Добірка наукової літератури з теми "Techno-typological Approach"

Protoaurignacian foragers relied heavily on the production and use of bladelets. Techno-typological studies of these implements have provided insights into crucial aspects of cultural variability. However, new technologies have seldom been used to quantify patterns of stone tool design. Taking advantage of a new scanning protocol and open-source software, we conduct the first 3D analysis of a Protoaurignacian assemblage, focusing on the selection and modification of blades and bladelets. We study a large dataset of complete blanks and retouched tools from the early Protoaurignacian assemblage at Fumane Cave in northeastern Italy. Our main goal is to validate and refine previous techno-typological considerations employing a 3D geometric morphometrics approach complemented by 2D analysis of cross-section outlines and computation of retouch angle. The encouraging results show the merits of the proposed integrated approach and confirm that bladelets were the main focus of stone knapping at the site. Among modified bladelets, various retouching techniques were applied to achieve specific shape objectives. We suggest that the variability observed among retouched bladelets relates to the design of multi-part artifacts that need to be further explored via renewed experimental and functional studies.

Bifacial tools (especially handaxes and cleavers) have played an important role in the Lower Palaeolithic studies trying to decode Acheulean lifeways through them. The methodological approach based on classical metrical analysis, could be insufficient and often subjective, especially in instances of asymmetrical tools, and incorrect orientation for capturing the morphological data. Recent years have seen the application of geometric morphometric methods on lithic tools (2D contours and 3D volumetric forms) as an accurate, efficient and objective method of data collection. This alternative approach has the additional advantage of being both interactive and reversible analytic process, reducing the time and effort in collection of data. Traditionally the museum collections of Palaeolithic artefacts of old surveys and fieldworks, are seldom subject to study due to their incomplete and often doubtful or mixed context. In the current study, both geometric morphometric on 2D contour analysis as well as classical techno-typological analytical methods has been applied to bifaces from Southern Peninsular Indian Palaeolithic kept in the British Museum (London, UK) and Musée de l’Homme (Paris, France). The aim of this study is to highlight the complementary nature of both analytical methods in deciphering and throwing light on the patterns of bifaces (handaxes and cleavers), their technological variability and stability and to identify if there are regional technological trends. The results obtained from both classical analysis and geometric morphometric analysis allow to show that handaxes were highly variable in both the regions while the cleavers show high standardization. While the former approach throws light on the knapping techniques and preferences, the latter complement the results with the shape preferences and variations across regions.

The discovery of oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis ) nut-cracking by wild long-tailed macaques ( Macaca fascicularis ) is significant for the study of non-human primate and hominin percussive behaviour. Up until now, only West African chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes verus ) and modern human populations were known to use stone hammers to crack open this particular hard-shelled palm nut. The addition of non-habituated, wild macaques increases our comparative dataset of primate lithic percussive behaviour focused on this one plant species. Here, we present an initial description of hammerstones used by macaques to crack oil palm nuts, recovered from active nut-cracking locations on Yao Noi Island, Ao Phang Nga National Park, Thailand. We combine a techno-typological approach with microscopic and macroscopic use-wear analysis of percussive damage to characterize the percussive signature of macaque palm oil nut-cracking tools. These artefacts are characterized by a high degree of battering and crushing on most surfaces, which is visible at both macro and microscopic levels. The degree and extent of this damage is a consequence of a dynamic interplay between a number of factors, including anvil morphology and macaque percussive techniques. Beyond the behavioural importance of these artefacts, macaque nut-cracking represents a new target for primate archaeological investigations, and opens new opportunities for comparisons between tool using primate species and with early hominin percussive behaviour, for which nut-cracking has been frequently inferred.

