Accolades For Tom Wynn: Too Bad About That Hand Axe Thing!

This just in!

University of Colorado
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology
Dr. Thomas Wynn

Tom Wynn, of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has just been given that institution's highest academic position—Distinguished Professor.

Well done, Tom!

He began working on bipedal ape cognition in the late 1970s, and in the past decades he and UCCS psychologist Fred Coolidge have compiled an immense amount of work around the evolution and character of, in particular, Neanderthal cognition.

Both are friends of the Subversive Archaeologist—although I'm well aware that they don't concur with much that I've written about the theoretical constructs that surround Paleolithic stone artifacts.

Tom's early work was highlighted by the 1979 "The Intelligence of Later Acheulean Hominids" (Man, New Series 14:371-391), in which he applied Piagettian genetic epistemology to "characterize the intelligence of later Acheulean" bipedal apes—makers of the ubiquitous, yet to me still inherently enigmatic, stone artifact that many call the hand-ax [or handax or hand axe or hand ax, the artifact formerly also known as the coup-de-poing.]

As you're no doubt keenly aware, I question the fundamental premise that lies beneath any such undertaking. Tom used the illustration below in 1979 when outlining his characterization of the intelligence behind the events that led to its having the shape you see here. According to Wynn, “The maker must have been able to conceive the desired shape . . .  .” That "shape" is the bilateral symmetry that has resulted from flake removals, some of which are labelled in this view because they are examples of what Tom calls "retouch," which he infers to have been the purposeful removal of small flakes to produce the desired end product. Granted, this is just one of tens of thousands of such bifaces that have been recovered archaeologically over the years—but the fundamental premise underlying its identification as a hand axe remains the same, and encompasses a shit-load of variation, including other bifacially flaked objects called 'cleavers,' and 'picks,' and 'discoids.'

Forgive me Tom, and you, Dear Reader, if I demur. While this artifact may have been purposefully shaped, that is by no means a necessary conclusion, and to me the evidence for that claim is shaky at best. Bear with me. Let's first look at the view on the right. You see a classic ventral flake surface, complete with striking platform, bulb of percussion, tiny fissures in the rock radiating from the platform, and the concentric ripples emanating from the same point, created  by the Hertzian cone of force that was required to separate this flake from its larger—source—block of raw material, in other words the original core. 

To begin with, there's really no way that I can see to know what this flake's original dimensions were. Although, I suspect that they weren't much different than you see here. I base my—freely acknowledged to be an informed lay person's—opinion on the ambiguity of the timing of all of the flake removals that I've numbered in red in this annotated view. They might all have been removed from the block of raw material PRIOR to this flake's detachment from that core. As such, absent the nibbling that you see labelled "A," the gross shape of this artifact could have been the natural outcome of the physics of rock fracture. Of course, I suppose one could propose that—as is the case with the Levallois so-called technique—those prior flake removals were intended to produce a flake of just this shape. [I think you can guess where I'd stand on that proposition!]

I'm happy for Tom. Kudos, Tom! For your tireless work, for your teaching, for your enthusiasm and for the excitement you've created in generations of archaeologists. But I still think that your construction of pre-modern bipedal ape cognition is profoundly flawed by your major presumption that artifacts such as this were 'created' purposefully in this shape.

One last comment. In the Gazette article Tom is quoted as saying that "One-point-seven million years ago our ancestors made them and continued making them for the next 1.5 million years. Then they quit." Sorry, Tom. Our 'ancestors' may quit making them—most likely when they stopped being our ancestors—but people like you and me have made objects like this up until recent times, as I've pointed out many time before.

Take, for example, these beautiful 'hand axes' from the Americas, with which I'll end this blurt. Archaeologists on this side of the Atlantic have never presumed that these were tools, in and of themselves. That's a much sounder basis—IMHO—on which to ground inferences of cognitive complexity than the one to which Tom Wynn and sooooo many others cleave.

El Pulguero Suroeste is here, in Baja California:

And the Topper Site is on the Savannah River in Allendale County, South Carolina, approximately where you see the bulls-eye in the logo below.

It's Sunday, And It's Gonna be a Dark and Stormy Night.

Well, the jerk pork tenderloin is marinading in the fridge, the sweet pineapple chutney is simmering, and the sweet potato fries are cooling their jets waiting for the oven to get to temperature. Alas, it'll be frozen veg tonight. Yup. No shopping this week. The kitty is at an all-time low. Seriously, I needed a bed! Mind you, I still don't have said bed. So far, I've just paid for it!

But you know I didn't come here to read you my bank statement [which would have been almost as exciting as me reciting, yet again, how I came to be embittered, but later emerged from the bittersweet embitteredness a sweeter man but wiser, having found solace in the fermented grape].

Nope. I came here to stick pins a very much inflated balloon that arrived in the archaeological literature at the end of August. It's about language and stone artifacts and flint-knapping:

Uomini NT, Meyer GF (2013) Shared Brain Lateralization Patterns in Language and Acheulean Stone Tool Production: A Functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound Study. PLoS ONE 8(8): e72693. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072693

We present the first-ever study of brain activation that directly compares active Acheulean tool-making and language. Using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTCD), we measured brain . . . hemodynamics . . . in subjects who performed . . . Acheulean stone tool-making . . . We show highly correlated hemodynamics in the initial 10 seconds of task execution.

Which they argue, might well have been the catalyst for language evolution. Wow. When I read that I was blown away. But it's not what you think. I was blown over by the prodigious amount of air whooshing out of their balloon once I had pierced it with my rapier-sharp mental intelligence-icity, and, I might add, my own, highly evolved, hemodynamics.

[Now, Rob. You shouldn't be so disparaging of people tryin' t' figger stuff out. You did it once. Remember?] [How could I possibly forget?]

