Palaeolithic Cave Research Articles

Üçağızlı mağarası Üst Paleolitik Dönem Ahmarıan taş alet kültürü

Paleolithic period reflects the stratigraphy, chronology, and cultural phenomenon with the help of fossil people, as well as within this period the people’s adaptation processes, the identification of the faunal and floral remnants, and organization of people’s living space are also investigated. Paleolithic period is divided into as lower, middle and upper, and those periods are dated between 2.500.000 and 10.000 years. Human evolutionary process in the Paleolithic time, stone tools technical and typological characteristics is made up past human population behaviors data. In this study, stone tool technology at Ucagizli Cave in Ahmarian culture will be discussed. Ucagizli Cave is an Upper Paleolithic settlement to dated 27 to 42,000 years ago and had been continuously inhabited by humans for 12,000 years. The culture of the Upper Paleolithic cave Ahmarian layers constitutes the final placement. This culture is characterized with higher blade/bladelet tool, lower unretouched tool and the presences of the protoprismatic cores, and it is different than Aurignacien culture. The features of Ahmarian cultures in Ucagizli Cave show that their Upper Paleolithic culture is within the Levantine.

Amerindian Cosmologies and European Prehistoric Cave Art: Reasons for and Usefulness of a Comparison

Several anthropological studies conducted in recent years among different Native American cultures have revealed a series of common features in ontological premises and cosmological frameworks. These features seem to be shared by most of the Native peoples in both North and South America. They include: a system of relationships between humans and non-human beings based on an ontology “of persons” as contrasted to the ontology “of things” typical of the Western attitude towards Nature; a structure of the cosmos made by superposed layers, which express the idea of a reality represented as comprising hidden dimensions and invisible domains; and the key role played by ecstatic practitioners in establishing relationships with and acquiring knowledge from these multiple dimensions of the universe. Here, the idea is suggested that these elements could be profitably utilized to interpret the meaning of Paleolithic cave art, not simply implying a series of typological likenesses, but suggesting the possibility of historic (pre-historic) links. It should be remembered that the main settlement of the Americas occurred in a period (from 30,000–20,000 years B.P.) which is contemporaneous with the creation of the masterworks in the caves of France and Spain.

Magnetic Investigations of Buried Palaeohearths Inside a Palaeolithic Cave (Lazaret, Nice, France)

ABSTRACTWe present a magnetic study of palaeohearths within Lazaret cave (Nice, France) that demonstrates how to recognize fired structures in similar geological contexts. Using magnetic field and susceptibility mapping, excavated and potentially still‐buried palaeohearths of the cave are investigated. Our study reveals some difficulties in conducting a magnetic field survey to detect combustion features in a cave due to noise and ambiguities in anomaly assignment. To overcome these difficulties, discrete measurements and a specific post‐processing methodology were applied to remove the magnetic noise generated by surrounding artificial sources. In addition, experimental and numerical modelling constrained by laboratory examinations of the magnetic mineralogy were performed to better identify the magnetic imprint of such fireplaces. We confirm that a short‐term fireplace produces a thin ash‐bearing layer characterized by a high magnetic susceptibility and a high frequency dependence due to a large proportion of grains of pseudo‐single‐domain (PSD) size. Such a burnt soil layer is the main source of the ca. 50 nT amplitude magnetic field anomaly at a sensor height of 15 cm observed over the excavated palaeohearth, as well as over an experimental hearth. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An Amudian Oddity: A Giant Biface from Late Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave

The paper reports the discovery of an extraordinary flint implement—a large biface—and discusses its significance in the context of Qesem Cave in particular and the late Lower Palaeolithic Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex of the Levant in general. We contend that this unusually large biface was discarded in an unfinished and unused state, most probably due to a collapse event that took place at the cave some 280,000 years ago.

