CAHO fieldtrip to France Postcard #2
by Lucie Bolton
Yesterday (Thursday) we motored down in glorious sunshine from north of Tours straight to Les Eyzies. We arrived mid-afternoon and the students spent the rest of the afternoon in the Museum of Prehistory. The special exhibition of Magdelenian art was particularly impressive and the general feeling was that a return visit is highly likely.
Today was an amazing day. A brief look-see through the fence at Le Moustier and then off to see Professor Randall White and his team’s excavation at the Aurignacian site of Abri Cellier. We were truly amazed at the amount of work Randy and the team have done in such a short time. They’d had an amazing morning with some spectacular finds made both before we arrived and while we were there which was very exciting for us. Obviously I can’t say what was coming out, but watch out for this site.
Randy invited us for lunch with his team which was great fun. Then it was back to Le Moustier, this time into the site, to share a talk by Professor Alain Turq with the Abri Cellier crew. When he found out who our guide was, young Chris Hoggard had to be helped out in a near feint.
How do you top that? A whole valley dedicated to the Aurignacian that is how (actually there is other stuff as well, but William was particularly enthusiastic about the Aurignacian) – the Castelmerle Valley.Ā It is an astonishing site really. Both sides of the valley are a series of connected Abri’s, some with engraved art on the walls and ceilings, others with engravings on small plaquettes of limestone. Randy thinks it was a winter site where Aurignacian groups took refuge in the small micro-climate of this dry valley practicing various craft activities. There are carved loops (pierres a anneaux) set in the roof at the front of the rockshelters from which coverings may have been hung acting as doors to keep the cold out. Randy’s team, when they dug here, found clear evidence for hearths inside the shelters. What got to me more than anything else was how much the site’s interpretation makes the Aurignacian seem personal. The archaeology is too late for me, but I can start to understand the enthusiasm people have for the Aurignacian. Sadly I don’t think I’d make a good Aurignacian hunter though. We all had a go at using spear throwers but I didn’t have the knack. Sarah and Tanner would probably have to be our chief hunters.
Our final site of the day was the great La Micoque. Handaxes at last! As Professor Turq forcefully reminded me this is NOT an abri, its deposits are river terrace aggradations abutting the limestone wall of the valley side. What was done to this site by Otto Hauser makes you weep, but thankfully a determined effort by French researchers in recent years has made much sense of what remains. Tyacian at the base and late(?) Acheulean Micoquian handaxes at the top. It is also, if I remember correctly, the oldest site in the area with the oldest levels near 450 kya.
It was an amazing day and a well-earned beer, or two, when we got back finished off the day perfectly. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Wishing you were here,
Mac, William, Cathy, Jo, Sarah, Tanner, Adam, Paul and Christian
Palaeolithic Fieldtrip to France by Dr John McNabb – Postcard #1
by Lucie Bolton
Ā This year’s CAHO Palaeolithic field trip to France, with the Captain William S. Davies (CAHO’s new director!!) at the helm.
Today was our first full day in France. We caught the boat from Portsmouth yesterday for a mid-afternoon sailing and were in Caen by late evening. An early start (ish) saw us on the road heading southwards for north central France. You get a real sense of how flat the loess plain is between the coast and Paris as you drive, and of course beneath the fields and trees are a wealth of Late Middle Pleistocene sites waiting to be discovered. Before we started I was privileged to see a minor miracle in the art – no the science – of putting a large volume of kit into an astonishingly small space as Jo, Sarah and Cathy decided they would take charge of the packing. With nine people and all their gear, this is one thing you have to get right. They did, and we were away.
There were two sites on the afternoon’s agenda. The first was the museum at Grand Pressigny. Wow – a museum dedicated to flint, does it get any better? – well its Neolithic, but you canāt have everything. I’d never seen the famous Livres de Beurre as these big honey coloured cores are called. They are knapped by a PCT for the purpose of making between five and ten long blades. They were knapped by masters of their craft and then traded out of the region, possibly by the makers themselves. It seemed ownership of such a blade, or a knife made from one, may have conferred much prestige on its owner. They are dated to between 2009 and 2003 BC. Like so many French museums this one is a thoughtful blend of detailed information (no dumbing down here) and elegant presentation. This was my first time here, and the museum has not been long open. If you are ever in the area itās well worth the detour.
Livres de Beurre at Grand Pressigny.