The lithic site Boa Esperança II (BES II), in the São Paulo segment of the Brazilian Plateau, next to the boundary between the cities of Araraquara (SP) and Boa Esperança do Sul (SP), presents a collection of almost 2,000 lithic artifacts (predominantly chert and sandstone), being interpreted as a settlement of diversified functions with possibly continuous or successive occupation. In this work, we approach the site based on interface of its insertion in the regional physical-environmental context - with emphasis on the interface with relief frames, surface structure study and estimated geomorphic sequences of the alluvial plain of Jacaré-Guaçu river - and techno-typological analysis. It was verified that the BES II artifacts are distributed along vertical profiles and relief pictures lined by records that mark the transition from semi-arid conditions to others of increasing humidity, successive oscillations of base levels and modifications of fluvial regimes (ephemeral channels passing to perennial channels of different hydrological meandrings patterns), indicating that human occupation has dealt with conditions of quite distinct landscapes between the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. Local lithic industry would have taken advantage of attributes derived from these modifications in the landscape over time - in particular the exposure of gravels of large river pebbles deposited by torrential ephemeral channels. The past abundance of raw material of fluvial origin would have contributed to the location of the site in the regional geomorphological context, as well as for a lithic assemblage based on the production of large unipolar flakes. We observed in the correlations between the position of artifacts, geomorphical and pedological data, OSL and Carbone-14 dates at archaeological levels, elements that allow us to discuss considering BES II as an archaeological site to integrate the interval of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and to had interfaces with the geomorphological and environmental changes of such time. The archaeological implications of the issue and the fact that only one dating of photoluminescence has been reported from the deepest level of the site (basal gravel layer) emphasize the need for new, denser and more diversified studies.

<p>El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar una primera aproximación a la caracterización de los afloramientos y el análisis tecno-tipológico de materiales líticos recolectados en una cantera-taller, ubicada en la localidad arqueológica El Ranchito (valle de Copacabana, Dpto. Ischilín), en el norte de la provincia de Córdoba. A lo largo de las investigaciones arqueológicas en el valle se menciona la presencia de una materia prima lítica de muy buena calidad para la talla, una roca silícea, de la cual se han hallado puntas de proyectil y otros artefactos formatizados. Si bien su presencia es escasa en comparación con otras materias primas como el cuarzo, la misma se encuentra en la mayoría de los sitios arqueológicos de la región. En la localidad El Ranchito se han identificado tres fuentes primarias de aprovisionamiento de este material, como resultado de cuatro prospecciones en donde se realizaron ocho cuadrículas de recolección de material lítico en diferentes sectores. Los relevamientos permitieron establecer la disponibilidad natural de esta materia prima, extrayéndose muestras de la fuente identificada que fueron inspeccionadas con microscopio e identificadas como silcrete. Aquí se presentan los resultados del análisis de la primera unidad de recolección realizada, en la que se recuperaron en su mayoría ecofactos y desechos de talla, y en menor proporción núcleos e instrumentos. Esto nos permite inferir que la actividad principal era el descortezamiento de nódulos.</p><p><br /><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p><br />This paper aims at presenting a first approach to the characterization of outcrops and techno-typological analysis of lithic materials collected in a quarry-workshop, located in the archaeological site El Ranchito (Valle de Copacabana, District of Ischilín) in the northern province of Córdoba. During archaeological research in the valley, we found lithic raw material of high quality for carving, a siliceous rock from which arrowheads were identified, in addition toother stone tools. While its presence is low as compared with other lithic artifacts such as quartz, such material was found in most archaeological sites in the region. In El Ranchito, three sources of this material were identified, in which quarry-workshop areas were formed. These resulted from four surveys in which eight collection grids of lithic material were conducted in different areas. The surveys helped establish the natural availability of this raw material, through which samples were analyzed under microscope and identified as silcrete. We report the results from the analysis of the first collection unit, in which we found, mostly, ecofacts and debitage, and, to a lesser extent, cores and tools, allowing us to infer that tasks related to the removal of nodule cortex were performed.</p><p> </p>