I know I'm being bad. As penance, I'll ditch the new foam bed in favour of a bed of nails upon, because there's no way in 'ell I'm gonna give this paper the same credulous treatment that it seems to have received from the media. I know—they're not scientists: they just report on science. Problem is, people who aren't scientists—and even people who are, they're just not palaeoanthropologists—read that stuff and, not knowing any better, buy it.* Then, when the tune changes in the succeeding months and years, we wonder why the public complains about the money spent on research.

*catches breath*

OK. Here's a diverting little video snippet, Video_S1 from the article, showing one of the participants performing the tasks that were being monitored. The first part is the 'control' portion, in which the knapper was asked simply to knock two rocks together, repeatedly. This was to emulate a rock-knocking activity that wouldn't have required too much thought—the proposition being that such physical activity wouldn't be sufficient to somehow lead to language. The rest of the video shows our knapper, clearly, thinking out every flake removal, with the thought in mind of arriving at the end point of the process—an Acheulean hand axe. He's really having to think hard to turn his large flake into a decent Acheulean hand axe. As would you or I. But there's no guaranteeing that the thing we call the hand axe required so much brain activity.



The problem with such experimentation is that it presumes the ancient bipedal apes were knocking rocks together to create an Acheulean hand axe.

And that, as you prolly know, is something that I simply can't allow them to get away with. Their experiment and it's thrilling and important results may, at the end of the day, have been nothing more than a waste of their time, yours, and mine.

Remember? Remember that this thing called a hand axe may well be just a bifacial core that had been reduced only to the point where it looks [a little] like an axe head to your garden variety palaeoanthropologist. Don't worry, I'm not gonna go into a big explanation at this point. I'll just put up a few choice images that more or less speak for themselves [well, after I put words in their mouths in earlier posts]. The montage below is one I made to illustrate the enormous variety of these artifacts, both size and shape. It wasn't possible to portray them all at the same scale. However, in a few of these images there are people parts that do give an idea of the scale. My favourite is the one with several laid out on a table, from a fist-sized one to one that could easily be 500 mm from stem to stern. If this thing they call a hand axe is in fact as variable as these images demonstrate, there was one eff of a lot of lousy flint-knappers in the Lower Palaeolithic.

Uomini and Meyer's study has, perhaps, captured brain connections that played a role in language evolution. However, until it's possible to say, unequivocally, that the so-called hand axe was the shape sought from the moment a Lower Palaeolithic bipedal ape started knocking rocks together, this study cannot stand as evidence that making Acheulean artifacts could have played a part in language evolution.

Thank you all for your kind attention. I'll see you soon.

By the way, the jerk pork and sweet potato fries were delicious, but the warm pineapple chutney was quite forgettable.

* in the sense of definition #5

ANY TIME IS A GOOD TIME TO GET GOOD STUFF AT THE SUBVERSIVE ARCHAEOLOGIST'S OWN, EXCLUSIVE "A DRINK IS LIKE A HUG" ONLINE BOUTIQUE

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Chazan's Amazin' Tunnel Vision: Truly A Chip Off The Old Block Of Bordes's Palaeolithic Typology.

This is the story of the Finished Artifact Fallacy (FAF). It's incessant mission: to infer strange new lithic technologies and new behavioural inferences: to boldly go where no palaeolithic archaeologist has gone before.

"Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus," by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. 

From "Butchering with small tools: 

the implications of the Evron Quarry 

assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus," 

by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013.

Allright. I know. I'm a Star Trek fan. And it's probably very geeky to make an analogy between the FAF and the starship Enterprise's mission. Sometimes I just can't help myself!

My paean to Star Trek was inspired by the just-published, peer-reviewed, "Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus," by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. It may bear the Good Housekeeping Seal, but it is, fundamentally, flawed. The author, together with the Antiquity editors and referees ought to be charged with false and misleading advertising!

The intellectual earthquake that this paper represents cannot be underestimated. From it, we learn that "[s]mall tools are emerging as a common element of the Early Stone Age/Lower Palaeolithic toolkit ... . On Oldowan sites, including Omo 57, Omo 123, Wonderwerk Cave and Sterkfontein, flakes under 20mm in maximum dimension [averaging between 22.2 mm and 37.9 mm] are a major component of the assemblage and an intentional product of knapping ... " [emphasis added]. Remember that last phrase. It becomes important further down.

Me, trying to wrap my
brain around this argument.

What's wrong with me? I should be ecstatic that a palaeolithic archaeologist recognizes the central importance of flakes in the Oldowan and later technologies. But alas, my euphoria is still born. The author adheres to the old school of palaeolithic typology when he classifies some of the chipped stone pieces from Evron Quarry "choppers" and "polyhedrons." And, in a stunning bit of 'doublespeak' the author  proceeds to re-re-reify the notion of the 'hand-axe.' According to Chazan, small flakes predominate at Evron Quarry as an "adaptation of local materials that make poor hand axes." Translation: Homo erectus was predisposed to make 'hand axes,' but couldn't. So they used flakes by themselves as a substitute for 'hand axes.' Those flakes, he argues, "reflect a level of conceptual thought [i.e. "an ingenious improvisation on the part of Homo erectus"] that allowed the occupants of Evron Quarry to solve the problem of how to butcher an elephant using only the material at hand." 

Almost takes your breath away. Don't it? Wait a sec. Isn't the material "at hand" always the only material 'at hand?' If those H. erecti were so clever, why didn't they walk a few kliks and find better material? After all, one of the site's early excavators declared the assemblage to be an artifactual accumulation of many temporally separate events. If that were true, surely during one of the times the H. erecti were elsewhere, they could have picked up some better material to take back to the quarry. [BTdub, that would be the Lower Palaeolithic equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle!] Unless... No. Of course! I've got it! εὕρηκα! The explanation: at each of the times those bipedal apes left chipped rock on the ground at Evron Quarry, it was because they had just spotted [or caught a whiff of] the rotting carcass of an elephant. And, logically, fearful that the meat would be thoroughly spoiled if they spent time wandering around the countryside looking for the best raw material to make a 'hand axe' with which to butcher said carcass, they instead used whatever was 'at hand.' Nah. We should just take Michael Chazan's word for it. Or not.