From there it was a short drive to the Roc-aux-Sorciers, another newish museum and another one where presentation and design have been carefully and successfully blended. Here a long freeze of horses, bison, wild goats and other animals was discovered in the 1950s and investigated by Suzanne de Saint-Mathurin and Dorothy Garrod. A modern projection onto a replica of the original rock shelter surface gives a marvellous impression of the contoured surface of the original, and how the artists used the contours to convey movement within the animal freeze. Being a Lower Palaeolithic man myself I claim no knowledge of this kind of late Magdelenian art, but I was amazed by the two human faces on the freeze, and the stylistically similar ones at la Marche 30-40 km away. There, our guide told us, they have complete figures (and the Roc-aux-Sorciers has copies of them). There is something rather unsettling about looking at a face from 15,000 years ago. The reconstruction and visual show are effective and very atmospheric.
The evening was spent staying with friends of William, Chris and John Lees who lived nearby. We will long remember their kindness and hospitality. Tomorrow we penetrate even further south to fabled Les Eyzies. More from there later.
As always, wishing you were here
Mac, William, Paul, Jo, Cathy, Sarah, Adam, Tanner and Christian.
Update from Tanzania by Dr. John McNabb: A postcard from Africa 4
by Samuel Griffiths
Sadly this is my last postcard from Africa. We had a quiet weekend reading and discussing various plans for the future. Today (Monday 5th) on the other hand was a busy one. Pastory, James and I had a productive meeting this morning with colleagues and collaborators from the National Museum.
@JamesColeArch with a Large LCT at the National Museum in Dar.
This afternoon was another memorable one. The three of us did some teaching for Pastoryās students from the BA and Masterās programs from the University of Dar-es-Salaam, and colleagues from the National Museum. Dr Kwaka, the principle curator for Archaeology at the museum joined us, bringing his invaluable geological experience to the mix. We used artefacts from the Olduvai Gorge collection to illustrate our points. It was amazing to be handling pieces from such famous sites as EF-HR, MNK and FLK, famous names Iād grown up with since my undergraduate days. Pastory, James and I really enjoyed our afternoon, and the students seemed to enjoy it too.
Tomorrow we fly back taking with us the memory of a beautiful country, new friends and colleagues, and some spectacular archaeology. All in all a very productive trip and great fun too.
Wishing you were all here
Mac
Update from Tanzania by Dr. John McNabb: A postcard from Africa 3
by Samuel Griffiths
Today (Thursday 1st May) is a national holiday in Tanzania so James and I had a more relaxed day visiting the galleries of the National Museum of Tanzania. The museum is an impressive place with really up to date galleries on human evolution and rock art. I took a lot of photos which will make their way into my lectures. The ethnographic collection also impressed me with the range and variety of material on display, reflecting Tanzaniaās rich cultural heritage both past and present. One of the many things that grabbed my attention were the intricate carvings in ebony. There were both ancient and modern examples on display, demonstrating the continuity of this sophisticated tradition of woodworking overtime. Some of them were truly astonishing in their detail. There were representations of devils, multi-bodied, sinuous and intertwined that were quite unsettling.
100 year old Fig tree in front of the National Museum with @JamesColeArch. Taken by Dr. John McNabb
For the past few days we have been systematically working our way through the Isimila archive and stone tool collections in the museumās Stone Age section. Just walking through the stacks is like listening to a lecture from my undergraduate days; there were draws of Oldowan tools and Acheulean handaxes, and famous site names like MNK, FLK, EFHR, and many others. I could almost hear my old mentor Roger Jacobi lecturing once more on Olduvai Gorge. He had a way of conjuring mind-pictures as he taught that made those far off African landscapes seem alive. To walk through the National Museumās stacks and peer into the draws brought it all flooding back. Isimila too was part of Rogerās lectures.
Itās a pretty sizeable collection, more than three thousand objects so we werenāt doing any detailed recording on this trip. Our aim was to get to know the collection, look through it and find out what was there. Unfortunately Pastory had teaching commitments in the University so he couldnāt join us. There is a considerable range of material from the old Clark Howell excavations. Some of the nicest handaxes I have ever seen and some of the biggest too, same goes for cleavers. Every time I handle one of these LCTs my respect for the Acheulean knappers increases, especially for their skills in making the flake blanks. They are as impressive and important as the finished artefacts.
Tomorrow it’s back to the museum for more meetings with Tanzanian colleagues and another chance to look at more fantastic archaeology.