The earliest hominin archaeological sites preserve a record of stone tools used for cutting and pounding. Traditionally, sharp-edged flakes were seen as the primary means by which our earliest ancestors interacted with the world. The importance of pounding tools is increasingly apparent. In some cases, they have been compared with stone hammers and anvils used by chimpanzees for nut-cracking. However, there has been little focus on providing a robust descriptive and quantitative characterization of chimpanzee stone tools, allowing for meaningful comparisons between chimpanzee groups and with archaeological artefacts. Here we apply a primate archaeological approach to characterize the range of chimpanzee nut-cracking stone tools from Djouroutou in the Taï National Park. By combining a techno-typological analysis, and two- and three-dimensional measures of damage, we identify clear differences in the location and extent of damage between nut-cracking hammerstones and anvils used at Djouroutou and when compared with other wild chimpanzee populations. Furthermore, we discuss these results in relation to interpretations of Plio-Pleistocene percussive technology. We highlight potential difficulties in identifying the underlying function of percussive artefacts based on morphological or techno-typological attributes alone. The material record from Djouroutou represents an important new datum of chimpanzee regional and material culture.

This paper presents the preliminary results of the study of the Early Neolithic pottery production in the Marche region, Italy (VI mill. BC). The main goal of this research is to expand the knowledge of pottery manufacturing processes associated to the typical Central Adriatic Impressed Ware, at present poorly understood. All sites under analysis are located in the piedmont hills of the Apennine Mountains, except one which is on the coast. This study aims to highlight synchronic and diachronic variability in pottery technology, to identify common traits and to investigate the raw materials selection and exploitation strategies. The pottery assemblages are examined by means of an integrated approach which include techno-typological and archaeometric analyses. The environmental factors, the distribution of resources, the technology solutions taken by these early Neolithic communities are considered.

Data about Palaeolithic peopling, settlement dynamics and techno-economy of the south-western margin of the Alpine region are sketchy. In this area, the lack of systematic research and the scarcity of lithic raw materials, spread the idea that Piedmont was not inhabited during Palaeolithic. In 2009, the re-starting of the excavations at the Ciota Ciara cave, gave rise to new questions and to the development of research projects at a regional scale. The Ciota Ciara cave is the only Middle Palaeolithic site object of multidisciplinary and systematic investigations. Its lithic assemblage, analysed through a techno-economic approach, allows to understand in detail the technological choices and the land mobility of the Neanderthal groups on a local and sub-regional scale. Other Middle Palaeolithic assemblages are known in the region and are all issued from surface collections. They come from the northern part of the region, from Vaude Canavesane, Trino, Baragge biellesi and Colline Novaresi. The technological study of these assemblages led to the identification of strong similarities in the technological choices of the Middle Palaeolithic human groups: they based their technology on the exploitation of vein quartz, a rock diffused all over the regional territory, from time to time accompanied by other local (spongolite, rhyolite, metamorphic rocks, jasper) and allochthonous (radiolarite and flint) lithic resources, with technological adaptation to their quality and mechanical properties both when it comes to predetermined methods (Levallois and discoid) and when expedient reduction sequences are used. Concerning Upper Palaeolithic, the only lithic assemblage issued from an archaeological excavation (and therefore with a clear stratigraphic context) is that from the Epigravettian site of Castelletto Ticino. Other lithic artefacts referable on a techno-typological basis to Upper Palaeolithic are from Trino and Colline Novaresi. As for Middle Palaeolithic, the techno-economic approach used in the analysis of these lithic assemblages, allow to have, for the first time, reliable data at a regional scale. In this work we present the data obtained after about ten years of research in Piedmont: they outline a scenario where, even in the limits of analysis mostly based on materials issued from surface collections, we can see both clear differences between the Middle and the Upper Palaeolithic technological behaviours and hypothesise the land mobility of the hunter-gatherers’ groups that inhabited the region.

