No Evidence for the OCHRE HAND IMPRINT OF HOMO ERECTUS

Homo erectus. Image: Henry Gilbert and Kathy Schick (Wikimedia, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0)

A tip o' the fedora to PastHorizonspr.com for this archaeological howler.

OCHRE HAND IMPRINT OF HOMO ERECTUS REVEALED

D'you remember that story about the guy in [I think it was] Arizona who reckoned he had Acheulean—therefore Homo erectus—stone artifacts from surface sites? It's a Bizarro World we live in.

Now we have a similar claim from Europe, where they oughta know better!

A rock, in all likelihood a hammerstone, was lifted from a newly plowed field near Lehberg bei Haidershofen in the Lower Austrian part of the Enns (a southern tributary of the Danube River)—the field that's illustrated below. The hammerstone has a semi-circular reddish stain on it. That stain could have been imprinted by an ochre encrusted Homo erectus hand. Or not.

It's axiomatic that the minute the word 'ochre' is mentioned, palaeolithic archaeologists and palaeoanthropolgists go ape-shit. Only humans use ochre—ipso facto whoever used that rock was a human. Except, in this case it's highly unlikely. The caption for the plowed field mentions areas that are rich in ochre. You can almost make out the areas that are redder than others.

Archaeologist A. Binsteiner tells us that the ochre-stained hammerstone was found on the same surface as some well-rounded bifaces he found [that may well be Acheulean hand axes.]

Unfortunately for Binsteiner and the media stenographers that picked up the story, without stratigraphic correlatives two artifacts found at the surface are just that—two artifacts found on the surface.

There's no hope of ascertaining the temporal relationship of any two artifats found on the surface that Bitsteiner criss-crossed while searching for evidence that aliens created the pyramids. The photo below is of the fundstellen [find spot] of a handaxe and a phalliform that has use wear from, apparently, pecking another rock, which was also found nearby. The caption, loosely translated, refers to this as the "stratigraphy" of the find spot.

Archaeologist Binsteiner also identified several other well-rounded bifacially flaked artifacts from the same locality—the ground surface shown above. The archaeologist reckons that the sediments that make up this open-air site are at least 500,000 years old.

I presume that's why he thinks that the 'handaxe,' the hammerstone, and the phalliform river-rolled rock are contemporaneous. If YOU think that's a sensible interpretation, hang around after my talk. I have a bridge in New York that I'm keen to unload for a song.

As these things go in archaeology, it's quite possible that the ochre hand print is half a million years old, and that it was put there by a precursor of the human species. It's also possible that pigs will fly, and that roses will emerge from one of my orifices the next time I have a BM.

If you were wondering why this field in Austria hasn't been featured in Nature, wonder no more. You could put it down to  archaeologist Binsteiner not being boastful. After all, his earlier finds have been reported in some very-not-well-known journals,  such as Linzer Archaeologie Forschungen, Oberösterreich Heimatblätter, and
Archaeologie Online. Meaning no disrespect, I'm guessing that A. Bitsteiner had no choice but to publish in the literary backwaters of European archaeology.

I'm kinda sorry about the circumstances. I'm sure there are many palaeolithic archaeologists who'd've eaten up this putative phalliform, almost as rapidly as they would a vulviform engraving on a rock surface in the Dordogne. Although, seeing a phallus in this rounded example of sedimentary rock—identifying it as a phalliform—probably says more about A. Bitsteiner's unconscious than he'd have liked if he'd been aware of his own neuroses! Wait a second! What's that I see in the superior view? Is that an inscribed male urethra? I think it is. Well! Dang! I'm wrong again! The stylized urethra petroglyph is the proof that Bitsteiner was right, after all. This is a phalliform and I'm blind.



I'm also nearly out of breath at the staggering discoveries here revealed. Especially the mortar and pestle shown at right. That's way more 'cultural' than we've seen from H. erectus before now. Where are the Arsuagas of the discipline? Where the De Lumleys? They should be here, if only to witness the silliness that sometimes passes as archaeology.

Obviously there's a lesson here.