Do I really think Chazan is asking us to accept such a monumental shortcoming on the part of H. erectus? Evidently. But I'm not sure the author even realizes how badly this looks for an "ingenious" species like H. erectus. Even if that were its only shortcoming this paper would be an "archaeological howler." But, buried in the data presentation there's an even more fundamental error in thinking.

As if the author's effusive praise for the quick-thinking H. erecti wasn't comic enough when viewed in terms of my [half] facetious scenario, we learn that indeed there are 'hand axes' in the Evron assemblage. But these "are all very thick," and "[u]nfortunately no complete handaxes were found in the excavation" [emphasis mine, SA]. Hmmm. In a minit I'll be showing you the 'hand axes' from the quarry site. There were apparently quite a few, only no "complete" ones came from the three test pits that Chazan used as his sample, which he refers to as "the excavation."

I'm reading between the lines, here. I'm guessing that Chazan refers to the Evron Quarry 'hand-axes' (those shown below) as "thick," to imply that they haven't been 'thinned' enough. They haven't been thinned enough, says he, because the local raw material was shite. He's willing to admit that they're 'hand axes,' all right. But they're crappy ones. So, if the Evron Quarry 'hand axes,' 'choppers' and the 'polyhedrons' were desired end products, where did all the flakes come from? Surely not from the 1.7% (15/845) of the assemblage that he calls 'cores!'

It's like this. Were he to entertain the notion that the 'choppers,' 'polyhedrons' and 'hand axes' were among the 'cores' that gave birth to the abundant small flakes, he would also have to consider the possibility that all the other 'hand axes' in all the sites, in all the world, are, after all, just cores. And that would naturally lead to the realization---the reality that dare not speak its name---might well be just a fantasy that exists only in the mind of [admittedly a great many] archaeologists. A reified category. In plain English, the 'hand axe'---the 'mental template' supposedly in the mind of its maker, the 'desired' end product, the 'finished' artifact---is fallacious! Shiver my timbers!

The FAF would be nothing to worry about, were it not that, where the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic are concerned, its perpetuation is a pernicious and persistent obstacle to a better understanding of our origins. [IMHO, of course.] Now, let's take a closer look at Michael Chazan's argument. First, though, let's look at the Evron Quarry 'hand axes' that didn't appear in the author's "excavation."

"Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus," by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. 

When is a 'hand axe' not a 'hand axe?' When it's a core, of *cough* course! Remember that I can only imagine the following scenario if you first accept the author's assertion that these 'hand axes' are ugly. So, on we go. If you peruse the above montage, you'll notice that many of the flake scars on the 'hand axes' are on the order of 20 to 30 mm. That, coincidentally, was the range of sizes for site's entire modified flake assemblage---the assemblage in which things called cores are thin on the ground, to say the least. Now, if one were to use Occam's Razor, rather than Bordes's typology, the logical explanation for the origin of said flakes is, most likely, those very 'hand axes,' the 'choppers,' and the 'polyhedrons.' [There is the possibility to apply a bit of hypothesis testing of the empirical kind with respect to my scenario... With only a few hundred pieces of rock, an enterprising archaeologist might try seeing if any of the useful small flakes could be refitted to the block of rock whence it came.]   

Check out the image below. The author calls these "pieces [of rock] ... [bits that are] associated with handaxe manufacture" [emphasis added]. Isn't it odd that, instead of calling them something like 'hand axe fragments"he chooses to call them [things] "associated with handaxe manufacture?" Why can't he just call a spade a spade? Why can't he see that these, too, are cores, not quasi 'hand axes' bits? He has told us that the numerous flakes themselves were " ... an intentional product of knapping ... ." Where does that leave the 'hand axes?' The author's answer is that they simply weren't there in the numbers that should be expected in a Lower Palaeolithic elephant butchering theatre. So, now, on the one hand we have the 'hand axes,' which are the desired end product of the H. erectus brain, and on the other hand we have the small, useful flakes. Here's where it gets really tricky, philosophically speaking. Are the flakes really debitage? Or are the 'hand axes,' 'choppers,' and 'polyhedrons' just cores? 

"Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus," by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. 

I'm not singling Michael Chazan out for punishment. He's not alone in trying to ascertain how many bipedal apes can dance on the distal extremity of a 'hand axe.' Inevitably, by cleaving to the FAF, they'll buy themselves "a ticket to obscurity" [excerpted from Famous Last Words of the Subversive Archaeologist, Vanity Press International, 2013]. I have to ask, "Has every archaeologist on the planet drunk the Bordesian typological Kool-Aid?" 

Source: Comme on dit en France, "Divine."

And speaking of drinking. When I started to write this blurt it was last Friday afternoon. I took a moment to plug a very decent $5 sparkling wine that Trader Joe's carries, and which I was, at the time, drinking. It's officially called Trader Joe's Blanc de Blancs Brut, and it's very colourful on the tongue. It's imported from France [so it must be good], and this grassy, pale beauty is every bit the peer of Freixenet, which at one time you could buy for $5, but which has suffered the fate of popularity, and had the price elevated due the disparity between supply and demand. [You know? I've always mistrusted the notion of supply and demand as the being the natural force determining value. It's too easy, don't you think, to consciously reduce output so as to encourage higher prices. The oil companies do it by limiting the number of refineries. OPEC does it by turning the well spigot a quarter turn to the right. Is it too far-fetched to think that wineries might do the same, even in the absence of demand in excess of production?

On the other hand, maybe drinking too much can engender conspiracy theories.

I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks for visiting!

 AND REMEMBER, ANY TIME IS A GOOD TIME TO GET GOOD STUFF AT THE SUBVERSIVE ARCHAEOLOGIST'S OWN, EXCLUSIVE "A DRINK IS LIKE A HUG" ONLINE BOUTIQUE!

