Rockshelter Sites Research Articles

The lithic assemblage from Sugenya, a Pastoral Neolithic site of the Elmenteitan tradition in southwestern Kenya

ABSTRACTThe spread of mobile pastoralism throughout eastern Africa in the mid- to late Holocene fundamentally reshaped social and economic strategies and occurred against the backdrop of major climatic and demographic change. Early stone-tool-using herders in these regions faced new and unpredictable environments. Lithic technological strategies from this ‘Pastoral Neolithic’ (PN) period (c. 5000–1400 BP) reflect the social and economic solutions to the novel environmental challenges faced by food-producing communities. In southern Kenya, the ‘Elmenteitan’ technological tradition appears during the PN in association with a specialised herding economy and distinct ceramic styles and settlement patterns. The Elmenteitan is known mostly from rockshelter sites in the Central Rift Valley and few open-air Elmenteitan sites have been extensively excavated. Fewer still have benefitted from comprehensive lithic analyses. This paper presents typological and technological analyses of the Elmenteitan site of Sugenya located in the Lemek Valley of southwestern Kenya and excavated by Alison Simons in 2002. Technological patterns add resolution to Elmenteitan tool-use and production in the region and contribute new insights to the organisation of Elmenteitan obsidian exchange networks.

Environmental reconstruction spanning the transition from hunter/gatherers to early farmers in Colombia: paleopedological and archaeological indicators from the pre-ceramic sites Tequendama and Aguazuque

Complex geoarchaeological research of the archaeological sites with continuous long-term occupation could provide insight into environmental change and human-landscape interaction during the transition from hunter-gatherer to horticulture economy in the north-west of South America. We performed a paleopedological study in the new sections at Tequendama (rockshelter site) and Aguazuque (open-air site) two key pre-ceramic sites of the Savannah of Bogotá region of Colombia, combined with traditional archaeological and paleontological investigations. The chronological scales of the sections based on a large number of 14C dates show that their occupation periods are complementary and together cover the period from the terminal Pleistocene to late Holocene. The material of the archaeological layers has a colluvial origin with large tephra input. Presence of volcanic components influence pedogenesis supporting development of granular structure, dark humus accumulation, and Andic properties that could not be used for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Micromorphological observations however show abundant evidence of pedogenic carbonate accumulation that we interpret as evidence of gradual aridization during the middle Holocene. This conclusion is supported by the paleontological data, an upward increase of the frequency of Cavia sp. remains, and agrees with the regional palynological proxies. Aridization was the background environmental trend during the transition period from a hunter-gatherer economy to an early horticulture and plant and animal domestication.

Search for new final Palaeolithic rock shelter sites in the Federal State of Hesse

The eruption of the Laacher See volcano ca. 13.000 years ago profoundly influenced the lifeways of Final Palaeolithic foragers inhabiting the fallout area. Apart from the substantial devastation that affected the proximal area around the eruptive centre (<50 km), substantial amounts of tephra covered the medial (50–500 km) and distal (500–1000 km) zones of the eruption. In particular, substantial amounts of volcanic ash were transported towards the northeast across Germany and into the Baltic region. In order to find new sites that would allow us to investigate the far-field effects of this cataclysmic event in detail, a predictive model using a legacy dataset of rock shelters in the Federal State of Hesse in Central Germany was developed. Hitherto, only few sites where Laacher See tephra is directly stratigraphically associated with Final Palaeolithic archaeology are known in the region. Following the in silico evaluation of the archaeological potential, two survey campaigns were conducted which resulted in the discovery of several locations that in turn will be subject to keyhole excavations in a subsequent field campaign.

Rockshelters and the impact of the Laacher See eruption on Late Pleistocene foragers

Predictive modelling has identified rockshelter sites to the north-east of the Laacher See volcano in western Germany. These will be excavated to investigate the impacts of volcanic eruption on Late Pleistocene foragers.

