Archaeology and Anthropology

"Neanderthals were absent from Britain for a large part of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, and returned after Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 when the climate ameliorated. Their presence in Britain has been established by early MIS 3, at least 55-60,000 years BP, until around 40,000 BP. Our understanding of this re-occupation of the British landscape has been relatively poor due to a combination of early excavations leading to loss of contextual information, and a lack of chronological constraints. However, advances in the precision of chronometric frameworks over the past two decades, alongside the recent discovery of a new site dating to the beginning of MIS 3 make a re-analysis of the British Mousterian now possible.
This thesis aims to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the most informative Mousterian lithic assemblages available from cave and open sites in Britain, using current methodologies involving quantitative and qualitative approaches. Specifically, metrical data, raw material type, and detailed information on typology and technology enable a chaîne opératoire approach focusing on the spatio-temporal location of stages of production, use and discard. Analysis and interpretation use these data to move between two scales: individual site examination concentrates on situational responses, while inter-site comparisons investigate technological organisation within the landscape by exploring the influence of raw material nature and availability.
Results indicate that Neanderthals were consistently making knowledgeable choices in their utilization of raw materials. This can be understood within a wider technological system focused on flexibility, reliability and maintainability, as a response to the challenges of an extremely mobile, high-risk lifestyle, where resources could be unpredictable. In the wider context of how Neanderthals adapted to the intense climatic fluctuations of MIS 3, and whether this could have affected their competitiveness in relation to modern humans, the British Mousterian demonstrates that while occupations may have been brief and interrupted, Neanderthals were capable of an organisational complexity that allowed them to exploit these landscapes successfully."

Selected results from a recent comprehensive, technologically-centred study of the British Late Middle Palaeolithic are presented. Bifaces are a major element of these MIS 3 Mousterian assemblages, but they have not been examined in an inclusive manner. Attention has until now been focused on particular strikingly-shaped examples termed bout coupés or flat-butted cordates which have been analysed from a chrono-typological perspective and compared with the French Moustérien de Tradition Acheuléen (MTA). This has resulted in a biased perspective, as in reality, the diversity in form in British Mousterian bifaces is quite substantial, although there remains a real lack of any flat triangular forms. The broader position of bifaces within Neanderthal technological systems is explored, with results demonstrating that they were treated as flexible objects with extended use-lives and transported through the landscape. Possibilities remain for bout coupé and other „hyper‟-shaped bifaces to signify a social facet to biface production through their deviation from the more typical cordiform/subtriangular biface form common across the MTA.

"Our view of Neanderthals as a species has been transformed over the last decade following important archaeological discoveries, and
advances in palaeogenetics. New evidence from varied elements of the Late Middle Palaeolithic (lithic raw material transport and
symbolic artefacts/practices) compel reconsideration of other aspects of material culture, and prevailing models of social networks built
upon them. It is suggested that Neanderthals were operating on larger social scales than previously acknowledged, and that regionallydistinctive
lithic traditions found around 60-40,000 BP acted as cultural/ethic markers. They provided a mechanism for individuals to
manage social relations with other groups, facilitating biological reproduction and maintaining relations during times of population
fragmentation and expansion. Reconsidering the Late Middle Palaeolithic record in this way transforms our view of how Neanderthals
perceived their own material record, and sets a stage for the extensive and intimate social contact that we now know was occurring
between late Neanderthals and incoming anatomically modern humans, the vestiges of which we still carry today (Burbano et al. 2010;
Green et al. 2010)."

"This paper presents a summary of the first season of fieldwork and archive assessment undertaken in 2010 as part of the Quaternary
Archaeology and Environments of Jersey Project. The principle aim of the project is to provide a reassessment of the early prehistoric
record of Jersey, through targeted sampling and key-hole excavation of poorly understood find spots, as well as a major reassessment of
La Cotte de St Brelade. This paper presents the successful results of two weeks of intensive fieldwork at three localities, demonstrating
the rich potential for early prehistoric archaeology on the island. Furthermore, the value of the island’s record in further understanding
the long term record of human occupation in the English Channel region is discussed."

A clear archaeological signature of the Late Middle Palaeolithic re-colonisation of Britain by Neanderthals during MIS3 can now be identified based on a corpus of sites dating to after 55 kyr BP, containing Mousterian-type assemblages. Although lacking in high-resolution, deeply stratified deposits, they permit consideration of broad patterns of Late Neanderthal adaptations at different scales, including technological organisation, settlement and mobility.  This poster presents the first synthesis of this data based on comprehensive analysis of lithic assemblages, and offers interpretations for its distinctive archaeological character.

Palaeolithic exploitation of lithic sources is still often considered from a site-centred perspective: ‘living’ sites are represented as centres of resource consumption, with stone entering them centripetally. The reality of how stone tool sources fitted into webs of resource use and human movements is likely to be more complex. Within landscape-scale studies, it is essential to understand the lithic sources themselves: both in terms of mapping centrifugal movement of stone away from them, and activities being undertaken at these locales.
This poster presents early results from a study of the Saint-Pierre-Eynac silcrete, Haute-Loire, France. In a region of mainly granitic/volcanic geology with sparse flint, this silcrete (silicified material from pedological processes) represents an accessible, abundant and technologically flexible resource. Lithic artefacts have been found at Saint-Pierre-Eynac itself, and the silcrete is present in Middle-Upper Palaeolithic sites at least 40 km away. This project therefore has two aims:
1) The first detailed study of Palaeolithic behaviour within this type of geological context, through aerial survey, large-scale surface collection, excavation and petro-archaeology.
2) Build a robust picture of Palaeolithic techno-economic exploitation of a siliceous stone within the Massif Central landscape by clarifying where the stone was transported, and how it was utilised.

Despite its long research history and particular palaeogeographic context, the British Late Middle Palaeolithic (LMP) of Marine Isotope Stage 4 and 3 has not been fully integrated in broader discussions of Neanderthal behavioural adaptations. This is due not only to the lack of a comprehensive account of the archaeological record, but also to perceptions that the numerically small character of the record itself, and its position at the margins of the Neanderthal world, are unpromising research contexts. This paper addresses the first problem by reporting results from a study of the British LMP lithic assemblages most securely assigned to late MIS-4 and MIS-3, using a technologically-focused approach designed to derive the maximum information from the available material. The results suggest a coherent and broadly uniform techno-economic system characterised by clear raw material selectivity and high levels of mobility. Bifaces and scrapers are common and show strong evidence for curation, transportation and maintenance. Discoid, centripetal and alternate core reduction methods occur alongside more informal approaches, with virtually no evidence for Levallois. This new data equally demonstrates the relevance of the British LMP to current questions about the diversity of later Neanderthal techno-economic organisation. Additionally, as this record is the only clearly defined example of a Middle Palaeolithic colonisation in Europe, this study provides an opportunity to examine associated behavioural adaptations within the mammoth steppe ecosystem of MIS-3.