The prehistory of South-western France is known worldwide for its rich record of Palaeolithic sites, especially from the Dordogne region. However, while research on the Palaeolithic is extremely prolific, the Neolithic was at the same time relegated to the background. Since the beginning of the discipline, few researchers worked on the Neolithic from SW France. Besides, they focused on ceramic typological analyses to describe cultural groups, rarely considered lithic tools and armatures, and never performed any techno-economical study of lithic productions. For over thirty years, rescue archaeology excavations revealed a large presence of Neolithic sites for this period; nonetheless Neolithic research remains little developed in relation to its potential. As part of my PhD thesis, the aim will be to fill this gap by characterizing lithic productions through techno-economical analyses, in order to describe the cultural groups existing in Northern Aquitania during the 4th and the 3rd millennia. With the example of La Lède du Gurp, a littoral occupation site dated to the middle and recent Neolithic, I will try to highlight in this paper what the study of lithic industries can say about a cultural group at a local scale. The reconstitution of the operating chains and the statistical analysis of small assemblages of non-standardised lithic reduction, allowed us to highlight a similar low investment in lithic production between the Middle and the Recent Neolithic of La Lède du Gurp. Our approach has enabled us to observe that a low investment in lithic production may reflect the complexity of the Neolithic groups and the complementarity of lithic industry with other technical subsystems directly related with the group's natural environment, as may it be the case for salt production during Recent Neolithic at La Lède du Gurp.

Over the last decades, the increase of data available for the study of the archaeological topic in the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Pleistocene has favoured the understanding of the technological trends of the Iberian Acheulean assemblages. These have features of a Large Flake Acheulean (LFA), displaying, among other traits, a significant presence of cleavers on flake, a specific tool type that is of great cultural and technological value. Particularly, these artefacts are privileged to discuss the importance of blank predetermination in the Acheulean techno-complex. Following this reason, in the present work we aimed to explore this topic through the 2D Geometric Morphometric Analysis of the cleaver on flake assemblage from Casal do Azemel (Leiria, Portugal), an example of a paradigmatic Iberian Acheulean site that has one of the largest collections of this type of tools in Western Europe. The results obtained revealed that no significant morphological differences were found according to the technological solutions applied to the acquisition of the blank and its secondary transformation. Considering that in most of the cases these tools display a low degree of secondary transformation, these data suggest that underlying the production of Casal do Azemel’s cleaver on flake assemblage was not only a technological and cognitive flexibility (given its typological composition), but also a conceptual, structural, and morphological standardisation. These observations allowed us to discuss the significance of blank predetermination in the Acheulean, implying the existence of greatly structured technical and cognitive prerequisites.

