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The lithic assemblage from Shizitan 29, a late Upper Paleolithic open-air site in Shanxi, China, provides evidence for the earliest, well-dated microblade production in East Asia, ca. 26/24 Ka cal BP. To pursue a behavioral rather than traditional typological understanding of this key adaptive technology, we apply a techno-functional approach that enables us to reconstruct the entire operational sequence in behavioral terms through the derivation of technical objectives. This methodology can serve as a model to be applied to other assemblages for greater understanding of the origins and spread of the broadly distributed eastern Asian Late Pleistocene microblade industries. Within the eight cultural layers at Shizitan 29, microblade production abruptly appears at the top of Layer 7 following earlier core-and-flake production, supporting hypotheses of microblade technology arising within adaptive strategies to worsening Late Glacial Maximum environments. Significantly, reconstruction of the operational sequence supports microblade technology being introduced into the North China Loess Plateau from regions further north. It also allows us to re-think microblades' relationship in behavioral terms with earlier limited examples of East Asian blade production and the evolution and spread of microblade technology, providing new insights into the adaptive relationships between subsequent microblade productions., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

This paper explores the explanations for, and consequences of, the early appearance of food production outside the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia, where it originated in the 10th/9th millennia cal BC. We present evidence that cultivation appeared in Central Anatolia through adoption by indigenous foragers in the mid ninth millennium cal BC, but also demonstrate that uptake was not uniform, and that some communities chose to actively disregard cultivation. Adoption of cultivation was accompanied by experimentation with sheep/goat herding in a system of low-level food production that was integrated into foraging practices rather than used to replace them. Furthermore, rather than being a short-lived transitional state, low-level food production formed part of a subsistence strategy that lasted for several centuries, although its adoption had significant long-term social consequences for the adopting community at Boncuklu. Material continuities suggest that Boncuklu's community was ancestral to that seen at the much larger settlement of Çatalhöyük East from 7100 cal BC, by which time a modest involvement with food production had been transformed into a major commitment to mixed farming, allowing the sustenance of a very large sedentary community. This evidence from Central Anatolia illustrates that polarized positions explaining the early spread of farming, opposing indigenous adoption to farmer colonization, are unsuited to understanding local sequences of subsistence and related social change. We go beyond identifying the mechanisms for the spread of farming by investigating the shorter- and longer-term implications of rejecting or adopting farming practices., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

The climatic downturn known globally as the Younger Dryas (YD; ∼12,900-11,500 BP) has frequently been cited as a prime mover of agricultural origins and has thus inspired enthusiastic debate over its local impact. This study presents seasonal climatic data from the southern Levant obtained from the sequential sampling of gazelle tooth carbonates from the Early and Late Natufian archaeological sites of Hayonim and Hilazon Tachtit Caves (western Galilee, Israel). Our results challenge the entrenched model that assumes that warm temperatures and high precipitation are synonymous with climatic amelioration and cold and wet conditions are combined in climatic downturns. Enamel carbon isotope values from teeth of human-hunted gazelle dating before and during the YD provide a proxy measure for water availability during plant growth. They reveal that although the YD was cooler, it was not drier than the preceding Bølling-Allerød. In addition, the magnitude of the seasonal curve constructed from oxygen isotopes is significantly dampened during the YD, indicating that cooling was most pronounced in the growing season. Cool temperatures likely affected the productivity of staple wild cereal resources. We hypothesize that human groups responded by shifting settlement strategies-increasing population mobility and perhaps moving to the warmer Jordan Valley where wild cereals were more productive and stable.

Yuchanyan Cave in Daoxian County, Hunan Province (People's Republic of China), yielded fragmentary remains of 2 or more ceramic vessels, in addition to large amounts of ash, a rich animal bone assemblage, cobble and flake artifacts, bone tools, and shell tools. The artifacts indicate that the cave was a Late Paleolithic foragers' camp. Here we report on the radiocarbon ages of the sediments based on analyses of charcoal and bone collagen. The best-preserved charcoal and bone samples were identified by prescreening in the field and laboratory. The dates range from around 21,000 to 13,800 cal BP. We show that the age of the ancient pottery ranges between 18,300 and 15,430 cal BP. Charcoal and bone collagen samples located above and below one of the fragments produced dates of around 18,000. These ceramic potsherds therefore provide some of the earliest evidence for pottery making in China.