Cut marks made with quartz tools: An experimental framework for understanding cut mark morphology, and its use at the Middle Palaeolithic site of the Navalmaíllo Rock Shelter (Pinilla del Valle, Madrid, Spain)

The study of cut marks in archaeological contexts is of great importance for understanding the subsistence strategies of past human groups. Many authors have indicated differences to exist between the cut marks produced by different tools and when the same types of tool have been made from different raw materials. The present work examines the cut marks made during the experimental butchering of a red deer (Cervus elaphus) using simple quartz flakes, with those found on fossilised animal remains at the Navalmaíllo Rock Shelter site (Pinilla del Valle, Madrid, Spain) likely to have been made with similar flakes. The methodology followed was that of Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. (2009), which was originally designed to differentiate between cut marks and trampling marks, but which here was tested as a method of distinguishing between the raw materials from which cutting tools were made. The results were also compared to those made with other types of tool/raw material reported in the literature. The present results confirm the above ideas: the marks made experimentally by the quartz flakes are very similar to those seen on the faunal remains from the level F of Navalmaíllo Rock Shelter site, but different to those made by other tools or by flakes made from other materials. They also show, however, that different cut mark morphologies are largely independent of the size of the animal butchered, and of the anatomical element on which they appear.

Identification of Painted Rock-Shelter Sites Using GIS Integrated with a Decision Support System and Fuzzy Logic

The conservation and protection of painted rock shelters is an important issue. Throughout the world, if unprotected, they are vulnerable to vandalism or to industrial activities such as quarrying. This research explores the integrated use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) with a multi-criteria decision support system and fuzzy logic to identify possible rock art sites over the Vindhyan Plateau in the district of Mirzapur, Central India. The methodology proposed compares results obtained by spatial modelling with validation data derived from recent exhaustive field surveys of more than forty newly discovered rock-shelters in the Vindhyan region. The zones obtained by predictive modelling are in agreement with validation datasets and show that the method can be used for new site prospection. This method represents a potential tool for landscape planners and policy makers to employ when seeking protection from anthropogenic activities of potential areas of painted rock-shelter sites and archaeological deposits.

Correction: A reassessment of the early archaeological record at Leang Burung 2, a Late Pleistocene rock-shelter site on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193025.].

Early Metal Age interactions in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania: jar burials from Aru Manara, northern Moluccas

New evidence from the rockshelter site of Aru Manara, on the island of Morotai, in the northern Moluccas, East Indonesia, suggests an earlier than previously assumed date for extensive interactions between this area of Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific. Shared mortuary customs and associated ceramic grave goods, along with other practices such as megalithic traditions, appear to start in the Late Neolithic, but become more widespread and consolidated in the Early Metal Age. Excavations at Aru Manara show that the northern Moluccas may have figured prominently in the newly established network of interaction evidenced at this time, making it an important location in the spread and dispersal of people and culture throughout Island Southeast Asia and into Oceania.

A LATE PLEISTOCENE ENDEMIC GENET (CARNIVORA, VIVERRIDAE) FROM AGHIA NAPA, CYPRUS

The Pleistocene endemic fauna of Cyprus consists mainly of dwarf hippos and elephants, adapted to the insular environment. Among the rare elements of this endemic fauna is a small carnivore, the viverrid Genetta plesictoides, poorly known from scanty material that comes from two localities. Recent excavations in a rockshelter site at the area of Aghia Napa yielded —apart from a rich hippo sample—new skeletal remains (a partial skull and a tibia) of the cypriot genet. The dental morphology shows adaptations towards a more carnivorous diet in relation to the extant Genetta genetta.

A reassessment of the early archaeological record at Leang Burung 2, a Late Pleistocene rock-shelter site on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

This paper presents a reassessment of the archaeological record at Leang Burung 2, a key early human occupation site in the Late Pleistocene of Southeast Asia. Excavated originally by Ian Glover in 1975, this limestone rock-shelter in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, Indonesia, has long held significance in our understanding of early human dispersals into ‘Wallacea’, the vast zone of oceanic islands between continental Asia and Australia. We present new stratigraphic information and dating evidence from Leang Burung 2 collected during the course of our excavations at this site in 2007 and 2011–13. Our findings suggest that the classic Late Pleistocene modern human occupation sequence identified previously at Leang Burung 2, and proposed to span around 31,000 to 19,000 conventional 14C years BP (~35–24 ka cal BP), may actually represent an amalgam of reworked archaeological materials. Sources for cultural materials of mixed ages comprise breccias from the rear wall of the rock-shelter–remnants of older, eroded deposits dated to 35–23 ka cal BP–and cultural remains of early Holocene antiquity. Below the upper levels affected by the mass loss of Late Pleistocene deposits, our deep-trench excavations uncovered evidence for an earlier hominin presence at the site. These findings include fossils of now-extinct proboscideans and other ‘megafauna’ in stratified context, as well as a cobble-based stone artifact technology comparable to that produced by late Middle Pleistocene hominins elsewhere on Sulawesi.