If you're surface collecting and you find a dinosaur fossil next to an Acheulean handaxe, do you announce loudly that you've found evidence that dinosaurs and bipedal apes were contemporaries?

No. You understand that, for as long as the locality you're surface-collecting has been a surface, the potential for finding items on that surface, from vastly different geological epochs is, one would have to think, high.

Your Honour. The prosecution rests. You'll get no further phallicisms from me!

Pardon Me, Fred, But Is This Your Freudian Slip Showing? I Think Not.

As you may have guessed, anyone who published titles like "Grave Shortcomings" and "Middle Palaeolithic Burial is Not a Dead Issue," might be amused at any similarly layered article title. I'm also someone who lets go a deep sigh of resignation when reading most article titles in my field. They not only leave a lot to be desired semantically, but also semiotically: dull as dust and twice four times so unhelpful as to be diffusely obfuscatory.

A brief paddle around the scientific title pool in just the last few days.

"Random and centrality-based emergence of leaders."
A study of how peer pressures influences society.

"Hollywood Diversity Brief: Spotlight on Cable Television."
Which concludes that shows having ethnically disparate characters garner better ratings for their writers.

These two articles might be pulling them in in Peoria with the right bait. Instead the authors go for the big surprise effect, preferring to say nothing of any importance in perhaps the most important words in the entire articles—the titles. What average Joanne in these disciplines—after skimming an email digest or a table of contents—could know that these two papers bore anything worthwhile? Seriously.

The big surprise for authors such as these comes when they discover no one reads or cites their [quite probably] important findings because the titles were so generic as to be a waste of printer's ink. Physician, heal thyself. And guarantee more citations!

But crummy titles aren't my problem. So, why start out with this? I just wanted to provide some background to the art of article titles before I introduced the following little gem, the title of which leaves no doubt what it's about, and at the same time manages to coyly stick it to the discipline of palaeoanthropology.

Thank you, Fred Spoor! This is delicious. Don't you think so, ID?

"Palaeoanthropology: Small-brained and big-mouthed," Nature 502:452–453. doi:10.1038/502452a
(Published online 23 October 2013.)

A tip o' the hat to friend of the SA, Patrick Randolph-Quinney, for notifying his facebook friends of this tidbit of Fred Spoor's oeuvre. The title is close to slanderous! Unless, of course, the title is just a case of the author's majestic Freudian Slip showing. Nah! But it does give Fred Spoor an out if they come after him for slander. And, thanks to the title, this latest contribution of his will attract the attention of everyone who wears the label palaeo [or paleo] anthropologist—and a huge audience not directly engaged in piecing together our evolutionary history from scraps of fossil bone.

Spoor's Nature News & Views piece is aimed at the leaders of the Dmanisi, Georgia excavations of ~1.75 Ma fossil-bearing dirt. They recently described the latest in a long line of beautiful Hominids [sensu here]:

Click to go to the article on the Science web site.

A through F: Dmanisi cranium (D4500). 

G: Dmanisi cranium ( D4500) and mandible (D2600) form the complete skull. From Lordkipanidze et al. (2013).

Dozens of lifetimes have been spent in fruitless pursuit of even one such beautifully preserved hominid specimen. For the Dmanisi crew, it's just the latest. [I know people who'd refer to theirs as disgustingly good fortune. But they're not bitter!]

The problem for the Dmanisi lot, and Spoor's main point, is that in the Science article they argue that the entire catalog of ~2.5 Ma to ~?1.77 Ma African, European, and Asian fossils represents a sole, but genetically variable species, that of Homo erectus (Dubois, 1892) [at one time referred to as Solo Man from Java]. Theirs is the quintessential evocation of the Multiregional Origins Hypothesis for the evolution of modern humans. And they couldn't be more wrong.

But, I'll let the palaeoanthropological sharks have their feeding frenzy. Fred Spoor has merely fired the first shot across Lordkipanidze et al.'s bow.

Dmanisi hominid skull (D4500/D2600) in norma lateralis

So, "Thanks! Fred Spoor" for leaving your steaming trace on the doorstep of the Dmanisi excavators, and that of the discipline at large.