Hot topics in architectural acoustics: Classroom acoustics and archaeoacoustics

When ASA members discovered that typical American classrooms were too noisy or reverberant for serious learning in 1988 they began a successful grassroots movement to fix them. By 2002, ASA volunteers produced the first-ever ANSI standard for classroom acoustics. The effort was led by ASA’s TCAA and supported by three other TCs, the S12 Standards Committee, courageous ASA staffers, and elected officers. ANSI Standard S12.60 was adopted fully or partly by school districts, states, and architectural authorities including the Green Building Council. Classroom acoustics research reporting remains active at ASA meetings. We show how this standard helps to make a better world. The new fields of archaeoacoustics and historical acoustics are “hot”. They employ scientific acoustics to study the past. Their novel hypotheses and discoveries attract young investigators to acoustical careers. Sound was more important in the quiet ancient world. Many are fascinated by the 1988 discovery of strong correlation between the locations of Paleolithic cave paintings and cave resonance. Why? A pyramid at Chichen Itza, Mexico, chirps like a bird revered in Mesoamerican cultures. The chirp is explained by applying the convolution theorem to pyramid architecture. Was it intentionally designed? Other archaeoacoustic and historical acoustic examples are addressed.

English

  This paper provides an analysis of prehistoric art documenting the genesis of human creativity. The Upper Paleolithic saw creative rise of material technology as well as artistic creativity as documented by a wide range of artefacts. These artefacts probably depict prehistoric figures of sorcerers (shamans) who masked themselves as animals for their rites. At the same time these images can be interpreted as prehistoric sorcerers in masks descending into deep caves to take the symbolic step across the boundary dividing the world of people and animals, culture and nature. The article makes a comparison and selective analysis of prehistoric sorcerer images that are well preserved for example in the Upper Palaeolithic caves. Special attention is dedicated to the existence of sorcerers in postmodernism, in particular to the furry phenomenon – an anthropomorphous being with human behaviour and characteristics. The term furry is closely connected with aspirations of the people whose desire is to take on the appearance of an animal. They achieve this by putting on animal masks and costumes. The result is archetypal semiotic information documenting the dual substance of humanity – ancient union of the man and the animal.   Key words: Sorcerer, furry, Upper Paleolithic, postmodernism, identity, liminal being

Ten seconds in the field: rapid Armenian obsidian sourcing with portable XRF to inform excavations and surveys

Armenia has one of the most obsidian-rich natural and cultural landscapes in the world, and the lithic assemblages of numerous Palaeolithic sites are predominantly, if not entirely, composed of obsidian. Recent excavations at the Middle Palaeolithic cave of Lusakert 1 recovered, on average, 470 obsidian artifacts daily. After sourcing more than 1700 artifacts using portable XRF (pXRF) in our field house, our team sought to shift pXRF-based obsidian sourcing into the field itself, believing that the geological origins of artifacts would be useful information to have on-site during an excavation or survey. Despite increasing use of portable instruments, previous studies have principally focused on collections in museums and other archives, and as a result, obsidian sourcing has remained embedded in post-excavation studies. One critical factor in the uptake of obsidian sourcing in the field is the time needed to measure each artifact, frequently 2–6 min in previous studies. Here we report our two methods of obsidian sourcing, including source matching done automatically by the pXRF instrument's onboard software, in only 10 s. Our tests with Armenian geological specimens and Palaeolithic artifacts demonstrate the high efficacy of our two methods, which are sufficiently fast to become syncopated with our excavation and survey activities. By reducing measurement times from a mode of 300 s in recent studies to just 10 s, here we show how (and why) to shift pXRF-based obsidian sourcing from the context of “white lab coats” to that of “muddy boots.”

Sexual Dimorphism in European Upper Paleolithic Cave Art

Preliminary research on hand stencils found in the Upper Paleolithic cave sites of France and Spain showed that sexual dimorphism in human hands is expressed strongly enough to allow empirical determination of the sexes of the individuals who made some of them. Further research increased the sample of measurable cases from 6 to 32, a large enough sample to show that persons who made hand stencils in the caves were predominantly females. This finding rebuts the traditional assumption that human hand stencils in European parietal art were made by male artists, either adults or subadults. Findings further suggest that the sexual dimorphism of hands was more pronounced during the Upper Paleolithic than it is in modern Europeans. Attempts to apply the same algorithms to a sample of North American Indian handprints confirms the view that different populations require separate analyses.