δ18O of Fissurella maxima as a proxy for reconstructing Early Holocene sea surface temperatures in the coastal Atacama desert (25°S)

Fissurella maxima is a keyhole limpet that is abundant and well preserved in archaeological shell midden sites along the coast of Chile, making it an appropriate species to use for reconstructions of past sea surface temperature (SST). In the present study we evaluate the potential of F. maxima shells as a proxy of SST by analysing δ18O of modern shells collected alive from the Atacama desert (area of Taltal, 25°S) and archaeological shells from two Early Holocene rockshelter sites: 224A and Paposo Norte 9. Reconstructed SST from modern F. maxima shells were related to SST obtained from in situ thermometers, supporting the use of this mollusc species as a paleotemperature archive. Mean SST reconstructed from Early Holocene archaeological shells (14.13 °C) was 2.86 °C cooler than mean temperature recorded in modern shells (16.99 °C). Mean SST reconstructed from modern shells was ~1.04 °C warmer than the mean temperature of in situ thermometers (15.95°C). Hence the paleo–SST data from archaeological sites 224A and Paposo Norte 9 enrich the Early Holocene nearshore paleoceanographic scenario of the Pacific coast of South America, with mean SST cooler than present-day SST. Our results validate the use of F. maxima shells as a SST proxy and contribute to a better understanding of the latitudinal distribution of the coastal upwelling regime during the Early Holocene, temporal changes in the structure of the Humboldt Current along the Holocene, and its influence on human adaptation through the prehistory of South America.

Emigdiano Blues: The California Indigenous Pigment Palette and an In Situ Analysis of an Exotic Colour

Abstract The Native inhabitants of South Central California produced rock art containing red, orange, black, white, green and blue colours using a range of mineral and organic materials. Many of these same colours were used on material culture and body painting. This paper focuses on a sub-group of the Chumash, called the Emigdiano, who produced an enigmatic blue colour used in the creation of rock art. Here, we focus on the blue pigment at the rock shelter site of Three Springs in the Wind Wolves Preserve in South Central California. The composition of blue pigments has previously been the focus of discussion with suggestions that they were produced either using European pigments taken from Spanish missions, or that azurite from a local quarry was the source. Previous experimental work had demonstrated that it was possible for the blue to be produced from locally available azurite. Here we present the in situ analyses of these enigmatic blue pigments using handheld X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF). Results from pXRF analysis of rock art, quarried azurite samples and experimental rock art reconstructions showed that the Emigdiano Blue at Three Springs were not azurite based and was composed of optical blue (a mixture of black and white or grey materials which mimic the appearance of blue). This paper discusses the surprising implications of the use, given the availability of a ‘true’ blue pigment, and the wider ontological importance of combining multiple colours to produce the effect of blue in a rock art panel.

Open-air preservation of miniaturised lithics: experimental research in the Cederberg Mountains, southern Africa

Open-air archaeology plays a limited role in southern African Late Pleistocene research, with most studies focused on rock shelter assemblages. Recently, archaeologists have noted discrepancies in the composition of Late Pleistocene lithic assemblages between some of the region’s open-air and rock shelter sites. For example, although relatively abundant in rock shelters, Late Pleistocene Later Stone Age (LSA, c. 44–12 kcal. BP) bipolar cores are rare in open-air contexts. In this paper, we assess this discrepancy by testing for differential preservation of specific artefact classes and sizes in semi-arid open-air conditions. We placed a replicated assemblage of miniaturised cores and flakes on an archaeologically sterile sediment surface in the Doring River Valley (South Africa) and recorded their movements over 22 months. Our results indicate that bipolar and freehand cores moved comparable distances within the study interval and that surface slope is the strongest predictor of miniaturised tool movement. We also show that (1) relatively flat lithics move disproportionately more and (2) random artefact orientations do not preclude local (i.e. metre) scale artefact transport. In terms of the archaeology of our study area, the observed clustering of surface artefacts on sediment bodies likely results from their recent exposure. Our data suggest that the paucity of open-air bipolar artefacts in Late Pleistocene LSA assemblages may have more to do with human behavioural variability at landscape scales than differential preservation. Southern Africa’s rich rock shelter record is, therefore, unlikely to represent the full suite of prehistoric hunter-gatherer behaviours.

