of landscapes in relation to hunter-gatherer sites.

Human skeletal remains from Hasankeyf Höyük, a sedentary hunter-gatherer site in southeast Anatolia

Human skeletal remains from Hasankeyf Höyük, a sedentary hunter-gatherer site in southeast Anatolia

Modelling the Pleistocene colonisation of Eastern Mediterranean islandscapes.

Predictive models have become an integral part of archaeological research, particularly in the discovery of new archaeological sites. In this paper, we apply predictive modeling to map high potential Pleistocene archaeological locales on the island of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. The model delineates landscape characteristics that denote areas with high potential to unearth Pleistocene archaeology while at the same time highlighting localities that should be excluded. The predictive model was employed in surface surveys to systematically access high probability locales on Cyprus. A number of newly identified localities suggests that the true density of mobile hunter-gatherer sites on Cyprus is seriously underestimated in current narratives. By adding new data to this modest corpus of early insular sites, we are able to contribute to debates regarding island colonisation and the role of coastal environments in human dispersals to new territories.

Current Occupation of Kruger Cave, A Later Stone Age Site, South Africa

Contemporary occupation of archaeological sites is fraught with challenges and conflicting priorities. While prevailing opinion on heritage management recognises the fluid and continuous nature of archaeological site formation, the role of present-day communities as agents of archaeological palimpsests is often not adequately acknowledged. Contemporary communities, often unrelated to the autochthonous inhabitants of the archaeological sites, occasionally use these sites and landscapes in similar or different ways to how they were used in the past. Their use of these sites, while potentially damaging to the archaeology, simultaneously adds to, and is part of, the life history of the site, of which the excavated material and rock art are but pictures in time. Squatters who appropriate archaeological heritage sites constitute ambiguous communities under current South African heritage legislation. Yet, their role as contributing agents to archaeological sites is no less real. This article presents the case study of Kruger Cave, a Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer rock art site in South Africa, currently occupied by a lay Christian pastor. We document how the pastor is using the site and offer some thoughts around the nuances of negotiating and reconciling archaeological preservation and living heritage management.

Genome of a middle Holocene hunter-gatherer from Wallacea

Much remains unknown about the population history of early modern humans in southeast Asia, where the archaeological record is sparse and the tropical climate is inimical to the preservation of ancient human DNA1. So far, only two low-coverage pre-Neolithic human genomes have been sequenced from this region. Both are from mainland Hòabìnhian hunter-gatherer sites: Pha Faen in Laos, dated to 7939–7751 calibrated years before present (yr cal bp; present taken as ad 1950), and Gua Cha in Malaysia (4.4–4.2 kyr cal bp)1. Here we report, to our knowledge, the first ancient human genome from Wallacea, the oceanic island zone between the Sunda Shelf (comprising mainland southeast Asia and the continental islands of western Indonesia) and Pleistocene Sahul (Australia–New Guinea). We extracted DNA from the petrous bone of a young female hunter-gatherer buried 7.3–7.2 kyr cal bp at the limestone cave of Leang Panninge2 in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Genetic analyses show that this pre-Neolithic forager, who is associated with the ‘Toalean’ technocomplex3,4, shares most genetic drift and morphological similarities with present-day Papuan and Indigenous Australian groups, yet represents a previously unknown divergent human lineage that branched off around the time of the split between these populations approximately 37,000 years ago5. We also describe Denisovan and deep Asian-related ancestries in the Leang Panninge genome, and infer their large-scale displacement from the region today.

Starchy food residue on a potsherd from a late Holocene hunter-gatherer site in Argentine Patagonia: towards the visibility of wild underground storage organs

The aim of this paper is to present recent advances in the microbotanical analyses of an organic residue on a potsherd from a late Holocene hunter-gatherer site in Argentine Patagonia, which is the first evidence of this kind for the processing of starchy food. Standard methods were carried out for starch grain recovery and morphometric analysis, care being taken in the prevention of cross-contamination and evaluation of post-depositional factors. Diagnostic features of the ancient starch grains recovered were compared against those from a list, available in the bibliography, of plants potentially processed in pottery, but no match was found. An anatomical and starch grain reference collection was established with three of the most frequently consumed traditional wild underground storage organs (USOs) of Patagonia, Alstroemeria aurea Graham, Tropaeolum porifolium Cav. and Diposis patagonica Skottsb., in order to compare these against the archaeobotanical record. We suggest that T. aff. porifolium (and probably also A. aff. aurea) were processed in the pot from which the sherd came, and discuss these results in terms of a better understanding of the role of wild USOs in subsistence and the possible cooking methods used in hunter-gatherer societies in Argentine Patagonia.

Journal of Greek Archaeology Volume 6: Editorial

Our latest volume maintains our goal to cover the broad chronological spread of Greek Archaeology, ranging from a new review of the Mesolithic occupation at Theopetra, one of the most important hunter-gatherer sites in Greece, to a detailed analysis of how the distribution of Middle Byzantine churches in the Peloponnese enlightens us into the evolution of human settlement and land use.