Wishing you all were here
Mac
Update from Tanzania by Dr. John McNabb: A Postcard from Africa
by Samuel Griffiths
Saturday was a really memorable day. We finally got to see the Isimila Acheulean site. Iād been reading about it for decades so I was very excited and James, who told me he had been literally dreaming about the place for years, was like a kid on Christmas Eve.
Itās the rainy season at the moment and Tanzania is very green, particularly in the highlands. The mountains and kopjes are blanketed in forest and dense thorn bush. Around Iringa, where we were staying, there are wide valleys, some with substantial rivers, and broad plains separated by long chains of rounded hills. Isimila sits in such a valley with low hills to the north, east and south. Imagine a snooker table with a jagged tear in the base filled with white chalk. Thatās what the Isimila donga looks like from a nearby vantage point.
I knew about the richness of the site from others who had visited, and my work in South Africa had prepared me for a carpet of artefacts, but I was still blown away by the sheer quantity of archaeology. Everywhere you turn there are handaxes and cleavers in beautiful condition. Some parts of the site are literally an artefact gravel, with LCTs more common than the natural background rubble.
Clark Howell and his colleagues interpreted the sedimentary sequence as a gradually contracting small lake or pond (some pond!), although later investigators saw a stronger fluvial input. Some of the artefacts are definitely associated with small to medium sized gravels, but others clearly lie in fine grained sediments which are predominantly silts and fine sands with a varying clay content.
The first things that strike you about the LCTs are the size and freshness of the artefacts, something the original excavators were keen to point out. For a technologist like myself the handaxes and cleavers are mouth-watering ā an odd expression to choose perhaps, but those of you who appreciate a well-turned Acheulean flake-blank will know exactly what I mean. The Isimila donga is famous for the giant handaxes recovered by Maclennan. Although we didnāt find any giants, there are some really big handaxes and cleavers present. Itās not hard to imagine the giants were the extreme end of a spectrum that naturally included big handaxes and cleavers.
Pictures by Dr. John McNabb
We spent the whole day there, wandering the donga and trying to recreate the stratigraphy of Clark Howell and his team. We also visited the spectacular columnar erosion features in the South Gorge, a well-known geological locality. Here induration of the sediments below caps of what looks like ferricrete has left pillars while running water has removed the surrounding substrate. Picture a forest of yellow pencils with red rubbers on the end, a powerful reminder of just how dramatic erosion can be in these environments ā as is the donga itself.
“Picture a forest of yellow pencils with red rubbers on the end”
At the end of the day Pastory, Habib, James and I, sat outside the little museum above the donga enjoying a beer, completely overwhelmed by the experience of the day, exhausted but happy. The Isimila Museum, run by Mr Ngoma and his staff is a great introduction to the site and the local history of the region.
So it was back to Dar and another memorable drive through the Mikumi National Park. This time a small herd of elephant was feeding close to the roadway, and a family of curious giraffe watched someone changing the wheel on their car ā āyou donāt want to do it like that mateā¦ā
Tomorrow Pastory James and I head for the National Museum to meet colleagues and begin looking at the collections from Isimila. The artefact lover in me canāt wait.
Wishing you were all here,
Mac
Update from Tanzania by Dr John McNabb
by Samuel Griffiths
A few months ago CAHO was invited to form a collaboration through Dr James Cole of the University of Brighton (James is a CAHO alumni) and Dr Pastory Bushozi of the University of Dar-es-Salaam. The project is to re-examine the famous Acheulean site of Isimila in Tanzania.
Picture taken from Dr James Cole twitter feed (@JamesColeArch)
So James and I flew out on the 23rd of April to meet Pastory and to plan our campaign at Isimila. I am interested in the Acheulean and the technology behind the manufacture of the large cutting tools (LCTs) at the site, James is interested in the Acheulean and the transition to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Pastory is interested in the MSA itself, having worked on the MSA in other parts of Tanzania. Isimila is a fascinating site. It was dug in the late 1950s by F. Clark Howell, Maxine Kleindienst, and Glen Cole amongst others, and excavations have been done by a number of other people subsequently. Based on typological associations, and early radiocarbon determinations it was initially thought to be a Late Pleistocene/late Acheulean assemblage. Later, a single Uranium Series date was produced which pushed the age of the site back to Middle Pleistocene.