The geoarchaelogical research on the Late Pleistocene Mousterian occupation deposits of the Abric Romaní rock shelter (Capellades Barcelona, Spain)

Changes in the focus of such research in conjunction with scientific advances have diversified the relationship between Earth sciences, Archaeology and History. Today, the core concept of geoarchaeology focuses on the study of anthropic sediments recovered from archaeological sites and landscapes. The potential results that anthropic sediments can offer were highlighted in the last third of the 20th century. Currently, the study of anthropic sediments is a dynamic field within archaeological research focusing on multi-scale analyses such as I try to present in this paper. Here, I give a sedimentary description of the living floors using sediments associated with the use of fire in the archaeological bed north of the Abric Romaní rock-shelter site. The data are the lithological descriptions of the combustion structures taken from the field record and thin section samples. The objective is to provide observations to demonstrate the physical reality of the living floors in the sedimentary record of archaeological sites and landscapes. My main conclusion highlights the importance of knowledge about historic and prehistoric human settlements in order to guide the field record and sampling of these rare sedimentary records. The aim of the research on the Romaní rock shelter is to report on the paleoecology and the autoecology of the archaic human groups through the archaeological record.

Sistem Penguburan Terlipat Takengon: Tambahan Data Baru Penguburan Dalam Gua di Indonesia

AbstractArchaelogical data about prehistoric burial inside of prehistoric cave or rock-shelter site in Indonesia has been found in some sites that spread at some different provinces, such as Central Java, West Java, East Java, East Borneo, and also South Sumatra. Now, there is addition one that found in Loyang(cave) Mendale and Loyang Ujung Karang in Takengon, Central Aceh, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam.

Maya mortuary landscapes, Central Belize

The Central Belize Archaeological Survey (CBAS) was initiated in 2005 as a sub-project of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance project (BVAR; directed by Jaime Awe) to investigate the prehistoric Maya cemetery site of Caves Branch Rockshelter. Subsequently, we began to survey other nearby cave and rockshelter sites (Hardy 2009) and to excavate the monumental civic-ceremonial centre of Deep Valley (Jordan 2008). CBAS became an independent project in 2009, with an increasing focus on sites in the neighbouring Roaring Creek Valley (Figure 1). This slight geographic shift was in part intended to expand bioarchaeological investigations to include dark zone cave contexts identified during the late 1990s by BVAR's Western Belize Regional Cave Project. In the area around these caves, we identified two large, previously unreported civic-ceremonial centres and a network of raised roads (sacbeob) connecting them and other sites. Our survey and excavations at Tipan Chen Uitz (Figure 2) have yielded evidence that it was a regional capital with ties to powerful foreign polities, as attested by the discovery of multiple carved stone monuments (Figure 3; see Andres et al. 2014; Helmke &amp; Andres 2015; Andres et al. in press in Antiquity). We have also continued our investigations of mortuary rockshelters, including Sapodilla Rockshelter in the Caves Branch Valley.

Experimental studies of personal ornaments from the Iron Gates Mesolithic

Personal ornaments, especially those made from the shells of marine mollusks and animal teeth, have been recovered from many Mesolithic sites across Europe. This paper reviews the evidence of personal ornaments from the Mesolithic of the Iron Gates, where such finds were identified in five sites on the Romanian bank: the cave and rock shelter sites of Climente II and Cuina Turcului, and three open-air sites—Icoana, Ostrovul Banului, and Schela Cladovei. The ornaments from these sites were made from the shells of several gastropod taxa and at least one species of dentaliid scaphopod, as well as the pharyngeal teeth of cyprinids, the teeth of several species of terrestrial mammal, fish vertebrae, and pieces of antler and bone. Particular attention is given to taxonomic identification and questions of taphonomy, provenance, selection, manufacture, and use. Experiments were conducted in which several types of ornament were replicated. Archeological and experimental pieces (at various stages of production) were examined under a microscope, to establish the durability of the beads and estimate the length of time over which they were worn. Our results show that shells of Lithoglyphus and Theodoxus sp. were simply perforated and fixed in composed adornments, as were shells of Tritia neritea in the early part of the time range. In the later Mesolithic, T. neritea shells were processed in a different way and fixed to clothing in the manner of appliques. No technological modification of the cyprinid teeth was observed; these were sewn individually onto clothing by means of a thread coated with an adhesive substance. The other categories of personal ornament were used mainly as pendants. Experimental use-wear analysis suggests that many ornaments were used over long periods, with broken or missing pieces replaced when necessary.