Stratigraphy and Palaeopedology of the Palaeolithic Cave Site of Combe‐Saunière, Southwest France

The sequence of Combe‐Saunière (southwest France) has been studied with a large suite of methods, including micromorphology, geochemistry, magnetic susceptibility, and organic matter (OM) analysis in order to document the post‐depositional processes that occurred during the last climatic cycle at the cave entrance. This study shows that intense weathering together with the accumulation of OM and phosphates by cave animals and others vectors (including humans) occurred during the phases of low clastic sedimentation. During the latter part of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, the Aurignacian and Gravettian humus‐bearing levels, which may be classified as cryoturbated leptosols, show incomplete decalcification and are dominated by poorly evolved forms of phosphates (bone fragments, coprolites). Phosphatized cambic B‐horizons formed at the beginning of MIS 3 and the Early Glacial and may reflect longer periods of pedological modification. The molecules identified by the analysis of the OM extracted from the Châtelperronian level derive mostly from the degradation of vegetal matter, most notably from conifers and mosses, in addition to bacteria and fungi. The Last Interglacial s.l. (MIS 5) is typified by the development of a phosphatized illuviated B‐horizon. Intense weathering together with phosphate leaching and precipitation took place in this soil, forming thick apatite–CaOH crusts. Although the poor chronological resolution prevents us from drawing clear conclusions as to the respective roles of the factors involved, phosphate accumulation and weathering seem to be controlled primarily by the duration of the soil‐forming periods. This study strongly suggests that a climatic signal has been recorded in the deposits.

Organization of lithic technology at ‘Ein Qashish, a late Middle Paleolithic open-air site in Israel

‘Ein Qashish (EQ) is a late Middle Paleolithic (∼60 ka) open-air site located in the Yizra'el Valley east of Mt. Carmel, at the geographic center between some of the major Middle Paleolithic cave sites in northern Israel. Three seasons of excavation at the site revealed a small faunal collection and a diverse lithic assemblage. In this paper we discuss the composition, reduction technology, and raw material curation strategies represented in the assemblage. The assemblage is flake-dominated, with low frequencies of retouched artifacts and of cores. Several reduction sequences were identified. Products of Levallois methods appear in low frequencies. The modified artifacts include lightly retouched flakes and blades, side-scrapers, truncations and burins. The low frequencies of primary elements, core trimming elements, and cores suggest that only part of the reduction sequence took place on-site. Side-scrapers may have been imported into the locality. In contrast, short non-Levallois reduction sequences were applied on-site.The expedient nature of the retouch and of local reduction sequences suggests that the site represents an ephemeral occupation(s) on the banks of the Qishon stream. The nature of the lithic assemblage is not consistent with specific tasks such as butchery or hunting. Technological aspects of the assemblage and its composition bear similarities to those observed in habitation sites found in caves in the late Middle Paleolithic.

A Passivity Prior to Passive and Active: Merleau-Ponty's Re-reading of the Freudian Unconscious and Looking at Lascaux

Merleau-Ponty's understanding of 'passivity' is a key to his account of perception. For Merleau-Ponty, perception is the way in which we are involved in the world, and it is on perception that the functions of understanding, reason, and reflection ultimately rest. While in his Phenomenology of Perception it is already clear that passive and active are intertwined, from a series of lectures he gave in 1954-5 we learn that inauguration or 'institution' arises out of a passivity that is not merely an absence of activity. I show how the thoroughly temporal status of the subject as 'instituting' distinguishes it from a certain model of the 'constituting' subject. Next, I argue that, to grasp the sense in which Merleau-Ponty intends 'passivity', we must recognize its mediating or transitional status. Specifically, I examine terms that arise repeatedly in his analysis of the Freudian account of the unconscious - namely, 'pivot' and 'enjambment' - to show how they reveal the peculiar status of a passivity that operates through a dialectic focused on its transitional terms rather than on opposing poles. Finally, I suggest the exchange between passivity and institution that Merleau-Ponty has in mind can be illuminated through consideration of late Palaeolithic cave paintings, where the rock itself seems to begin an expression that the artist completes. © 2013 Hughes 2013.

