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.

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Newly discovered hand[soap]-axe

Sure enough, another hand[soap]-axe has been discovered! The second of these beautiful implements has lately come to light, in this case raking morning sunlight. The palaeoanthropological community knows just what to make of it, too. As with it's lithic counterparts, this must surely have been purposefully shaped by the hominid that resides with us here at Subversive Archaeologist world headquarters.

Yet, unlike the earlier discovery, pictured above, at left, this specimen is an exquisite ovoid. The ovoid is double-convex, like the first. Moreover the angle formed at the margins is identical to that of the elongated leaf-shaped original discovery? To the right in this photo is the form of raw material that occurs naturally in the vicinity. Given the clearly different outline, this latest hand[soap]-axe, assigned the label H[S]A-2 was likely used for a different function than that of H[S]A-1. Or, conversely, if there turns out to have been a temporal discontinuity between the two, it's quite possible that the two performed the same function, but in different cultural systems. Either way, there's no denying that the hominid soap shapers carried out an almost unbelievably complex series of attritional episodes (colloquially known as washing) in arriving at these forms. No other explanation could possibly exist for the existence of these nearly perfectly shaped pieces.
     This 'industry' rivals the Levallois technique for its sheer virtuosity. 

Prometheus Unfounded: Contradictions and Conundrums at Wonderwerk Cave

Wonderwerk Cave profile (Photo by M. Chazan)

I've previously opined on aspects of the claim for very early fire use at Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa here, here, here, and here. In brief, it's Swiss cheese. Today I'm beginning to look at Peter Beaumont's 2011 synthesis of the 'evidence' for hearths in the cave, published in Current Anthropology. Forgive me if this comes across as unusually pedantic--I find the author's descriptions to be less-than rigorously scientific, and thus less-than helpful if one's hoping to cast a critical eye on what amounts to his life's work. I've found it all very difficult to wrap my brain around. See what you think.   
     Beaumont begins his discussion of what he calls 'hearths' by mentioning that in places he observed 'poorly defined ash lenses' and in other places 'ash-rich' deposits, which he thought had been 'single hearths ... largely destroyed (perhaps by trampling).' It's unfortunate that there could be so much ambiguity entailed in such a short paragraph.
     First of all, what really is the difference between a 'poorly defined lens' and an 'ash-rich deposit'? Aren't they both 'ash rich' if you can recognize the ash in profile? And what about the other sequelae of burning, charcoal and the reddened substrate. I would have expected any fire that could turn plant fuel to ash would have been sufficiently hot and of such a duration that it would also have reddened the sediments beneath the fire. Moreover, in many cases where reddened sediments and ash are visible in a stratigraphic sequence there is a higher than average chance that there will be a layer of charcoal-enriched or blackened sediment between the reddened substrate and the ash. Trampled or not, Beaumont's inference that these ash lenses were hearths is hardly to be believed on the face of it.
     Presumably Beaumont wants us to believe that, in the case of the 'ash-rich' places, any vertical distinction that at one time would have been evident between the ash and the reddened sediments had been obliterated by treadage. Yet, if that were the case, how is it that he's able to discern anything that might be called discrete (albeit poorly defined) ash lenses? For Beaumont to be able to observe 'lenses' comprising ash, those lenses must have escaped, in large part, the destructive results of trampling. And surely, if the ash 'lenses' had escaped the ravages of time and trampling such that they were visible in profile, the underlying reddened sediments would also have retained enough integrity to be visible, too! Yet, the author mentions nothing about the substrate, reddened or otherwise. Odd. On the other hand, one has to agree that in all likelihood it was trampling that transformed what had once been intact ash deposits elsewhere in the cave into something the author calls (merely) 'ash-rich.'

[My recognizing problems with Beaumont's after-the-fact verbal descriptions doesn't ensure that the his inferences are incorrect. However, one does have to wonder. Doesn't one? One would have thought that a perspicacious referee or editor would have noticed these vague and incongruous descriptions. Wouldn't one?] 