Archaeologists are often tempted to make their own contributions to the study of the evolution of cognition and language. At the same time many more researchers in other fields try to find in the archaeological literature the evidence that would disclose the steps in the evolution of these aspects of human nature. On one issue all scholars agree: The so-called Upper Paleolithic Revolution, since some 45,000 years ago, commonly characterized on the basis of Western European archaeological records, fossils and genetic evidence, is the expression of hominins like us. It is generally agreed, although not accepted by all, that due to gene flow and cultural transmissions modern humans came out of Africa and dispersed around the world. The question, however, is how much earlier were the origins of languages and cognition, and can we identify the material remains that reflect the phases that led to today's expressions, within the sequence from 3.3 or 2.6 Myr ago. This paper examines briefly the common stone tool making techniques that are still considered in the literature as a source for providing information about the evolution of cognition, along with very few comments on the pattern of seasonal/annual mobility of past groups of foragers. It reaches the conclusion that when we study not only the records of Europe, western Asia and Africa from a Western view point but also take into consideration the information from East Asia, we are forced to adopt a cautious attitude to the interpretations concerning the emergence of cognition and languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three engraved limestone plaquettes from the recently excavated Epipaleolithic open-air site Ein Qashish South in the Jezreel Valley, Israel comprise unique evidence for symbolic behavior of Late Pleistocene foragers in the Levant. The engravings, uncovered in Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran deposits (ca. 23ka and ca. 16.5ka BP), include the image of a bird—the first figurative representation known so far from a pre-Natufian Epipaleolithic—along with geometric motifs such as chevrons, crosshatchings and ladders. Some of the engravings closely resemble roughly contemporary European finds interpreted as "systems of notations" or "artificial memory systems"–records related to timing of seasonal resources and associated aggregation events of nomadic groups. Moreover, similarly looking signs and patterns are well known from the context of the local Natufian—a final Epipaleolithic culture of sedentary or semi-sedentary foragers who started practicing agriculture. The investigation of the engravings found in Ein Qashish South involves conceptualizations developed in studies of European and local parallels, a selection of ethnographic examples and preliminary microscopic observations of the plaquettes. This shows that the figurative and non-figurative images comprise a coherent assemblage of symbols that might have been applied in order to store, share and transmit information related to social and subsistence realms of mobile bands. It further suggests that the site functioned as a locality of groups' aggregation and indicates social complexity of pre-Natufian foragers in the Levant. While alterations in social and subsistence strategies can explain the varying frequency of image use characterizing different areas of the Late Pleistocene world—the apparent similarity in graphics and the mode of their application support the possibility that symbol-mediated behavior has a common and much earlier origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Natufian culture is of great importance as a starting point to investigate the dynamics of the transition to agriculture. Given its chronological position at the threshold of the Neolithic (ca. 12,000 years ago) and its geographic setting in the productive Jordan Valley, the site of Nahal Ein Gev II (NEG II) reveals aspects of the Late Natufian adaptations and its implications for the transition to agriculture. The size of the site, the thick archaeological deposits, invested architecture and multiple occupation sub-phases reveal a large, sedentary community at least on par with Early Natufian camps in the Mediterranean zone. Although the NEG II lithic tool kit completely lacks attributes typical of succeeding Pre Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) assemblages, the artistic style is more closely related to the early PPNA world, despite clear roots in Early Natufian tradition. The site does not conform to current perceptions of the Late Natufians as a largely mobile population coping with reduced resource productivity caused by the Younger Dryas. Instead, the faunal and architectural data suggest that the sedentary populations of the Early Natufian did not revert back to a nomadic way of life in the Late Natufian in the Jordan Valley. NEG II encapsulates cultural characteristics typical of both Natufian and PPNA traditions and thus bridges the crossroads between Late Paleolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weeds are currently present in a wide range of ecosystems worldwide. Although the beginning of their evolution is largely unknown, researchers assumed that they developed in tandem with cultivation since the appearance of agricultural habitats some 12,000 years ago. These rapidly-evolving plants invaded the human disturbed areas and thrived in the new habitat. Here we present unprecedented new findings of the presence of “proto-weeds” and small-scale trial cultivation in Ohalo II, a 23,000-year-old hunter-gatherers' sedentary camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel. We examined the plant remains retrieved from the site (ca. 150,000 specimens), placing particular emphasis on the search for evidence of plant cultivation by Ohalo II people and the presence of weed species. The archaeobotanically-rich plant assemblage demonstrates extensive human gathering of over 140 plant species and food preparation by grinding wild wheat and barley. Among these, we identified 13 well-known current weeds mixed with numerous seeds of wild emmer, barley, and oat. This collection provides the earliest evidence of a human-disturbed environment—at least 11 millennia before the onset of agriculture—that provided the conditions for the development of "proto-weeds", a prerequisite for weed evolution. Finally, we suggest that their presence indicates the earliest, small-scale attempt to cultivate wild cereals seen in the archaeological record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite almost a century of