The age of three Middle Palaeolithic sites: Single-grain optically stimulated luminescence chronologies for Pech de l'Azé I, II and IV in France.

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurements were made on individual, sand-sized grains of quartz from Middle Palaeolithic deposits at three sites (Pech de l'Azé I, II and IV) located close to one another in the Dordogne region of southwest France. We were able to calculate OSL ages for 69 samples collected from these three sites. These ages reveal periods of occupation between about 180 and 50 thousand years ago. Our single-grain OSL chronologies largely support previous age estimates obtained by thermoluminescence dating of burnt flints at Pech IV, electron spin resonance dating of tooth enamel at Pech I, II and IV and radiocarbon dating of bone at Pech I and IV, but provide a more complete picture due to the ubiquitous presence of sand-sized quartz grains used in OSL dating. These complete chronologies for the three sites have allowed us to compare the single-grain ages for similar lithic assemblages among the three sites, to test the correlations among them previously proposed by Bordes in the 1970s, and to construct our own correlative chronological framework for the three sites. This shows that similar lithic assemblages occur at around the same time, and that where a lithic assemblage is unique to one or found at two of the Pech sites, there are no deposits of chronologically equivalent age at the other Pech site(s). We interpret this to mean that, at least for these Pech de l'Azé sites, the Mousterian variants show temporal ordering. Whether or not this conclusion applies to the wider region and beyond, the hypothesis that Mousterian industrial variation is temporally ordered cannot be refuted at this time.

Deciphering site formation processes through soil micromorphology at Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco.

Contrebandiers Cave preserves a Late Pleistocene sequence containing Middle Stone Age (MSA) so-called Maghrebian Mousterian and Aterian occupations, spanning from ∼126 to 95 ka (thousands of years ago), followed by spatially restricted Iberomaurusian industries. Micromorphological analyses, complemented by instrumental mineralogical identification and fabric orientation, allowed for the reconstruction of the main site formation processes at the site. Initial deposition is characterized by local reworking of marine shelly sands dating to Marine Isotopic Stage 5e (MIS5e). The subsequent stratification reveals sedimentary dynamics predominantly associated with gravity-driven inputs and contributions from weathering of the encasing bedrock, at the same time that anthropogenic sediments were being accumulated. The allochthonous components reflect soil degradation and vegetation changes around the cave during the last interglacial. Human occupations seems to be somewhat ephemeral in nature, with some stratigraphic units apparently lacking archaeological components, while in others the human-associated deposits (e.g., burned bones, charcoal, and ashes) can be substantial. Ephemeral breaks in sedimentation and/or erosion followed by stabilization are mainly discernible microscopically by the presence of phosphatic-rich laminae interpreted as short-lived surfaces, peaks of increased humidity and colonization by plants. More substantial erosion affects the uppermost Aterian layers, presumably due to localized reconfigurations of the cave's roof. The subsequent Iberomaurusian deposits are not in their primary position and are associated with well-sorted silts of aeolian origin. While the effects of chemical diagenesis are limited throughout the whole stratigraphic sequence, physical bioturbation (e.g., by wasps, rodents, and earthworms) is more pervasive and leads to localized movement of the original sedimentary particles.

On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb.

North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two 'industries' are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia.

The Roc de Marsal Neandertal child: a reassessment of its status as a deliberate burial.

Whether Neandertals buried their dead has considerable bearing on the debate concerning the nature of their cultural behavior. Among the claims for intentional Neandertal burial in Europe, the child from Roc de Marsal has long been one of the less contentious examples because its articulated skeleton was found in what has become widely accepted as an intentionally excavated pit. However, what is known about the context of the Roc de Marsal remains from the original descriptions, coupled with new stratigraphic, sedimentological, and archaeological data on the site from recent excavations, cast serious doubt on this interpretation.

Reconstructing Late Pleistocene paleoclimate at the scale of human behavior: an example from the Neandertal occupation of La Ferrassie (France).

Exploring the role of changing climates in human evolution is currently impeded by a scarcity of climatic information at the same temporal scale as the human behaviors documented in archaeological sites. This is mainly caused by high uncertainties in the chronometric dates used to correlate long-term climatic records with archaeological deposits. One solution is to generate climatic data directly from archaeological materials representing human behavior. Here we use oxygen isotope measurements of Bos/Bison tooth enamel to reconstruct summer and winter temperatures in the Late Pleistocene when Neandertals were using the site of La Ferrassie. Our results indicate that, despite the generally cold conditions of the broader period and despite direct evidence for cold features in certain sediments at the site, Neandertals used the site predominantly when climatic conditions were mild, similar to conditions in modern day France. We suggest that due to millennial scale climate variability, the periods of human activity and their climatic characteristics may not be representative of average conditions inferred from chronological correlations with long-term climatic records. These results highlight the importance of using direct routes, such as the high-resolution archives in tooth enamel from anthropogenically accumulated faunal assemblages, to establish climatic conditions at a human scale.