     Alas, the abovementioned 'hearths' aren't the only curiosities to be found in Beaumont's treatment of putative fire use at 1+ Ma. In another example he describes stratum MU2, in excavation 5, where as much as 45 cm (!) of the stratigraphic column 'is very largely composed of white ash with many burned bones and fire-damaged Middle Stone Age artifacts.' This ash apparently 'accumulated slowly' and continuously between about 1,155,000 and about 70,000 years ago. [Get out your calculators!] 
     Depending on what Beaumont means by 'very largely composed of' [and it's not at all clear], it sounds as if he's suggesting that for 1,085,000 years a very wide area of the cave received little other sedimentary input than that of completely combusted plant material. That's a prodigiously long time for a single depositional process to have endured, and a phenomenally long time for a large surface comprising a substance as mobile as ash to have survived without either blowing away or being adulterated by larger [especially inorganic], autochthonous clastic input. 
     Even more mysterious: Beaumont claims that the ash was the result of thousands of fires fueled by above 15 tons of fuel. It's really hard for me to imagine that such a focus of hominid activity could have escaped the inevitable, and destructive, treadage that would have accompanied that use of that part of the cave for what amounts to a single activity--that of making and keeping fire--over such a vast expanse of time. I suppose it's not impossible. But, probable? I really don't think so. Plausible? Barely.
     Beaumont's description of MU 2 in excavation 5 just makes no sense. If his account of its clastic composition is accurate, nothing but a long-lived colony of fire-loving faeries could have produced it! There must be alternative explanations. And, indeed there are, provided by an unlikely source--the latter-day excavators of Wonderwerk Cave, the very ones who have recently reprised Beaumont's long-standing claim of fire use by Acheulean hominids.
     Here's what Matmon, Chazan, Porat and Horwitz conclude in 'Reconstructing the history of sediment deposition in caves: A case study from Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa' published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin (First published online October 14, 2011, doi: 10.1130/​B30410.1).

The cave sediments comprise a sequence of fine sands and silts that were transported naturally by wind to the environs of the cave and later into the cave by water. Transport within the cave occurred by low-energy water sheetflow, which distributed and deposited the sediment in its final location. Field observations and grain-size distribution analysis of the sediments inside and outside of the cave imply the following sediment transport scenario: eolian transport of Kalahari sand to the Kuruman Hills, slope wash of the eolian sediment into the intermontane valleys, fluvial transport of the sediment from the intermontane valleys to the entrance of the cave, and final deposition of the sediment inside the cave by low-energy water action.

 These are the verbatim conclusions. Unfortunately for the authors, this sequence of transport processes leading to the input of allochthonous sands and silts at Wonderwerk Cave can equally explain the presence of anything that would be as easily transported as sands and silts. Indeed, anything lighter than fine sand--if it shows up at the doorstep--would have been subsequently transported into the cave by sheetwash. Sheesh! They've done my work for me! 
     Their conclusions also solve a riddle that I found while wandering through the images from Wonderwerk. This one shows non-conformable and curiously wavy strata. I've drawn yellow rectangles where I see evidence of what appear to be erosional events overlain by non-conformable strata. These observations support the conclusions of Matmon et al. It appears that there have been numerous erosional episodes during the build-up of sediments in Wonderwerk Cave. The wavy contacts suggest an agent even more energetic than sheetwash. If these observations are borne out it's clear that at times the input of material and liquid from outside the cave was considerable.     

After Berna et al. 2011

Make of it what you will. 
     Beaumont describes 'grass mats' in various stages of combustion that occur here and there in the cave. Regardless of how they arrived at the cave's doorstep, in they went--wind-whipped dry grass, partly combusted grass, grass ash [try saying that five times really fast without saying something unfit for polite company], small bits of burned bone made as light as fine sand by partial combustion. You name it! Matmon et al.'s conclusion opens the door to serious questioning of Wonderwerk's depositional history. How can they claim, unequivocally, that any wind-transportable allochthonous sediments came to rest in the cave by the hands of hominids?
     Seriously! They are way past the bounds of logical inference when they claim that any of the tiny particles that Berna et al. describe in exquisite micromorphological detail were left there as a result of hominid behaviour. Somebody's gotta tell them. I'm trying me best. But they appear not to be listening.
     So, get out there to the meetings and to your classrooms and call out the litany of overwrought inferences of hominid behaviour that keep emanating from Wonderwerk Cave!     

     

One thing's for sure: the excavations at Wonderwerk Cave are looking more and more like job security for this Subversive Archaeologist.

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Still Waiting For Some Response From Francesco and Paul...

Berna et al. 2012 Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. PNAS online.