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

"Oh! Scrapers and Choppers and Picks. Oh My!" Apologies to L. Frank Baum et al.*

A representation of the Movius Line. [Somehow Ubeidiye was translocated to the Indian Ocean, far from its true position near to Ain Hanech in the Levant. Thanks to Norton for the inadvertent loan of this graphic. 

First, R.I.P. [Hallam L.] Movius Line, that 60+ year old invisible boundary between, on the one hand the 'hand-axe' Acheulean of Africa, Europe and south Asia, and on the other hand what at one time was conceived of as a 'hand-ax'-less Lower Palaeolithic of east and southeast Asia. Those days are behind us. We know now that there are rock chunks similar enough to the 'hand axes' of the western side of Movius's line[It seems to me that the 'absence of hand axes' in the eastern parts of Asia probably had more to do with Mao's People's Republic's xenophobia and anti-intellectualism than with any empirical observation.]

Anyhoo, today's phys.org brings us word of recent discoveries in the PRC.

"A Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Guochachang II Paleolithic Site in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, Hubei Province," by Hao Li, Chao-rong Li and Kathleen Kuman. Acta Anthropologica Sinica 32(2):144--155, 2013.

The open-air early Palaeolithic site of Guochachang yielded 132 stone artifacts from an excavation that covered approximately 500 m². The swag comprises 9 hammerstones, 14 cores, 69 flakes, 18 chunks, and 22 "stone tools." Those "tools" are diagnosed as 13 'scrapers,' 5 'choppers,' 1 'pick,' and 3 'handaxes.'

A while back, here and here, I unsubtly tried to bang home the final nail in the coffin of the old typology that ascribes function by analogy to shapes that are broadly familiar to modern humans: the chopper, the axe, the pick, the discoid, and the cleaver. With nothing other than shape to use as a determinant of function, those old archaeologists [and the ones that continue to use such typologies in the present] are employing what's known as a 'formal analogy,' i.e. one based purely on shape. Such analogies are often a good place to start, but they are notoriously fickle when it comes down to interpreting the true function of a lump of stone. What's needed are solid 'relational' analogies that use more than resemblance in arguing for a 'real' similarity of form

Here's a quick example. Claiming that a lump of rock is a hand axe because its shape reminds one of an axe head is tantamount to claiming that the item below, on the left, is a cow femur, which is what the item on the right happens, in fact, to be.

By the way, the item on the left is a [nearly anatomically correct] doggy chew toy, if it wasn't already abundantly clear.

So, Li, Li, and Kuman begin with the unremarkable pieces in the assemblage. A hammerstone, a core, and some small and large flakes. So far, so good.

From "A Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Guochachang II Paleolithic Site in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, Hubei Province," by Hao Li, Chao-rong Li and Kathleen Kuman. Acta Anthropologica Sinica 32(2):144--155, 2013.

The authors then show us 2 of the 13 'scrapers' [1 and 2 in the drawing below], the solitary 'pick' [item number 3], and 3 'choppers' [4, 5, and 6]. Compare the two views of item 2 in the drawing above with the two views of 'chopper' number 5 in the drawing below. Both have cortex dorsally and ventrally [whichever is which---take your pick. No, not number 3, the 'pick'!]. Both have had flakes removed dorsally and ventrally. Yet the one above is called a core [which is a safe inference] and the one below is deemed a 'chopper,' not such a secure inference. What, I ask you, is so different about these two rocks that they are classified differently---the one as a source of flakes, and the other as the desired end product? I think most of us would be hard pressed to mount a convincing argument either way. The authors have clearly imbibed the Kool-Aid of the French lithic 'school' and that of L. S. B. Leakey.

I don't read Mandarin Chinese. So, I'm just guessing. I think 1 and 2 are probably the "scrapers"; 4, 5, and 6 are likely the "choppers"; 3 is most likely the "pick." From "A Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Guochachang II Paleolithic Site in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, Hubei Province," by Hao Li, Chao-rong Li and Kathleen Kuman. Acta Anthropologica Sinica 32(2):144--155, 2013.

Finally, Li, Li and Kuman trot out the 3 'hand axes.' I dunno. I think it's a bit of a stretch even to label these three rock lumps as 'hand axes,' with or without the implicit functional ascription. These are some pretty sad looking 'hand axes,' if you ask me. The shape of number 1, below, could NEVER have been intentional. Unless the 'knapper' could foresee where the natural fracture planes were, inside the rock, the shape of very few of the removals could have been predicted. Thus, the shape we see is just the product of happenstance.

Hand axe #1. 

Check out the impressive number of unintentionally shaped removals. Most simply follow the natrual fracture planes of the rock. Can you say that? "Fracture plane?"

The same is undoubtedly true of 'hand ax' #2, pictured below.

Hand axe #2
Once again, a good number of unintentionally shaped removals. 

Maybe I lack the imagination required to be an archaeologist of the palaeolithic. Clearly I don't see whatever it is that the Real Palaeolithic Archaeologists see in these lumps. Jeebuz Murphy!

Hand axe #3.

I have no idea why the authors didn't label this one a 'pick.' From "A Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Guochachang II Paleolithic Site in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, Hubei Province," by Hao Li, Chao-rong Li and Kathleen Kuman. Acta Anthropologica Sinica 32(2):144--155, 2013.

I won't be beating this dead equine any further today. I'm sure that there'll be plenty more opportunities down the track.

One thing's for sure.The Finished Artifact Fallacy is alive and well and living in east Asia.

Take care. I'll see you again as soon as I can find some time to work up a critical lather.

* Members of the et al.

