Paleolithic research in the Armenian Highlands and Anatolia

I returned safe and sound from Anakara a couple of weeks ago (an unexpected overnight stay in Terminal 5 at JFK not withstanding) and am happy to report that the trip was well worth it. It was an intimate event, with 14 papers and perhaps 20-30 audience members. Some highlights:

• The first paper was by Amilié Vialet and her colleague M. Cihat Alçiçek, who discussed the Kocabaş skullcap. I was particularly interested to hear this talk, as I knew next to nothing about this important hominin fossil. The remains consist of the frontal and parietal of a hominin that were recovered in 2002 during quarrying activities in the travertines of the famous Pammukale (Turkish: "Cotton Castle") hot springs (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) in western Turkey. (I actually visited this area, which also includes impressive ruins from Greek and Roman times, on a vacation way back in 2001.) The top of the skullcap was literally shaved off by heavy equipment (unfortunately, the rest of the skull, nor any other part of the skeleton, have ever been recovered) but, thankfully, the recovered bones were brought to the attention of Alçiçek, who recognized their importance. John Kappelman and his colleagues had previously published on the remains and suggested that (1) they dated to ~500,000 years ago, (2) provisionally, they represented H. erectus; and (3) the individual suffered from the earliest known case of tuberculosis. Vialet (who, apart from being a world-class paleoanthropologist, is a genuinely nice person) summarized more recent work on the fossil. Perhaps most importantly, they push back the age of the remains using a variety of dating techniques to ~1.4 million years ago, which makes them among the oldest in all of Eurasia. An audience member asked Vialet about tuberculosis, and she vacillated, saying that a confident diagnosis from their team would need to await further analyses. Their 3D reconstruction of the cranium, however, suggested a closer affinity of Kocabaş to Homo ergaster fossils from Africa rather than early Homo (including the crania from Dmanisi) fossils or later, classic Homo erectus populations from Asia. Vialet suggested, then, that Kocabaş represents an "expansion [from Africa that is] different from that represented by the Dmanisi fossils". It is becoming increasingly clear that the movement out of Africa by hominins ca. 2 million years ago was a complex series of events (emphasis on the plural) that involved many populations, some of which were able to establish long-term occupations and others that quickly went extinct. The new information from Kocabaş certainly reinforces this idea.
• What followed was a series of papers by our Turkish colleagues that summarized the Lower and Middle Paleolithic of Anatolia. What struck me is that apart from a few notable exceptions (Kaletepe Deresi 3, Karaïn Cave, Yarımburgaz Cave, and Üçazğlı Cave), much of what is known is based almost exclusively on surface assemblages that lack key contextual information (chronometric dates, paleoenvironmental reconstructions, etc.). For example, Kadriye Özçelik reported on surface surveys that documented for the first time the presence of Paleolithic material in the Denizli Basin of southwestern Anatolia (this is the same region in which the Kocabaş fossil was uncovered). It is quite amazing, if you think about it, that it took until 2014 to officially recognize the presence of Paleolithic tools in this region, especially since, as I later learned, handaxes have been known in Turkey since 1896. While those of us working in Armenia faced a similar situation−that is, a dependence largely on surface finds−a great deal of progress has been made on this front in the last 10 years, due largely, I think, to the support of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, which has done much to nurture Paleolithic research in Armenia. My conversations with Turkish researchers revealed that it is extremely difficult to acquire permits to even examine and collect surface assemblages in Turkey, much less excavate stratified sites. Until that changes, I fear that our knowledge of Paleolithic settlement in modern Turkey will continue to lag behind that of other nearby countries.
• Our paper summarized work on Bagratashen 1, and we officially announced OSL dates from the Middle Paleolithic horizon of around 35,000 years ago. While Middle Paleolithic sites of this age are not unusual, the types of stone tools uncovered from the deposit look like artifacts from other parts of the southern Caucasus and the Levant that are much older, somewhere around 150,000 to 200,000 years ago (see my previous post on Bagratashen 1 here). So, either our dates are way out of whack (which is possible), or we have an example of technological convergence where culturally and temporally unrelated hominin groups independently converged on similar tool types. There is a long history in archaeology of viewing stone tools to track human populations. That is, particular cultures made particular types of tools, so if you find similar tools, you have the same people. However, folks have long pointed out that, as complex a technology that lithic manufacture can be, there are only so many ways that one can reduce a chunk of rock into different shapes. Dan Adler and his colleagues made precisely this point in their paper about their excavations at Nor Geghi 1 in Armenia. What they found is that at about 330,000 years ago, folks in Armenia were creating both bifacial artifacts typically associated with the Acheulean and Middle Paleolithic Levallois products at the same time. This shows definitively that, at least at Nor Geghi 1, making Acheulean bifaces has little to do with being part of an Acheulean "culture" that represents a particular group or species of hominins. Likewise, it seems that the appearance of Levallois technology, again at least in Armenia, need not necessarily represent a new group or species of hominin. Perhaps it is time, as Dan simulated with a humorous slide, to flush many of these stone tool "cultures" down the toilet.

I should also point out that Phil was able to bring together Turkish and Armenian researchers to discuss Paleolithic archaeology. This shows the power of science in general, and archaeology in particular, to transcend political and ethnic enmity and bring together people with common goals. I was honored to be part of such a momentous event.

Off to Turkey!

I am leaving tomorrow for Ankara, Turkey, where my colleague Phil Glauberman has organized a workshop entitled "Palaeolithic Research in the Armenian Highlands and Anatolia". I am honored to be included in this event, which will bring together an international contingent of researchers that work on the Lower and Middle Paleolithic in a very under-appreciated and understudied region. I'll be presenting on our recent work at Bagratashen 1. It's been 15 years since my last visit to Turkey, so I'm looking forward to the trip. Check back soon for a post that summarizes the event...  