research, the Chinese Paleolithic chronocultural sequence still remains incomplete, although the number of well-dated sites is rapidly increasing. The Chinese Paleolithic is marked by the long persistence of core-and-flake and cobble-tool industries, so interpretation of cultural and social behavior of humans in East Asia based solely on comparison with the African and western Eurasian prehistoric sequences becomes problematic, such as in assessing cognitive evolutionary stages. For the Chinese Paleolithic, wood and bamboo likely served as raw materials for the production of daily objects since the arrival of the earliest migrants from western Asia, although poor preservation is a problem. Contrary to the notion of a 'Movius Line' with handaxes not present on the China side, China does have a limited distribution of Acheulian bifaces and unifaces. Similarly, Middle Paleolithic assemblages are present in the Chinese sequence. Although the available raw materials have been assumed to have limited applicable knapping techniques in China, this notion is challenged by the appearance of microblade industries in the north in the Upper Paleolithic. In the south, early pottery making by foragers emerged 20,000 years ago, thus preceding the emergence of farming but heralding the long tradition of cooking in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the symposium and to this issue of Current Anthropology attempts to provide some sense of the topic, the meeting itself, the participants, and some of the initial results. Our symposium brought together a diverse international group of archaeological scientists to consider a topic of common interest and substantial anthropological import—the origins of agriculture. The group included individuals working in most of the places where farming began. This issue is organized by chronology and geography. Our goal was to consider the most recent data and ideas from these different regions in order to examine larger questions of congruity and disparity among the groups of first farmers. There is much new information from a number of important areas, particularly Asia. Following a review of the history of investigation of agricultural origins, this introduction summarizes the results of the conference. There are at least 10 different places around the world where agriculture was independently developed, and the antiquity of domestication is being pushed back in time with new discoveries. Our symposium has emphasized the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to such large questions in order to assemble as much information as possible. We anticipate that the results and consequences of this symposium will have long-term ripple effects in anthropology and archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a Levantine model for the origins of cultivation of various wild plants as motivated by the vagaries of the climatic fluctuation of the Younger Dryas within the context of the mosaic ecology of the region that affected communities that were already sedentary or semisedentary. In addition to holding to their territories, these communities found ways to intensify their food procurement strategy by adopting intentional growth of previously known annuals, such as a variety of cereals. The Levantine sequence, where Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene Neolithic archaeology is well known, is employed as a model for speculating on the origins of millet cultivation in northern China, where both the archaeological data and the dates are yet insufficient to document the evolution of socioeconomic changes that resulted in the establishment of an agricultural system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prehistoric archaeology provides the temporal depth necessary for understanding the evolution of the unique human ability to construct and use complex symbol systems. The long-standing focus on language, a symbol system that does not leave direct evidence in the material record, has led to interpretations based on material proxies of this abstract behavior. The ambiguities resulting from this situation may be reduced by focusing on systems that use material objects as the carriers of their symbolic contents, such as color symbolism. Given the universality of some aspects of color symbolism in extant human societies, this article focuses on the 92,000-year-old ochre record from Qafzeh Cave terrace to examine whether the human capacity for symbolic behavior could have led to normative systems of symbolic culture as early as Middle Paleolithic times. Geochemical and petrographic analyses are used to test the hypothesis that ochre was selected and mined specifically for its color. Ochre is found to occur through time in association with other finds unrelated to mundane tasks. It is suggested that such associations fulfill the hierarchical relationships that are the essence of a symbolic referential framework and are consistent with the existence of symbolic culture. The implications of these findings for under- standing the evolution of symbolic culture in the contexts of the African and Levantine prehistoric records are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes four Upper Paleolithic sites from NE Sinai, near Quseime. Three of them are in a primary context, two of which yielded radiocarbon dates of ca. 33,000- 32,000 years b.p. They are embedded in a silt-sand terrace that is attributed to a relatively wet phase of the Early Upper Paleolithic period. The sites are small camps, remnants of living surfaces, with numerous flint artifacts, limestone anvils and hammers, ochre flecks, and ostrich eggshells. The flint assemblages are dominated by numerous fine blades, some of which were either retouched or backed. The Qadesh Barnea assemblages, along with similar assemblages from the Negev and Sinai, represent the earliest and best-documented Upper Paleolithic culture in the Levant, the Lagaman, which is broadly contemporary (ca. 40,000-30,000 b.p.) with the Early Aurignacian of Europe and the French Castelperronian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features archaeologist Francis Turville-Petre and his works. His interest in archaeology started in the Oratory School in Birmingham, England and was later shaped and guided by anthropologist Robert Ranulph Marett. Among his works include the discovery of a skull in Zuttiyeh Cave in Palestine, uncovering of the earliest Upper Palaeolithic industry in Emireh Cave and the discovery of information about the nomadic hunter-gatherers called Kebarans at Kebara Cave.