ANY TIME IS A GOOD TIME TO GET GOOD STUFF AT THE SUBVERSIVE ARCHAEOLOGIST'S OWN, EXCLUSIVE "A DRINK IS LIKE A HUG" ONLINE BOUTIQUE

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Sheesh! Handy Items, Handaxes. Or Maybe Not. Beyene et al. and the oldest Acheulean at Konso, Ethiopia

From: "The characteristics and chronology of the earliest Acheulean at Konso, Ethiopia," by Yonas Beyene et al.
PNAS, published online before print January 28, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1221285110

I hafta hand it to the early stone age archaeologists and their enablers. They persist in identifying artifacts such as the one shown above as "tools" [in this case a hand axe] without ever having demonstrated that these artifacts were used as tools. It's the conventional wisdom. Who can blame them? The latest voodoo archaeology comes to us from the pages of PNAS, in an article claiming the earliest Acheulean assemblages ever discovered---1.75 Ma! That's a fab result on the dating side, but not so much on the artifact typology side. [You might have expected me to say as much.]
     In the case of the unit shown above, it's a wee bit of a reach to call this a 'hand' axe. It might better be described as a two-handed axe or, perhaps, a two-fisted axe. Or, better still: a mangler. It's on the large side, it seems to me, to have been used one-handed. Most of the other so-called hand axes illustrated in the Bayene et al. article are similarly size grande, as are the so-called cleavers and picks. The image below is a montage that I made from three of Beyene et al.'s figures. I've adjusted their sizes to present them at the same scale [plus or minus my ability to observe when the red smudges lined up in the three photographs]. I've also oriented them with what I infer is the distal [or bulb of percussion] end of the original flake at the bottom.
     I've chosen to present these artifacts in this way so it might be easier for the reader to observe that the range of variation in dorsal outline amongst these three classifications---'hand axe,' 'cleaver,' and 'pick'---could easily be a function of the number of times the original flake was whacked, as opposed to the ultimate intention. For example, if the so-called handaxes in the top row were in fact just cores, it's easy to see how one attempt more or less to remove useful flakes could easily result in a shape that would be considered more like a cleaver or a pick. I'd love to see those inevitable lumps of bifacially flaked rocks from Konso that the excavators didn't view as 'tools.' I'm fairly certain they were there, and sufficiently amorphous that they were simply deemed cores and not tools. They would very likely fill in the gaps in the range of shapes, producing a continuum from discoid through to pick-oid.

Upper row: Dorsal view of a chronological series of artifacts classified as Tools/hand axes. Earliest at left. Bottom row, from the left: Dorsal view three artifacts classified as cleavers; Dorsal view of six artifacts classified as picks (From "The characteristics and chronology of the earliest Acheulean at Konso, Ethiopia," by Yonas Beyene et al.PNAS, published online before print January 28, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1221285110) [scale in cm]. 

In the past I've received a little back-chat having to do with the Oldowan classification, which still retains the vestiges of the formed tool paradigm. I think it's fair to say that those classifications are still present in the minds of lower palaeolithic archaeologists. To give you an idea of how far back in time such categories as handaxe, cleaver and pick are pushed, have a look at the illustration below, from CJ Lepre, et al. "An earlier origin for the Acheulian." Nature 477(7362):82-5, . 2011. doi: 10.1038/nature10372. I'm fairly sure that to call this assemblage Acheulean is a bit fantastic.

Supplementary Figure 2: World’s oldest known Acheulean (ca. 1.76 Ma) from KS4, West Turkana (Kenya). Photo P.-J.Texier © MPK/WTAP, from Supp. Ref. 5. Top: Partial crude handaxe made on a flat large phonolite cobble. Middle: Pick-like tool with a trihedral section, made on a thick split phonolite pebble. Bottom: Partial crude handaxe made on a thick split phonolite pebble. From CJ Lepre, et al. "An earlier origin for the Acheulian." Nature 477(7362), 82-5, 2011. doi: 10.1038/nature10372.

"Partial crude handaxe? You've gotta be joking! Pick-like tool?? Then another partial crude handaxe!? This was the best they could come up with as examples of the Acheulean at 1.76 Ma? No wonder Beyene et al. are a little suspicious of Lepre et al.'s characterization of the Kokiselei assemblage as Acheulean. If this is the best they've got... they really have no leg to stand on. From what their readers are presented, there's nothing here but a few Oldowan cores. The point here is that the archaeologists imbued these crudely flaked lumps of rock with the finished artifact paradigm that permeates the post-Oldowan periods, and as a result they've fallen prey to their own presuppositions.

I'm going to stop now. Cross your fingers that the next Very Important Article that comes within my sight has something to do with an area and a time other than the Pleistocene of Africa and Asia.

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Ceci N'est Pas Une Barre de Savon: Apologies to René Magritte

Ceci n'est pas une barre de savon 

Behold the lowly bar of soap [albeit somewhat used]. In the past I've used similar objects to make fun of handaxes [here and here]. Although the tone of those essays was tongue-in-cheek, my purpose was serious: a used bar of soap is an excellent analogy to use when theorizing about the lithic reduction sequences that result in what's come to be known as 'the' Acheulean handaxe, and what's called the 'Levallois technique,' the two main aspects of which are the 'Levallois core' and the 'Levallois flake.'
     Some of you may lack an intimate knowledge of Middle Palaeolithic stone artifacts and the history of their interpretation. I must warn you. What I'm about to say will not be well received by Very Serious [Palaeolithic] Archaeologists. These objects have been heavily theorized, going back more than a century, and their 'reality' is a foregone conclusion in the disciplinary 'culture.' As such, my efforts are akin to pissing into the wind.