Les récentes recherches archéologiques en Iran ont abouti à la découverte de nouveaux sites paléolithiques en plein air sur le plateau iranien. Deux des découvertes récentes de ce type ont été choisies pour être étudiées ici. L'un des sites en plein air concerné s'appelle Band-e Pey et il est situé dans les forêts de la côte sud de la mer Caspienne et l'autre, nommé Kouhrang, se trouve dans les hautes terres des contreforts du Zagros. Les deux contiennent des centaines d'artefacts lithiques dispersés sur une vaste zone. Ces deux sites ont été étudiés en utilisant une approche techno-typologique lithique, puis en donnant un sens de datation comparative aux deux assemblages. En plus d'essayer de donner une idée de l'attribution chrono-culturelle, la structure de l'assemblage lithique des deux sites est comparée aux données climato-environnementales pour vérifier si l'on pouvait trouver une corrélation entre les deux variables de la technologie et de l'environnement et, par conséquent, pour étudier les stratégies d'adaptation. Le principal inconvénient ici est le contexte des découvertes et l'absence de tout dépôt daté de manière sûre. Pour pallier cette difficulté, les résultats de l'étude techno-typologique sont comparés aux données d'un large échantillon d'autres sites connus du Paléolithique moyen et supérieur d'Iran et d'Asie du Sud-Ouest à l'aide de statistiques multivariées. L'autre problème concerne la rareté des recherches paléoclimatiques en Iran qui rend difficile la reconstitution des conditions environnementales. L'analyse a toutefois pu indiquer que les deux sites en plein air étaient très probablement des camps de base avec une large variété d'activités. Compte tenu du fait que la principale séquence de réduction dans les deux sites est l'enlèvement d'éclats et que la fabrication d'outils à base d'éclats comme le fait que les outils dans les deux assemblages sont dominés par les types attribuables au Paléolithique moyen avec la présence de la technique Levallois, l'occupation principale des sites remonte à cette période. En plus de ce qui a été mentionné, l'assemblage de Band-e Pey semble expédiant, impliquant peut-être l'impact de l'environnement forestier tempéré sur la structure de l'assemblage, contrairement à Kouhrang, avec une meilleure conservation. Enfin, le résultat de la démarche comparative suggère que le modèle d'utilisation des territoires était plus de nature saisonnière à Kouhrang, alors que l'on pourrait envisager une durée d'occupation annuelle plus longue à Band-e Pey
The recent Aarchaeological research in Iran has resulted in the discovery of some open-air Paleolithic sites across the Iranian Plateau which are seemingly found everywhere across the plateau. Two of the recent finds of this type have been chosen for study here. One of the open-air sites is named Band-e Pey, which is located within the forests of the Southern Caspian Sea shore and the other, named Kouhrang is in the highlands of the Zagros foothills. Both are containing hundreds of lithic artifacts dispersed across a vast area. It is intended here to study the two sites using lithic techno-typological approach and then, giving some sense of comparative dating to both assemblages. In addition to trying to give a sense of timeframe, the lithic assemblage structure of the two sites would be compared against climatic-environmental data to check whether one could find any correlation between the two variables of technology and environment and hence, to study adaptive strategies. The main drawback here is the surface nature of the findings and the lack of any securely dated deposit. To ameliorate this difficulty, the results of techno-typological study would be compared to the data from some other known Iranian and southwest Asian Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites with the help of multivariate statistics. Apart from the lack of any dated deposit, the other problem concerns the paucity of paleoclimatic research in Iran which makes it difficult to reconstruct the environmental conditions. As a result of lab and library research, the analysis indicated that both open-air sites were most probablybase camps with a variety of activities. Giving the fact that the main reduction sequence in both sites is the removal of flakes and the making of flake-based tools and the fact that tool category in both assemblages are dominated by the known Middle Paleolithic retouched varieties with the presence of Levallois technique, the main occupation of the sites was in Middle Paleolithic Period. In addition to what has been mentioned, Band-e Pey assemblage looks more expeditious, maybeimplying the impact of temperate forest environment on the assemblage structure, contrary to Kouhrang, with more significant conserved nature. Finally, the result of library research suggests that land use pattern was more of a seasonal nature in Kouhrang, while one could envisage longer yearly duration of occupation in Band- e Pey

The identification of lithic raw material sources used to produce tools and the characterization of their management are essential when studying a prehistoric population. For the Middle Paleolithic, it may be one of the crucial keys to understanding the technological and typological variability observed within the lithic assemblages, particularly in the Rhine Valley where the scarcity of flint and geological complexity go hand in hand with the exploitation of a wide diversity of the raw materials by Neanderthal groups. In this paper we propose an analysis of raw material management on the only two Middle Paleolithic sites in the French part of the Rhine Valley to have been actually excavated and well-documented and which have yielded sufficient quantities of lithic material: Achenheim “Sol 74,” an open-air find horizon dating to the Saalian glaciation, and Mutzig “Rain,” a multi-layer rockshelter settlement from the beginning of the Weichselian glaciation. These two sites occupy quite different environments and belong to different chronological periods but they probably had access to the same raw material sources. The analyses carried out combine petrography, observation of the natural surfaces on the lithic artifacts and the reconstruction of reduction sequences and chaînes opératoires. For both sites, this approach has allowed us to highlight the exploitation of raw materials which were primarily sourced locally. It has also revealed other techno-economic behaviors such as the circulation of certain kinds of products, especially retouched tools made from good quality flint. Our observations allow us to propose interpretations regarding the functioning of Neanderthal groups and the functions of sites within the territory that they exploited.