I'm starting to feel slighted. Tell me why I shouldn't.
     Either Francesco Berna and Paul Goldberg are so far out in the field that they're incommunicado and have been for a while, or they're too embarrassed by their fireplace faux pas at Wonderwerk Cave that they're playing it cool. 
     Paul is someone I've known for decades. I've never met Francesco. When my recent blurt on the matter called into question their claims, I expected an immediate response--so devastating is the overlooked evidence. Yet, crickets chirping was all I heard. Then I emailed Don Grayson, well-known to most of you, who was the National Academy member who acted as the editor for the paper in PNAS. He was intrigued, and thought I ought to pursue the publication route. But I thought it better to email Francesco and Paul instead, a week or so ago, hoping to stir them into some sort of response to my contention, i.e. that finding no Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrographic evidence of Berlinite in the sediments at Wonderwerk Cave can't be used to rule out spontaneous combustion of bat doo-doo in the 1.0 Myr old deposits. 

Home, Sweet, Homo erectus Home (Source):
Home is Where the Hearth Is.

     Theirs is no small inference. An Acheulian Prometheus is big news. No doubt about it! It's not the sort of thing you want to make a mistake about, especially when the mistake you're making is to ignore or to be, evidently, ignorant of the formation temperature of Berlinite [something you would have thought a geochemist and a geomorphologist might have thought to investigate before they made their claim for the controlled use of fire so long ago by Homo erectus--or H. ergaster, whichever you prefer--a species long since extinct--unless you accept that H. Floresiensis is a dwarf relict population, which I happen to do, but which is beside the point in this discussion, albeit really interesting and kewl].
     Remember that no 'hearths' were recorded at Wonderwerk Cave; the excavators instead base their inferences on the presence of heat-altered sediments across a wide area in the million-year-old cave deposits. Unfortunately, the authors report no evidence for temperatures above 550° C, and Berlinite will not form below 583° C. But then, you already know this, 'cause I've written about it here. 
     So, although I'm repeating myself, I'd like to call on the authors--either, any, or all--to respond to my question about their observations, and to comment on the temperatures required to alter the chemistry of the plant and animal remains they recovered, together with their conclusions that Berlinite would surely have been visible if spontaneous combustion of bat guano (a well-known and well-documented phenomenon) had been responsible for the raised temperatures in the cave sediments. 
     I'm waiting, gentlemen.

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The World's Oldest Hand[-soap] Axe!

Figure 1. On the left: a hand-soap axe. On the right: dorsal view of a bar of Dial glycerin soap, identical with the one from which the axe was fashioned. 

There's an old saying: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Well, here's my own version of joining 'em, straight from an Industrial Era archaeological site near the world headquarters of the Subversive Archaeologist. What you see in Figure 1 is an astonishing example of the forethought and planning that has been a hallmark of the human lineage from at least 1.75 Ma. The object on the right is an example of the raw material that was used in this case; on the left, the exquisitely symmetrical end-product of a complex series of water-aided reductive events, all of which were intended, from the outset, to result in this aesthetically pleasing and most useful tool. I'm calling it a hand-soap axe. There's no doubt in my mind that the object on the left is a deliberate product of a highly sophisticated, human, brain. 

Figure 2. On the left: a hand-soap axe. On the right left lateral view of the same bar of soap illustrated in Figure 1.

     Just look at the metrics. The raw material blank is rectangular in plan (see Figure 1), with a convex dorsal and concave ventral aspect and 1/2-round bevelled on all vertices (see Figure 2). Its dimensions are given in Table 1. 

These items were measured in the field using the only appurtenance available at the time: a Stanley No. 26 1/2 boxwood folding caliper rule (pictured below). It's an oldy. And it's only calibrated in 16ths, so these are very approximate numbers. We'll be able to get a better handle on the morphology when we're out of the field.

Stanley No. 36 1/2 boxwood folding calipers.

As for the hand-soap axe. A glance at it convinces one that it bears little resemblance to the block of raw material, which should persuade anyone with half a brain that its final shape had nothing to do with the original shape of the raw material block. Its lateral margins, pictured above, are perfectly bi-convex. When viewed on end, the same is true. The intention was for the dorso-ventral bi-convexity to create an angle of ca. 45° that is uniform through almost its entire length. Quite an accomplishment. No? Undoubtedly this would have been used to work skins.
     And look at the length of the product--the axe itself. The artisan who made this was ever-so-careful to avoid reducing the proximal and distal mass so as not to end up with a useless lump of soap. This is indeed an artifact that represents a high level of cognitive ability, and anyone who says 'Nay' is likely to be a closet bigot or someone who doesn't know their glycerine soap from sandpaper!
     As yet we've been unable to computer-model adequately how, with judicious application of plain old water, and simply by rolling it in his hands to create a lather, the human who made this was able to fashion such a gorgeous object. I'd go so far as to say that this example is SO perfect that it may even have been a ceremonial object, or money, or something like that! 
     PLoS one here we come!

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