A worked bone assemblage from 120,000-90,000 year old deposits at Contrebandiers Cave, Atlantic Coast, Morocco.

The emergence of Homo sapiens in Pleistocene Africa is associated with a profound reconfiguration of technology. Symbolic expression and personal ornamentation, new tool forms, and regional technological traditions are widely recognized as the earliest indicators of complex culture and cognition in humans. Here we describe a bone tool tradition from Contrebandiers Cave on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, dated between 120,000-90,000 years ago. The bone tools were produced for different activities, including likely leather and fur working, and were found in association with carnivore remains that were possibly skinned for fur. A cetacean tooth tip bears what is likely a combination of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic modification and shows the use of a marine mammal tooth by early humans. The evidence from Contrebandiers Cave demonstrates that the pan-African emergence of complex culture included the use of multiple and diverse materials for specialized tool manufacture.

Nubian Complex strategies in the Egyptian high desert.

Systematic survey by the Abydos Survey for Paleolithic Sites project has recorded Nubian Complex artifact density, distribution, typology, and technology across the high desert landscape west of the Nile Valley in Middle Egypt. Our work contrasts with previous investigations of Nubian Complex settlement systems in Egypt, which focused on a small number of sites in the terraces of the Nile Valley, the desert oases, and the Red Sea Mountains. Earlier research interpreted the Nubian Complex, in particular, as a radiating settlement system that incorporated a specialized point production. Our high desert data, however, indicate that the Nubian Complex associated with early modern humans in this region of the high desert reflects a circulating, rather than a radiating, settlement system, and that point production has been over-emphasized. Data available from our work, as well as sites investigated by others, do not conclusively identify Nubian Complex behavioral strategies as modern. These data, however, do contribute to the understanding of landscape use by early modern human populations living along the Nile Valley Corridor route out of Africa.

Author Correction: Two million years of flaking stone and the evolutionary efficiency of stone tool technology.

In the version of this Article originally published, the authors mistakenly included duplicate entries in the flake datasets for the new Pech de l'Azé IV and Warwasi collections, resulting in minor errors in the statistical analysis. The authors have now repeated this analysis with the correct flake datasets. As a result, in the following two sentences, the number of flakes has been changed from 19,000 to 18,000: "Using more than 18,000 flakes from 81 assemblages spanning two million years..." and "We applied a comparative approach...on more that 18,000 complete and unmodified flakes." In addition, in Figs. 1-3 and Supplementary Fig. 1, some of the data points for the Pech de l'Azé IV and Warwasi collections have moved; the original and corrected figures are below. Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 have been updated to reflect the corrected statistics, and datasets 'Flake_data' and 'Summary_data' have been replaced with the corrected data files. Furthermore, the data availability statement has been updated with the text "Open access to these data and the R code generated for this study is provided at https://zenodo.org/record/1408081#.W6iyn84zaHs ". The authors would like to thank L. Premo at Washington State University for finding the duplicate entries in the published flake dataset.

Two million years of flaking stone and the evolutionary efficiency of stone tool technology.

Temporal variability in flaking stone has been used as one of the currencies for hominin behavioural and biological evolution. This variability is usually traced through changes in artefact forms and techniques of production, resulting overall in unilineal and normative models of hominin adaptation. Here, we focus on the fundamental purpose of flaking stone-the production of a sharp working edge-and model this behaviour over evolutionary time to reassess the evolutionary efficiency of stone tool technology. Using more than 19,000 flakes from 81 assemblages spanning two million years, we show that greater production of sharp edges was followed by increased variability in this behaviour. We propose that a diachronic increase in this variability was related to a higher intensity of interrelations between different behaviours involving the use and management of stone resources that gave fitness advantages in particular environmental contexts. The long-term trends identified in this study inform us that the evolutionary efficiency of stone tool technology was not inherently in advanced tool forms and production techniques, but emerged within the contingencies of hominin interaction with local environments.

New dates for the Fontéchevade (Charente, France) Homo remains.

Homo I from the site of Fontéchevade, France, has long been an anomaly in the European fossil record. The specimen is a fragment of human frontal bone that lacks a supraorbital torus and appears to belong to an anatomically modern Homo sapiens. However, the level from which it was recovered in 1947 was dated on the basis of associated faunal and lithic material to the last interglacial or earlier. As a result, Homo I has been interpreted, among other things, as a representative of a pre-sapiens lineage in Europe. This paper reports on recent ESR and radiocarbon dates that indicate that the specimen almost certainly dates to oxygen isotope stage 3, which brings it in line with other evidence for the entry of modern Homo sapiens into Europe.