Me and my Level 4 Biohazard suit 

Never mind about that. Somebody's gotta do it. Might as well be me. Besides, I've taken a face-full so many times I'm ready for anything in my Level-4 Biohazard suit! Regardless, it does get tedious donning and doffing these togs every other day or so. [And guess what? They don't protect against hurt feelings or embarrassment. So, they're not perfect, 'specially when you consider the atmosphere of acrimony that sometimes prevails in  this binness.]
     Back to the matters at hand. By now you may have consulted my previous two outings on this issue. Today I'm hoping to break the argument down into its components so as to make a step-by-step case as to why a used bar of soap is a good analogy for the handaxe and the two genres of Levallois artifacts.
     First of all, let's talk about the functional underpinnings, beginning with a question [and don't get all bent outa shape. This isn't a 'Why did the chicken cross the road' joke!].
     "Why did the bipedal ape bang one piece of rock against another piece of rock with the result that a small, sharp-edged fragment was subtracted from the larger of the two blocks?" Was it to make the large block smaller? Not likely. Was it to prepare the large block for the removal of a second or third sharp-edged fragment? Hmmm. Let's think about that for a moment. It seems rather unlikely, given that this was just about the first time a bipedal ape left such a trace in the palaeontological record.
     Remember that we don't know much about the cognitive abilities of those first 'flintknappers.' All we can say for certain is that they would have been every bit as smart as the last common ancestor that we humans share with chimps. Best guess? A chimp-like brain. So, the cognitive abilities of those first 'flintknappers' were at best equivalent to those of present-day chimpanzees [unless we're to imagine that today's chimps have de-volved from a golden age of chimp cognition, which seems, again, unlikely].
     Do we think that the first 'flintknapper' banged one rock against another because it envisioned a useful sharp bit in the block of raw material and then struggled to work out a way to get it out? I'm gonna say that's also highly unlikely. [By so saying I might be accused of a certain bias against our early progenitors. However, I think it'd take one gigantic heap of special pleading to suggest that the first 'flake' was the result of forethought.] So, if not because of forethought, how do we explain that first act of rock against rock, and the removal of a sharp fragment. Here I'm jumping into the realm of speculation.
     I see a couple of possibilities. First, it could have been accidental, the result of a meaningless, nothing-better-to-do-at-the-moment banging together of two rocks with the unexpected effect that a small, sharp-edged fragment was detached from one of the two rocks. Second, it may have been a cognitive leap based on observation. In this scenario the first flake removal was an effort to replicate the result of two pieces of rock, in nature,  coming into contact with violent force such that a small, sharp fragment was detached. Not much to choose between there. Could go either way. What about that second possibility? How could that have occurred?
     I see at least a couple of ways that our bipedal hominid might have espied pieces of rock coming into contact in such a way that that first 'flintknapper' decided to take a *cough* crack at it. The first possibility is that it was, once again, a natural occurrence. Picture a cliff face from which, at random, fragments are naturally detached and fall to ground level with great force. At some point one block is going to come crashing down on another one resting on the surface and voila! The flake is born. The other possibility is that our incipient 'flintknapper' was out foraging one day with a fist-sized rock that was intended to be used as a missile in case it was surprised by a vicious predator [or to scatter a bunch of scavengers, or something equally as efficacious, in the palaeolithic sense]. Fast forward to the confrontation. Bipedal hominid flings rock at lion and misses, hitting cliff face or rock outcrop. Lion runs off. Our intrepid hominid goes to retrieve missile. It looks different now. There's a chunk missing. Hominid glances at ground. Spies flake. Picks up flake. 'Refits' flake. [Please, please, don't somebody use this scenario to argue for the presence of lithic analysts at 2.6 Ma!] Our better-than-chimp-brained bipedal ape puts two and two together and hominids lived happily ever after...
     So, our choices are 1) meaningless rock banging leads to lithic technology, or 2) observation of the results of rock banging leads to lithic technology. I think 2) is most likely. As for the event that brought about the observation, the possibilities are 1) naturally occurring fracturing, or 2) a rock used as a missile fractures when it impacts a larger rock mass. I think we must begin from this supposition, that our 'flintknapper' observed a natural phenomenon and put two and two together. This is the explanation that requires the least speculation. But, of course, it doesn't rule out the missile scenario.

     Just an aside, here. How did our savvy, soon-to-be 'flintknapper' know that a sharp rock could function as a cutting or scraping tool [which seems the most logical function for the arch flake and its progeny]? I reckon it's a no brainer. [Well, okay, it's a chimp brainer!] Ever bang your head on a sharp overhanging object, whether rock or other material? Hurts. There might be blood. Same with walking barefoot on sharp rocks. It probably didn't take an Oldowan Einstein to see the utility of sharp-edged rock fragments. So, it seems most likely that the first sharp stone flake removed intentionally from a block of raw material was used to cut or scrape something that couldn't be cut or scraped using fingernails or teeth. [It matters little to this discussion which of those two activities was primary in hominid evolution.] What matters is the result: one sharp fragment and one block of raw material from which it was removed.

     By now you're prolly wondering what any of this has to do with soap. I'm getting there. Be patient.
     If the entire archaeological record consisted of a sharp-edged fragment of rock--i.e. a flake--and the lump of raw material from which it was detached--i.e. a core--do you think archaeologists should ignore the flake and try to figger out what the lump might have been used for? Would that same archaeologist look at a used bar of soap and ignore the material that had been removed to wash somebody's hands? They might if they had no idea that any material had been removed in its creation. So, under such circumstances we could forgive the soap analysts if they focussed on the bar and not the lather, and dubbed the used bar a work of art or, well you can see what I'm up to. In the next chapter I'm going to argue that this is just what the earliest palaeolithic archaeologists did, and for much the same reason--at the very beginning the flakes--the lather, if you will, of a lump of rock--were very likely not in the picture.
     For now, I'll just foreshadow that next installment with an example from recent palaeoanthropology. Have a look at the illustration below. These are some of the oldest stone artifacts, from Kada Gona, Ethiopia, at around 2.65 Ma. These were reported in a 2000 Journal of Archaeological Science publication by Sileshi Semaw, "The World’s Oldest Stone Artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their Implications for Understanding Stone Technology and Patterns of Human Evolution Between 2·6–1·5 Million Years Ago." The typological paradigm that's in play in these descriptions is a direct descendent of the first discoveries of Pleistocene stone artifacts in Europe, including those that were described from the very beginning as hand axes. The Kada Gona archaeologists are obviously reluctant to suggest that any of the objects shown are handaxes (although number 2 would be a good candidate for what the Qesem Cave and Kathu Pan 1 teams have described as a "handaxe roughout"--a pre-form, in other words). How number 2 escaped such a claim, and indeed, how the Kada Gona archaeologist missed his chance at claiming the earliest handaxe, is beyond the ability of this little brain of mine to understand. Unless, of course, said archaeologist had been brought up to think that handaxes weren't even invented until the Acheulean stone industry appeared, at about 1.5 Ma.