Anthropology

The mineral components of the sediments that accumulate in an archaeological site constitute a potentially rich source of information on the diagenesis, and in turn the archaeology of the site. This detailed three-dimensional study of the mineral assemblages in mainly the Mousterian sediments of Hayonim Cave incorporates more than 2100 infrared analyses performed on-site during the excavation, as well as diverse analyses in the laboratory. Three major mineral assemblages are identified: the calcite-dahllite (CD) assemblage, the assemblage comprising mainly montgomeryite, leucophosphite and siliceous aggregates (LMVS), and a highly altered sediment in which the clays have broken down and silica was released. The boundaries between these assemblages were mapped in detail. The overall picture is one of extreme heterogeneity with sharp variations occurring over distances of a few centimetres. The relation between the CD and LMVS assemblages shows that it is a product of post-depositional diagenesis, whereas the altered clay assemblage formed beneath an erosional unconformity. The CD and LMVS assemblages were derived primarily from an accumulation several metres thick of ash deposits produced by humans. Ash is thus shown to be a major component of the sediments of this cave. The distribution of the CD assemblage reflects to a large extent the locations of two active springs/seepages in the cave. The distribution of the CD assemblage also faithfully maps the distribution of bones in the cave, showing that their distribution is a function of preservational conditions and not human activities (Stineret al ., 2001). The conditions that produced the erosional unconformity, also resulted in severe alteration of the clays and other mineral components of these sediments. The erosion process and the fact that the thickness of this altered zone decreases towards the centre of the cave, indicates that the diagenetic driving force was probably climatic. The three-dimensional distributions of the mineral assemblages have a direct bearing on the dating of the cave by thermoluminescence and electron spin resonance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

China’s historiographical traditions tell of the successful control of a Great Flood leading to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the beginning of civilization. However, the historicity of the flood and Xia remain controversial. Here, we reconstruct an earthquakeinduced landslide dam outburst flood on the Yellow River about 1920 BCE that ranks as one of the largest freshwater floods of the Holocene and could account for the Great Flood. This would place the beginning of Xia at ~1900 BCE, several centuries later than traditionally thought. This date coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley and supports hypotheses that the primary state-level society of the Erlitou culture is an archaeological manifestation of the Xia dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The invention of pottery introduced fundamental shifts in human subsistence practices and sociosymbolic behaviors. Here, we describe the dating of the early pottery from Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi Province, China, and the micromorphology of the stratigraphic contexts of the pottery sherds and radiocarbon samples. The radiocarbon ages of the archaeological contexts of the earliest sherds are 20,000 to 19,000 calendar years before the present, 2000 to 3000 years older than other pottery found in East Asia and elsewhere. The occupations in the cave demonstrate that pottery was produced by mobile foragers who hunted and gathered during the Late Glacial Maximum. These vessels may have served as cooking devices. The early date shows that pottery was first made and used 10 millennia or more before the emergence of agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The study comprises an experimentally based investigation of interaction between temporal change in the morphology of microlithic tools and transformations in projectile technology during the Late Pleistocene in the Levant. Archery experiments with differently designed arrows fitted with various types of microliths representing subsequent Epipaleolithic cultures of the Levant allowed analyzing performance abilities of the arrows, identifying projectile damage types characteristic of particular hafting modes, detecting factors influencing the frequency of projectile damage and estimating the frequency of projectile damage expected to be found in archaeological samples. The data obtained through the experiments applied in the analysis of the archaeological microliths from Geometric Kebaran and Natufian sites in Israel indicate different approaches to the design of projectiles fitted with microliths characteristic for these cultures. The shift in design, associated with such important economic and social transformations as transition to sedentary settlements and a broad-spectrum economy, may reflect a demand for light, flexible and efficient projectile weapons requiring low time and labor investment for preparation and retooling. The use of such efficient weapons in conditions of growing population density and restricted areas available for Natufian hunter–gatherers can be considered as one of the factors that could have affected the subsequent transition to food production that took place in the early Holocene. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Observations pertaining to particular stages of the lithic chaîne opératoire, or reconstructions of the entire operational sequence at a particular site, can be used to develop a detailed understanding of past human cognitive capabilities, technological sophistication, mobility, and land use. The “reduction sequence” is a specific stage of the chaîne opératoire that many archaeologists have attempted to measure. Many of these attempts fail to recognize that “reduction” is a three-dimensional process, and thus should be measured with an appropriate three-dimensional unit: volume. This paper presents a new methodology for measuring and defining reduction in unifacial stone tools that reconstructs the original volume of a modified blank, allowing a realistic percentage of volume loss to be calculated. This new method is fast, precise, and very accurate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Focuses on an archeological site in Zhoukoudian, China that is regarded as having the oldest reliable evidence for the controlled use of fire by humans. A re-examination of the evidence showing burned and unburned bones; The lack of ash or charcoal remnants.