Itās a site that is often talked about and referenced, but very little is actually known about it as it was never properly published. It is also a site that has been involved in important developments in the methods and techniques (particularly typological) applied to the study of East African Acheulean assemblages. Dating will form a key part of our collaborative venture.
Today (Friday 25th) was our first full day in Tanzania, and it was a really exciting one. We drove up from Dar es Salaam on the coast to Iringa in the central Tanzanian highlands which is 1,500+ metres above sea level. The journey was a magnificent cross section through the physical geography and environmental differences that mark the transition from the coastal plain to the central plateau. To begin with we were in the most terrifying traffic jam I have ever been in as we tried to get out of Dar, but our driver Habib was very skilful at ducking and diving through the traffic. Eventually we were on our way. We headed eastwards rising in altitude slowly until we crossed the Mikumi National Park. Here the landscape has not really been affected by farming. We saw giraffe and wildebeest, and James saw an elephant which I missed. From my South Africa days I would have said the landscape was an open bush and tree veld, with more open areas of savannah in the distance. It set me to thinking about Acheulean hunters occupying a variety of African landscapes, and just how mosaic that landscape really can be within quite a small area. I well recall Kruger National Park in South Africa really bringing that home to me.
After Mikumi we began the real climb into the foothills of the Tanzanian highlands, driving up the switch back road that winds its way up the escarpment. The views back onto Mikumi were superb. At the top there is a completely different landscape. Granitic (I think) kopjeās and low ranges of hills dominate a more open landscape all boulder strewn. We are staying in a place that overlooks the lower part of Iringa town and you really get a sense of the how different the landscape is up here. It is also a good point for a cool beer after the long ten hour drive; we all agreed that Habib especially had earned his.
Tomorrow it is off to see the site, so we are all really excited. Iāll let you know how that goes…
Wish you were all here,
Mac
Update….
by Samuel Griffiths
We have updated the next two seminars for our CAHO seminar series. Dates and timesĀ and abstract for our next talk on the 14th March are available to view now with more to follow….
Who/What chased the elephants out from the Southern Levant
by Samuel Griffiths
CAHO next seminar series will be presented by Dr Rivka Rabinovich of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Visit http://cahoseminars.soton.ac.uk/events/tbc/to view her abstract and all other details.
I hope we see many of you there on Friday 31st at 17:00 in the Wymer Lab, 65A
The Mid Upper Palaeolithic of Russia in its European context
by Iza Romanowska
The first seminar of 2014 will be given byĀ Natasha Reynolds from the University of Oxford. She will talk about the exiting yet lesser known Upper Palaeolithic of Russia. For further details see the abstract below. The seminar will take place as usual on Friday, 17th January Ā at 5pmĀ in the Wymer Lab (bld 65a). Hope to see many of you!
The Mid Upper Palaeolithic of Russia in its European context
The Mid Upper Palaeolithic (MUP) record of Russia has long fascinated archaeologists worldwide, especially for its mobiliary art, huge lithic assemblages, and evidence for possible dwelling structures. However, historical and linguistic reasons have made it very difficult to study the Russian MUP in its broader European context. Furthermore, within Russia, earlier MUP assemblages have been somewhat neglected in comparison with the iconic Kostenki-Avdeevo Culture. Here I present an overview of current understanding of the Russian MUP and introduce some pressing research questions. This presentation includes some preliminary results from studies of backed bladelet assemblages from five Russian MUP sites undertaken over the past eighteen months.
CAHO Christmas Lecture
by Iza Romanowska
Dear all,
We are pleased to announce that the annual CAHO Christmas Lecture will be given by dr Penny Spikins from the University of York. In the spirit of Ā the festive season she will talk about:Ā Angels or Demons?:Ā
Can the archaeological record tell us what motivated our earliest ancestors?Ā For more details please see the abstract below.
The lecture will take place on 12 December (Thursday) 2014 at 4pm in the Wymer Lab, bld 65a, Avenue Campus. Wine and mince pies will be served.
Hope to see many of you!
Angels or Demons?: Can the archaeological record tell us what motivated our earliest ancestors?
From when science took over the story of what made us human we have been driven to understand the motivations of our ancestors. Were they angels or demons? The archaeological evidence appears to support either case depending how we view it. Perhaps it is not a question that we can answer, nonethelessĀ we can address how emotionalĀ capacitiesevolved by considering archaeological evidence. Here I discuss two case studies ā the evolution of emotional self-control and that of compassion and raise the question of why social emotions have been seen as difficult or even dangerous to research.