I couldn't have said it better myself!

Until next time!

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Penny Spikins, Handaxes, and the 'Trustworthy' H. ergaster: The Annual Subversive Archaeologist Thanksgiving Day Turkey Shoot

A number of colleagues have commented that it gave the appearance of an argument for inherent violence among the great apes, especially humans. That canard was presumed dead and buried—in absentia—in the 1970s.

Those wishing to see the Subversive Archaeologist's plucky gaggle of remarks with respect to Penny Spikins's theory of the meaning of handaxe shape are welcome to click over to the original content at
http://www.thesubversivearchaeologist.com/p/turkey-day-2012.html

Thank you for visiting, and for your cooperation.

So long!

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Are There Bats In Beaumont's Belfry? Once More Down the Wonderwerk Cave Rabbit Hole.

Okay! Ready for another visit down the Wonderwerk Cave rabbit hole? Keep in mind the main points of Berna et al.'s paper claiming million-year-old fire use at Wonderwerk. First, lots of burnt stuff--animal bone, grass, ash. Second, no bat guano 'cause there wasn't any Berlinite in the deposits [long story, that]. Their conclusion: no spontaneous combustion. That leaves Homo erectus [or a reasonable facsimile] as the only actor that could have been responsible for the fires in the cave. And Berna et al. report that the senior archaeologist, Beaumont, 'reported macroscopic evidence for burning.' 
     I had to see what he had to say. So I've collected the pertinent portions of 

'The Edge: More on Fire-Making by about 1.7 Million Years Ago at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa,' by Peter B. Beaumont (Current Anthropology, 52, 585-595, 2011). 

I call Wonderwerk Cave a rabbit hole mostly because the logic of what's been claimed can be a little hard to follow [to say nothing of 'swallow']. 

     One of the first bits we learn is that

the cave was exploited for “agricultural fertilizer” between 1940 and 1944, when the cave interior was largely dug out to a depth of up to 2.5 m     

Here's a link to the full-sized version on my Flickr account. 

A back-of-a-napkin estimate of the volume of cave earth removed by the 'diggers' yields a figure of 375 cubic metres. I know that most of you know what a cubic metre is, since most of you have had the experience of digging a 1 by 1 to a depth of a metre. But, really, how much Wonderwerk dirt was bagged for fertilizer? 
     A 40 lb (~22 kg) bag of fertilizer works out to about 40 litres. A cubic metre contains 1000 litres (doh!). So, those 375 cubic metres removed from Wonderwerk would have yielded about 9,375 bags of fertilizer. That's a lot of dirt! That's a lot of labour, too. Yet, as you'll discover a little further down, Beaumont surmises that there can't have been much in the way of effective fertilizer in the dirt the diggers removed. Keep that in mind as we work through the rest of Beaumont's 'observations' on Wonderwerk Cave.

     Next Beaumont muses on the likelihood that there was ever a significant number of bats 'hanging' around in the cave. He turns first to a modern observation     

Zoological studies at regional bat caves show that all have dark interiors, little or no air movement, and relatively high humidity levels; the only place in Wonderwerk that partly matches those conditions is a deep roof cavity at its rear, where a small number of bats were seen in 1988, briefly replacing the barn owls that usually reside there...

My guess is that we're to assume nothing has changed during the time that the upper 2.5 metres of the stratigraphic column had built up--i.e. that dirt removed for the presumed phosphate-depauperate fertilizer. I find this to be an astonishing assertion. But, there's more. 

As for bat dung/guano, this was originally linked to the red sand strata ..., a claim not supported by a study of the sediments ..., which showed that all levels are mainly (>90%) made up of sand and roof fragments, or by the finding that the microfauna indicates a preponderant avian occupation of the cave by barn owls..., with only modest amounts of bat guano likely confined to lenses below the roof cavity near the back wall.

Here the author tips his hand. Of course! There never were bats in the cave in any number! The presence of rodent remains convinces him that the major avian residents had been barn owls--for a million bloody years! 