As you can see in the caption above, the archaeologist makes every effort to downplay the flakes, and to ascribe a meaningful function to the lumps from which the flakes were removed. Number 1 is a "unifacial chopper," while number 2 is inscrutably identified as a "discoid." Number 3 isn't just another unifacial chopper, it's a unifacial side chopper. [Explain that one!] Number 4 is a unifacial end chopper. Doesn't it look like 1 and 3? It does to me. But, then again, I'm not a lithic analyst. The fifth is a 'partial' discoid, presumably because it's not really discoidal at all. So it's an irregular discoid! Criminy! 6 and 7 are called the same thing as 3. UNBELIEVABLE! It's the flake, Stupid! [Recalling the Clinton campaign strategy: "It's the economy, Stupid!"] These so-called choppers prolly couldn't chop a pound of butter without smearing it all over Olduvai! Choppers, my ass. Are we to believe that these Ur-flintknappers, who had just learned to walk for gawd's sake, could possibly conceive of a chopper, or an axe? Good luck with that one.
     On the basis of the foregoing evidence courtesy of the Kada Gona archaeologist, I'm gonna guess that any lumps of stone with fewer than a half-dozen flake removals were simply not considered worthy of discussion [much less illustration in an august refereed journal]. But you and I know that they're there in the assemblage, disguised as 'mere' cores, and giving lie to this preposterous labelling of more heavily used lumps as 'choppers' and 'discoids.' What a load of crap. And I'm talkin' poop of pachydermical proportions.

I'm outa here.

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

The Acheulean in Arizona: More Bizarre News From the Dark Side of Archaeology

It really doesn't get any better than this. And mind, I wouldn't normally expend much energy dispelling incipient myths like this one, were it not that in this case there's a real danger of it sprouting legs and moving under its own power thanks to a daft academic archaeologist in Boston.

We won't be so crass as to point out the misspellings, 
erroneous capitalization and poor punctuation. Will we?

My dad used to say 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' The only serious danger in the field of archaeology [aside from liver disease and arthritic knees] is that a patently false claim--however well-intentioned--becomes received knowledge. In other words, an erroneous claim that becomes an archaeological myth. In this instance, the danger to archaeology is being multiplied by a gullible Phoenix media hungry for an interesting story and, in an unusual turn of events, a truly credulous and misinformed 'professional' archaeologist, Curtis Runnells, from Boston University.

A putative Acheulean site in Pheonix, Arizona (Photo credit)

      The story goes like this. Mr. Ken Stanton, Amateur Archaeologist, thinks he's found an Acheulean archaeological site. The Acheulean, previously known only from Europe, Africa and southern Asia began about 1.5 Ma. This isn't the first time that such objects have come to light in the southwestern United States. Indeed, the Arizona story is virtually identical to that of the Calico Hills site, famed for having fooled Louis B. Leakey into thinking that Homo erectus had somehow made it to the Americas in the Early to Middle Pleistocene. His attention was drawn to the site  in the late 1950s after broken rocks similar to those Mr. Stanton has lately found compelled archaeologist Ruth DeEtte Simpson to announce her interpretation--that the site contained very old, very crude, stone tools like those that had been known in Europe and Africa for nearly a century. The Calico Hills' proponents are still making those same claims fifty years on, even though they've been thoroughly and rigorously refuted by archaeologists who know a great deal about the geological processes and their expectable outcomes in the production of a desert alluvial fan--C. Vance Haynes, for one.

Ruth 'Dee' Simpson and L.S.B. Leakey at the Calico Hills Early Man site.
(Photo credit)

     But what are the claims, Rob? We wanna see!
Behold and be dismayed. First, photos of Stanton's finds and a cross-section of the sedimentary context, all kindly provided by Mr. Stanton, himself.

An amorphous lump of 
angular vein quartz

A pointy lump of angular vein quartz.

A tiny piece of angular quartz

As one can plainly see from these illustrations, this is vein quartz, which while being very hard, is also quite brittle. And, while some forms of quartz fracture conchoidally, this type does not. Its material nature aside, the geological context is most important in this instance. That these artifacts are found in a desert alluvial fan should be a red flag for any archaeologist, especially one who's geomorphologically aware or is in fact a geoarchaeologist. Alluvial fans develops as a result of the intense, but infrequent, rainstorms that are characteristic of desert climates. The rain falls upslope and quickly entrains every loose bit of rock and dirt that has, through colluvial action, come to rest in the dry course of the newly active ephemeral stream since its last activation. Depending on the energy level of the flow and the nature of the rock being carried along, the overall result is what you see in the profile below.

A cut through the alluvial fan, with quartz geofact visible in the centre.

This high-energy alluvial phenomenon is more appropriately called a debris flow, rather than an ephemeral stream, because the water represents just one component of the stream, the majority consists of sedimentary clasts of various sizes that collide forcefully with one another to produce what in some cases may be seen to resemble chipped stone artifacts that humans or human ancestors have made. This kind of object is called a geofact because it was created by geological processes, but nonetheless fools a naive observer because they appear to have been chipped in a manner that broadly resembles early hominin stone technology. And Rule #1 states that if something that you think is made by people, but that could just as well be made by other natural processes, you can not give priority to people, but must instead show cause as to why we should think anything other than that these are geofacts! 