New Neanderthal remains from Mani peninsula, Southern Greece: The Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site

The Kalamakia cave, a Middle Paleolithic site on the western coast of the Mani peninsula, Greece, was excavated in 1993–2006 by an interdisciplinary team from the Ephoreia of Paleoanthropology and Speleology (Greek Ministry of Culture) and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (Paris). The site is dated to between ca. 100,000 and >39,000 years BP (Before Present) and has yielded Mousterian lithics, a rich fauna, and human remains from several layers. The latter include 10 isolated teeth, a cranial fragment and three postcranial elements. The remains represent at least eight individuals, two of them subadults, and show both carnivore and anthropogenic modifications. They can be identified as Neanderthal on the basis of diagnostic morphology on most specimens. A diet similar to that of Neanderthals from mixed habitat is suggested by our analysis of dental wear (occlusal fingerprint analysis) and microwear (occlusal texture microwear analysis), in agreement with the faunal and palynological analyses of the site. These new fossils significantly expand the Neanderthal sample known from Greece. Together with the human specimens from Lakonis and Apidima, the Kalamakia human remains add to the growing evidence of a strong Neanderthal presence in the Mani region during the Late Pleistocene.

Dental Remains from the Middle Paleolithic Layers of Altai Cave Sites*

Two Middle Paleolithic cave sites in the Altai – Okladnikov and Chagyrskaya – have yielded dental remains (mostly isolated teeth) of individuals of various ages. A newly discovered mandibular fragment with teeth from Chagyrskaya Cave reveals a Neanderthal trait combination: anterior fossa and epicristid (midtrigonid crest) on molars, metaconid and crest on premolars. The totality of dental traits support the conclusion previously drawn on the basis of postcranial characters: Altai Neanderthals appear to be intermediate between other Eurasian Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans.

Wood resource exploitation by Cantabrian Late Upper Palaeolithic groups (N Spain) regarding MIS 2 vegetation dynamics

A series of charcoal analyses for nine Upper Palaeolithic caves in northern Spain chronologically placed in MIS 2 (19.6–10.3 ka uncal BP) is presented in this paper. Juniperus, Fabaceae and Salix, together with Hippophae and minor occurrences of Betula, Corylus and deciduous Quercus are recorded in some sites dated prior to 13 ka BP. This open vegetation was still dominant between 13 and 11 ka BP, although the sharp increase of Betula and deciduous taxa indicates greater environmental diversity. Pinus, Betula and deciduous Quercus are dominant between 11 and 10 ka BP. However, the manifestation of charcoal data is conditioned by the interaction of several natural and human factors that are the focus of anthracology. This paper discusses the vegetal landscape surrounding Cantabrian archaeological sites in relation with the major vegetation dynamics outlined in MIS 2 high-resolution pollen records from SW Europe, the available woody resources, and the human exploitation of these plant communities throughout the Late Upper Palaeolithic.

The existence of acoustic signs and their meanings in Paleolithic caves

The existence of acoustic signs and their meanings in Paleolithic caves

Palaeolithic Cave Art in Italy: from the Iconography of Signs to the Underlying Symbols

Palaeolithic Cave Art in Italy: from the Iconography of Signs to the Underlying Symbols

Modernism in the Animal Trap?

