3 27 18 Origins of the Human Logistical Adaptation 1 Practicalities Midterm 2 4 5 18 is a week from this Thursday covering lectures through this Thursday 3 29 18 and this week s lab Lab 9 but not Lab 10 Lab 10 will be held next week 4 2 4 5 No lab between 4 9 and 4 12 2 Topics for Today Site Formation Processes the Oldowan Industry Implications of the Oldowan for diet anatomy and cognition Residential mobility vs Logistical Mobility for Understanding the Oldowan s Techno Organic niche Who Made the Oldowan 3 The stone tool record is the beginning of a defining aspect of the human adaptation Human life consists of ceaseless and varied interactions among people and myriad kinds of things Michael Schiffer The Material Life of Human Beings 1999 2 Culture is an essential part of the human adaptation and as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion or thick enamel on our molars Robert Boyd 4 Material culture as the human exoskeleton a defining characteristic Stone Age Visiting Cards 6 What are they using these sharp rocks for 7 8 The aids to the wimpy dentition of a hominin 9 Techno organic evolution sensu Schick Toth 1993 10 replaces anatomical adaptations with tools 11 12 Shea s Ch 4 Predictions for Pliocene Early Pleistocene Lithic Technology Systematic production of small stone cutting edges stone used as artificial teeth Stone cutting edges used for pre oral food processing Stone cutting edges used to manufacture tools from other materials Earliest preserved wooden artifacts a platter at 0 79 mya at Gesher Benot Ya aqov Israel 14 What one small stone flake can do 15 Bone marrow extraction by direct percussion 16 Break patterns for bone marrow extraction Prehistoric Modern 17 Taphonomic Diagnostic Features Tooth Marks Shape U Depth shallow Internal surface smooth Stone Tool cut marks Shape V Depth deep Internal surface striated 18 Microscopy of bone surfaces Modern stone tool cut marks Olduvai Gorge 1 9 mya 19 Microscopy of bone surfaces Olduvai Gorge 1 9 mya stone tool cut marks Olduvai Gorge 1 9 mya Carnivore tooth mark 20 Units within Archaeology Artifacts Features Sites Olduvai Gorge Zinj floor Bones stones are more than 100 times as concentrated on Oldowan sites as they are on the landscape without human activity 21 The Pivotal Question How were these dense clusters of bones and stones formed 22 Did Early Hominins live in Home Bases like modern humans Glynn Isaac s Central Place Foraging Hypothesis 23 Did Early Hominins live in Home Bases like modern humans 24 25 Bone surface wear accumulation time Bed I sites at Olduvai 26 Hunting or scavenging Likely BOTH but there is evidence at some sites for early access to carcasses keeping carnivores away from the tastiest pieces and or hunting themselves Bone surface wear accumulation time Bed I sites at Olduvai 27 Types of Food Getting Technology Instrument a tool used to impinge on masses incapable of significant motion and relatively harmless to people Oswalt 1976 p 64 Weapon a tool used to apply energy directly to kill a mobile resource Tended and untended facilities a tool used to apply energy indirectly to control the movement of a species to a hominin s advantage Oswalt W H 1976 An Anthropological Analysis of Food Getting Technology New York Wiley and Sons 28 Oldowan Food Getting Technology All of these are Instruments 29 Possible Oldowan Weapons Wooden clubs or spears similar to those found at Sch ningen Germany at 400 kya may have been part of the Oldowan tool kit 30 Power Confrontational Scavenging Would this strategy be pursued differently by females with infants than by males and adolescent females 31 Sketch by John Gurche Chimpanzee vs Human hand Note Finger tips apical tufts Length Curvature of chimpanzee fingers Shortness of chimpanzee thumb relative to the palm 32 Importance of the Precision Power Grips for the human hand 33 Consequences for Gripping between the Human vs Chimpanzee hand 34 35 Kansi a bonobo flintknapping Initial trials throwing produced geological flakes Continued training flakes vaguely similar to Oldowan 36 Flintknapping as hard as Rocket Science 37 Oldowan Technology A learned behavior that requires social intimacy to learn A behavior within the zone of latent solutions of a 500 cc brain 38 Positron Emission Tomography images of Nick Toth while knapping Stout et al 2000 ANTH3008 Introduction to Flintknapping ANTH5008 Advanced Flintknapping 40 Our Current Industrial Model of Residential Sedentism John Shea 2017 Stone Tools in Human Evolution The Archaeology of Behavioral Differences Among Technological Primates Cambridge University Press 41 Simple residential mobility without Central Place Foraging John Shea 2017 Stone Tools in Human Evolution The Archaeology of Behavioral Differences Among Technological Primates Cambridge University Press 42 Residential mobility with a Logistical component producing Central Place Foraging John Shea 2017 Stone Tools in Human Evolution The Archaeology of Behavioral Differences Among Technological Primates Cambridge University Press 43 Human Mobility Extremes in the Ethnographic Record Central Place Foraging with more left or less right logistic mobility associated with different levels of residential mobility less on the left more on the right Adapted by Andrefsky 2005 211 213 from Binford s 1980 Willow Smoke and dog s tails Hunter gatherer settlement systems and archaeological site formation American Antiquity 45 4 20 44 Central Place Foraging as a continuous variable scalable to the Pliocene or the Present Effective foraging radius re one way distance to patch beyond which the net returns of a logistical foray do not meet the daily caloric needs of the forager due to the energetic costs of commuting long distance Kelly 1995 Foraging Spectrum Raw material for stone tools cryptocrystalline rocks such as basalt rhyolite obsidian chert flint etc were moved by Early Pleistocene hominins 3 5 km from their geological source to the archaeological sites Carrying planning depth beyond that of non human apes 46 Did they select for better quality stone for knapping Stout et al J of Human Evolution 2005 47 Refitting flakes to cores shows what activities occurred at the site If rind of the cobble cortex is present on flakes at the site knapping of that cobble began on site If cortex is absent cobble was introduced to the site as a core This indicates a more human degree of hominin planning than seen in chimpanzee nut cracking 48 Questioning Reconstructions What
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