     The kind of deposit shown in the profile is a diamicton--comprising an unsorted (or at best poorly sorted) mélange of newly angular bits of rock as well as sand, silt and clay, not all of which are clast supported. Such deposits are very UNlike the ones that a permanent stream produces in its path. In the Arizona case the quartz stands out from the rest of the material in the fan because it happens to be of a type that's analogous to that of the finer-grained rock that makes good stone artifacts. I wonder how many bits of vein quartz Mr Stanton passed up because they didn't look like 'good' artifacts!

     Aside from the attention that Stanton's claims received in the Phoenix media, news of his 'discovery' reached an academic archaeologist who is, unfortunately, credulous and is giving these naturally broken rocks more attention than they warrant. The following three passages are messages that archaeologist Dr. Curtis Runnels of Boston University has sent to Mr. Stanton, which have given the Arizona man no reason to suspect that his claims are theoretically unsound.

 These are extremely interesting artifacts and the context is very interesting too. I am not an expert in Arizona desert geology, but the the [sic] deposit looks like a cemented debris flow or perhaps a lake-margin deposit. It could very well be Pleistocene in age. It should certainly be possible to date that context if you can get a knowledgeable regional geologist to look it over; for instance by a technique like Infrared Stimulated Optical Luminescence on the sand grains I can see in the surround [sic] matrix.

We can only guess about the nature of Pleistocene humans: our own species, Homo sapiens, is dated securely at sites like Herto (Ethiopia) to 200,000 years ago and would certainly be a candidate, as well as Homo heidelbergensis (a hominin grade that dates to ca. 400,000 years ago). Without fossils there is no way to tell because these kinds of tools were probably made by more than one hominin grade, perhaps by as many as four or five! 

My summary is that you have early looking artifacts in a definite geologic context that might help pin down their age.

and

Dear KC,

Thank you for showing me the photographs of the lithic artifacts and their findspot from the site that you have discovered near Phoenix.

My specialty is the Palaeolithic of the Old World in the eastern Mediterranean and SE Europe, and not the American SW, but the artifacts that you have shown me would be considered as Lower or Middle Palaeolithic if they were foud [sic] in my area.

They are definitely artifacts [emphasis added], and the typological and technical characteristics that I see in the photographs are consistent with their identification with Pleistocene industries (modes or technocomplexes).  Similar artifacts are widely distributed in the Old World, and have been reported also in the United States over the past century or so. Unfortunately they are rather hard to date: in the Old World such industries have a wide chronological span, ranging from 1.6 myr to ca. 0.175 myr (and some similar forms occur in the Middle Palaeolithic or Middle Stone Age in Europe and Africa much later, down to ca. 50 kyr). Therefore, it is of particular importance that your finds appear to be in a datable geologic context. The photographs you showed me appear to show artifacts in situ (geologically speaking) in a cemented breccia or debris flow. This suggests two things to my mind. The original sites, in the sense of living floors or occupation areas, have no doubt been destroyed by erosion and the artifacts have been redeposited downslope.  Dating the breccia/debris flow would, therefore, give a minimum age for the artifacts, but that would be an important start. My geological training is in the Mediterranean in regions (e.g. Greece, Albania, and Turkey) with similar arid conditions to the American SW, and from what I can see in your photographs I would consider the artifact-bearing deposit to have considerable age, probably Pleistocene.

A more precise estimate In short, I would accept as a working hypothesis to be tested by further research in the field that these artifacts are of Pleistocene age and likely to pre-date, perhaps by a considerable margin, the earliest accepted industries such as Clovis and Folsom in the SWof their age or the affinities with other industries would not be possible at this stage of research.

Good luck! Sincerely yours, Curtis

Curtis Runnels, MA, PhD, FSA, Professor of Archaeology, Archaeology Department, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215

Editor, Journal of Field Archaeology

and later on

Here is a longer message than I could manage yesterday on my phone in the train. No need to send me the Washington Artifacts; let's not risk getting them lost in the mail. I want to concentrate on the Arizona stuff for the moment. My plan is to discuss the artifacts you already sent me with a geoarchaeologist who is familiar with Arizona geology and get his opinion on the context.

My other plan is to write an essay in the Journal of Field Archaeology as Editor-in-Chief (co authored with my contributing editor Professor Norman Hammond, who is also the Archaeology Correspondent for the Times of London and the editor of the Times Literary Supplement). He is a New World specialist and we have already talked about how the Pre-Clovis picture is becoming clearer. We will call for a total reexamination of the old sites (e.g., George Carter's Texas Street Site and Calico among others) and a new open minded approach to the Pre-Clovis question and invite contributions of manuscripts on the subject for publication. I think the timing is right. The Stanford and Bradley book, Across Atlantic Ice, will be published in January and in it they make their case for the movement of Solutrean people by boat across the Atlantic in the Palaeolithic to the east coast. If one group of Palaeoliths could make the trip, then anything is possible and a complete restudy of the archaeological record is warranted.

All this takes time and don't worry about your priority (i.e. credit for your discovery). I have the evidence before me that you found this stuff first and am willing to say so whenever and wherever necessary.

Best wishes,

Curtis

I ask you, 'How lame can this guy Runnels be?' He recognizes that this is a debris flow, but somehow fails to make the connection between the nature of an active debris flow and the concomitant and expectable damage to, in this case, vein quartz. I will be very surprised if, when Runnels approaches the 'geoarchaeologist who is familiar with Arizona geology' he is told anything other than that these are perfectly good geofacts and not, as Runnels proclaims, 'definitely artifacts.' [By the way, I'm guessing that the above-mentioned geoarchaeologist is none other than Paul Goldberg, whose academic appointment is also at BU. Paulie, you still haven't responded to my Wonderwerk Cave take-down. Clock's ticking...]

     Nitey, nite!

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