MODERNISM IN THE ANIMAL TRAP? Stalling the Subject: Modernism and the Animal by Carrie Rohman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp 208. $90.00 cloth, $29.50 paper.It's interesting to observe how animal studies, or, to be more precise, critical animal studies, occupies a more and more significant place among what is broadly called human sciences. This is a part of a massive twentieth-century tectonic shift, where the very core of human sciences, i.e., the human itself, meets its limit. The human subject bids farewell to its dream of autonomy and attempts to define itself from without, through various figures of the nonhuman, the latter thought of in terms of radical alterity. This move tries to embrace the unstable domain beyond the border of humanity and, among nonhuman others, the animal is the most insistent and striking. The animal accompanied humanity, as its mirror twin, from its very birth in Paleolithic caves, and the animal is still here, still promising to reveal something that humans cannot grasp about themselves.Long after the Cartesian formula, linking the subject and the thought, the philosophy of animality turns to the question of how to think about this mode of existence that supposedly does not think itself. As opposed to the classical philosophical tradition characterized by an almost general disregard towards animals as a being deprived of thought, language, consciousness or subjectivity, contemporary thinkers working at the crossroads of animal studies, critical philosophy, and human and natural science are mainly trying to think about animality as another kind of subjectivity either by pragmatically locating this question in the domain of ethics, politics, and science or along the lines of a theoretical and critical deconstruction of classical philosophy and the metaphysical tradition. The animal turn in human sciences, most generally inspired, perhaps, by Peter Singer's practical ethics and animal liberation movement, but also by the theoretical interventions of Deleuze and European post-Heideggerianism, shapes a peculiar crossing point between philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, literature, and other arts.Carrie Rohman's Stalling the Subject is a good example of interdisciplinary academic research in this field. It applies posthumanist theory to literary studies - namely, to studies in British modernist literature. Rohman thus does not speak about modernism in general, or the subject in general, or the animal in general; her work consists of critical analysis of works by T. S. Eliot, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, and Djuna Barnes that focus on the figure of the animal or animality. Such a clear framework, however, allows the author to make rather deep observations about socalled human nature as it is represented in this specific historical and cultural context, and to interrogate the most universal questions about the limits of humanity as tested by various experiences of sexuality, violence, poetry, etc.Rohman emphasizes that her work is mostly inspired by Gary Wolfs philo&oophy, but work by Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze, George Bataille, and Jacques Derrida - authors who deal with the human rather than with the animal, properly speaking - are other primary references. If Gary Wolf is searching for a proper nonhuman animal, Rohman addresses instead the experience of the human animal, exploring the thresholds and the borders, the places whereof the human and animal encounter each other within the world of the human rather than in the realm of the supposed animality per se. The question here, then, is not about what constitutes the animal, but how the animal makes humans think about themselves. Literature is taken as a place of such encounters because as the world of words, the domain of an extremely cultivated language, it tends to meet its opposite, the nonspeaking animal, as its very ontological limit.Modernist literature gives especially wide room for rethinking subjectivity through its relation to the animal. …

Hatay Orta Paleolitik dönem endüstrilerinde hammadde kullanımı

In recent years the studying of the raw materials economy has gained importance and aims to show the human behavior and life style of the people lived in the past, hunting strategies, and settlement systems. Thus, in this study, the stone tools were recovered from Hatay Province of the Middle Paleolithic period caves: Ucagizli II, Merdivenli, and Tikali, examined to understand raw material economies. In this context, it is determined to reveal inhabitants of those caves settlements, what kind of sources of raw materials used in the past and how they manage these resources in behavioral traits. As a result of excavations and surveys conducted in the region have been identified two types of source of raw materials. These resources are defined as the primary and secondary by the geological formations. According to the geological formations in the caves shelled flint pebbles, which are often used in the secondary. The primary sources of raw materials consumed less frequently.

Hatay Orta Paleolitik Dönem toplumlarında mobilite ve yerleşim sistemleri

With the increasing ethnological research, many models are created about hunter-gatherers in lifestyles and daily activities. From the beginning of the 1980s, these models were applied on prehistoric communities. In order to create of those models from past, material culture remains of people who lived in this period were examined.With the help of those models, the information about motilities’ of past people lived in Paleolithic period and the evidence such as settlement pattern was reached. In this study, mobility and settlement patterns of Middle Paleolithic Caves, Ucagizli II, Merdivenli and Tikali at Hatay were investigated. As a result of this study past people lived in the Middle Paleolithic period in Hatay, preferred longand short-term settlements, the implementation of logistics and residential mobility were generated.

The First Interior? Reconsidering the Cave

As a relatively new conceptual narrative, the history of interior design has various potential starting points. Thus far, interior design histories have followed either art, architectural or decorative arts histories in order to establish a coherent, progressive narrative that might both contextualize and frame possibilities for contemporary practice. While older historical surveys of the discipline typically located the origins of interior design in ancient civilizations such as Greece or Rome, recent historical surveys have followed an art historical convention in locating the origins of interior design in the Paleolithic caves of Europe. This paper contains a review of literature on the beginnings of interior design's historical narrative, as well as a reconsideration of the cave as a conceptual foundation for interior design theory and practice. The Paleolithic cave is here re–evaluated as both an historical origin that distinguishes interior design history from architectural and art history, and as a speculative, theoretical space rich with possibilities.