Lithic production strategies in the Middle Paleolithic of the southern Balkans

One of the major challenges in Paleolithic research is disentangling various factors that contributed to variation in Neandertal technological behavior. As a result of variable abundance of the Paleolithic record across Eurasia, our understanding of regional and temporal patters of Middle Paleolithic industries differs from one region to another. Southeastern Europe is one of the areas that stands in contrast to rich and thoroughly investigated regions of other parts of Europe. A few sites in the region, nevertheless, offer an opportunity for the study of technological behavior of Middle Paleolithic hominins. The rockshelter sites of Crvena stijena and Bioče in Montenegro, located on the eastern Adriatic coast in the Mediterranean zone, have relatively dense remains of hominin occupations compared to other sites in the Balkan peninsula. Previous research identified several characteristics of the eastern Adriatic industries. Firstly, they have been characterized as Micromousterian due to the small average size of the artifacts, a feature that potentially results from the size of the local raw material. On typological grounds, some assemblages have been said to show typological similarity to Charentian, and some researchers have emphasized frequent denticulate tools as a late Mousterian feature. In this study we aim to examine lithic production strategies at the two sites based on samples from Crvena stijena deposits that tentatively range from late MIS 5 to MIS 3 and from the still undated upper sequence of Bioče. We will evaluate variability in the industries in the Adriatic region by looking at both the process of blank production and further tool production and consumption to provide a clearer picture of lithic production strategies during the late Middle Paleolithic. We will address the issue of how raw material affects the structure of these assemblages, artifact size, and particularly diachronic patterns of stone tool production strategies.

An Early Holocene Record of Cimex (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) From Western North America.

The subfossil remains of 14 cimicids (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) were recovered during archaeological investigations of the Paisley Five Mile Point Cave site (35LK3400), an exceptionally well-dated (n = 229 radiocarbon dates) late Pleistocene-early Holocene rock shelter site in south-central Oregon. Nine of the specimens have been assigned to three modern species of Nearctic Cimicidae-Cimex antennatus Usinger & Ueshima, Cimex latipennis Usinger & Ueshima, and Cimex pilosellus (Horváth)-whereas the remaining five individuals were too fragmentary to positively identify. The chronology of the insect assemblage puts one specimen at circa 5,100 calibrated years before present (cal. yr BP), and the remaining 13 range in age from 9,400 to almost 11,000 cal. yr BP. Although fossil and subfossil cimicid remains have been recovered at other archaeological sites, the fossil record for bed bugs is largely undocumented. The Paisley Caves specimens thus far represent the oldest remains of the genus in probable contact with humans on record.

Lithics, landscapes & la Longue-durée – Curation & expediency as expressions of forager mobility

With the recognition that practically all archaeological sites are depositional composites unrelated to the activities of any contemporaneous group of individuals (i.e., palimpsests) and that forager adaptations are not ‘site-specific’ but rather landscape-scaled phenomena, statistical approaches designed to take these predicates into account have been developed over the past 20 years that depart from the traditional techno-typological systematics used for decades in much of Europe and the Levant. Based on artifact density and the frequency of retouched pieces scaled to the volume of sediment excavated in cave and rock shelter sites, and – for surface sites – the ratio of retouched artifacts to artifact totals scaled to unit area, they can potentially determine whether or not changes in mobility and land-use often assumed to have coincided with major evolutionary events (e.g., the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition) actually occurred. Lithic artifact counts and densities from the cave of La Riera (Posada de Llanes, Asturias, Spain) are used here to illustrate the potential of the approach. Changes in artifact volumetric density are then compared with a radiocarbon summed probability curve using calibrated BP dates scaled against changes in oxygen isotope ratios in the GISP2 ice core. The intent is to determine to what extent macroclimatic change over the 30–10 ka cal BP interval compares with changes in the La Riera sequence.