Bead-making in the early Upper Paleolithic

Mary Stiner and her colleagues (2013) recently published a really fun analysis of shell beads from the Paleolithic site of Üçağızlı Cave I in Turkey. The levels at the site date to the early Upper Paleolithic, between about 41,000 and 29,000 radiocarbon years ago (calibrated dates place the occupations between about 45,000 and 35,000 years ago).

Examples of perforated shells from Üçağızlı Cave I. From Stiner et al. (2013: Figure 5). 

After demonstrating (convincingly) that the modified shells are, in fact, artificially punctured beads, Stiner et al. (2013) show that the types of shells brought back to the cave, and the types that were chosen as beads, change over time. They provide four hypotheses to explain the change in shell type frequencies: (1) environmental changes determined what sorts of shelled animals were living near the cave, and thus what was available for bead exploitation; (2) the distance from raw materials (mediated by sea level fluctuation) changed over time, in which case people would accumulate more "junk" when raw materials were close and/or convenient and be very selective (i.e., only take the best stuff) when raw materials were distant and/or inconvenient; (3) the diversity of shell types is a function of the number and heterogeneity of shell collectors and users (that is, the more folks, and the more types of folks, exploiting shells will result in greater shell diversity); (4) cultural "conformism," where norms determine the types of shells used during any one time period.

The first hypothesis was not supported, as habitats don't appear to have changed significantly over time. The second hypothesis found some support in the fact that the diversity of ornament shells increased in those levels with evidence of frequent shellfish consumption. The latter would, theoretically, signal that the coast, and thus the raw materials for beads, were relatively close by and people became less picky about what they brought back to the cave for ornamental use. However, Stiner et al. (2013) question whether the distances to, and the weight of, the shells would have played much of a role in mediating what was, or was not, transported to the cave.

In the end, they feel that group size and composition and conformist behavior best explain the patterning in shell usage at the site. This is based on two observations. First, an inverse relationship exists between the diversity of species brought back to the site and the frequency of shells that were actually perforated for use as beads. That is, during time periods where many different types of shell were collected, only a few of those types appear to have been utilized for bead use. In the earliest levels, on the other hand, people transported only a few types of shells back to the cave, but most of them were subsequently perforated. Second, the size and shape of perforated specimens is relatively consistent regardless of time period. Stiner et al. (2013: 396) therefore conclude that:

Several factors contributed to the variation in the UcI ornament assemblages. Sample size effects were addressed early in the analysis and do not explain the patterns that concern us. The taxonomic diversity of the assemblages as a whole stems first from the natural biotic diversity of the marine environment. However, changes in littoral habitats to not seem to account for the differences between assemblages or changes over time. Many other aspects of the variation developed as the material was filtered by human choices. The narrow range of shapes and shell sizes is clearly attributable to human preferences, as are the bias toward whole specimens and the methods of modifying the shells for suspension. The extent of 'noise' or variance in the ornament assemblages is a product of the relationship between raw material collection activities and ornament manufacture and use. 

The fact that the taxonomic diversity of the UcI shell ornaments increased with time while the percentage of holed specimens decreased demonstrates that variation in the assemblages must be considered according to two distinct technological stages: raw material collection and artifact manufacture. The more playful and less constrained stage of artifact life history is raw material collection. Variation in overall raw material diversity among the assemblages related in part to how convenient access was to the shoreline and/or the overall importance of marine foraging from UcI. Variation in raw material also correlates with increasing occupation intensity and dietary breadth; the least variable assemblages formed during the lightest occupations. Changes in the size and complexity of the social groups that occupied UcI therefore may have played a role in shaping variation in the ornament assemblages. Unfortunately, the predictions for neutral social effects (more people on site or present for longer periods) and high-grading effects (raw material access) are difficult to distinguish in this particular case. What we can be certain about is that more 'junk' found its way into the shell raw material brought to the site at some intervals and that very different criteria took over at the manufacture stage. As the times collected were streamed into more formal uses, their characteristics narrowed, and many of the shells initially collected were rejected before further modification. It is for these reasons that we conclude that post-manufacture characteristics of the ornament assemblages most clearly reflect the influence of shared esthetic and visual norms. 

I actually ran into this article while I was mining the latest publications on modern human origins, which we are currently covering in my Paleolithic Archaeology class. One of the traits that many archaeologists associate with "modern" behavior is the use of personal adornment, since it is extremely likely that these items were used by ancient people as symbols to transmit information about themselves (just as jewelry does today). Stiner and her colleagues do not involve themselves in the modern human origins debate (as they note, the beads are not among the oldest in the world, or even in the Levant), but there analysis got me thinking about the importance of group size and complexity in the production of symbols. There is, in fact, quite a bit of recent work in Paleolithic archaeology that invokes the importance of demographic factors (mainly population size and density), rather than cognitive factors, to explain the appearance (and disappearance) of symbolic objects among pre-Upper Paleolithic cultures. Think about it: if you interacted with other groups only very rarely, or you ran into the same groups over and over again, there is very little incentive, even if you were cognitively able, to create a ton information transmitters (i.e., symbols) of any kind, much less those that would preserve in the archaeological record.

References:

Stiner, MC, Kuhn, SL, Güleç, E (2013). Early Upper Paleolithic shell beads at Üçağızlı Cave I (Turkey): Technology and the socioeconomic context of ornament life-histories. Journal of Human Evolution 64, 380-398.