     This strikes me as an odd conclusion to make for three reasons. First, the rodent remains wouldn't have been in the cave had it not been for the owls. But that's not germane to this question, since bats don't eat small furry creatures and therefore would have left nothing other than dead bats, which are in evidence in the cave sediments.   

     Second, does he think that bat guano fossilizes? Well, if he does, he's very wrong. It decomposes like any excrement, leaving phosphate minerals. Thus, if at present it's invisible in the cave sediments we should expect nothing less. And until Berna et al. publish the complete list of phosphate minerals they did find in the cave, we're left in the dark as to the likelihood that bats ever left much behind in the cave [that wasn't mined by 'diggers' that is].  
     Lastly, it's laughable when the author asserts that bat guano would have accumulated only where bats have been observed to roost in the cave in the past hundred years. We're talking about a MILLION years, fer gawd' sake! Beaumont must be the most extreme proponent of uniformitarianism that ever set foot in a palaeontological locality! 

     His conclusion, which appears below, is a case of special pleading, if ever I heard one.

From these data it is evident that the 1940–1944 diggers were marketing a product that contained little in the way of fertilizer

If so, they must have been running a con. And, if it was a con, this might be the only time in criminal history that such a gambit involved hard labour on the part of the grifter! Hey. Maybe not! Maybe the cons were so good at their game that they did a Tom Sawyer on some unsuspecting yokels, and had them dig out half the cave! 

Please, make your own conclusions. I'm happy to hear your reasons why anyone should accept Beaumont's assertions at face value.  


















   

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A Good Bloody Mary, a Loaf of Bread, and Kathu Pan 1 Again.!

There's nothing like a decent Bloody Mary when you really feel like a pick-me-up. Seriously. But you should know that I'm not a purist. I like to use vegetable juice, like V-8. Trader Joe's makes a good V-8-like mix called Garden Patch that's way cheaper and prolly better for you. I like my BMs [stop chortling, toilet-brain] on the mild side, so I add a dash or three of Worcestershire sauce and voila! Who'd've thought that cocktails could be so nutritious? I feel all picked up! Which is where I wanna be. 'Cause I'm gonna pick up where I left off a while back. So, if you stick around, prepare to be catapaulted (nay, trebucheted) into the Lower Palaeolithic of Southern Africa for the rest of this blurt.

Wilkins and Chazan (2012)*

     Remember Kathu Pan 1? All those run-of-the-mill, plain, or garden-variety flakes that Wilkins and Chazan* have interpreted as evidence of a 'blade industry' at 0.5 Ma? It would be an extraordinary finding if it were true. Alas. Life as a subversive archaeologist isn't ever simple--deciding on the veracity of such a claim is not a straightforward endeavour. I fervently wish that I could just accept an archaeological inference on the face of it. Unfortunately, in the case of Wilkins and Chazan, it's not to be. 


[I know. I know. I've blathered on about this previously. But in truth, I've only called their claim into question--I haven't as yet produced much in the way of evidence to counter or refute their interpretations.]


     The truth (or reality) of this extraordinary claim hinges on the amount of morphological variability they and their 'MSA'-of-Africa colleagues will accept into the class of flake that they've chosen to call 'blades.' To them, a blade is a 'detached piece' that is at least twice as long as it is wide. Simple. No? No. No archaeologist would say that it's that simple. And those who work on the palaeolithic of southern Africa and elsewhere know that to be the case. But that's where they start. As would be the drill for anyone who's in the business of studying the lithic output of modern humans, the length-to-width ratio (hereafter just L-W) is a very basic starting place. The trouble with Wilkins and Chazan and others is that they try outflank the blade purists by suggesting that a quite different set of behaviours can be looked at as analogous, if not homologous, with the blade industries of modern humans. It's a bit of a reach, as you'll see.

     Have a look at the image up above, which illustrates some of the morphological variability inherent in the Kathu Pan 1 assemblage of 'blades' [ignore the core in the lower left]. Here you see flakes with convergent margins, flakes that have been retouched, flakes that are nearly square, flakes that are slivers of stone, flakes with cortex, and some really thick flakes. None are parallel sided, as is the case with the Mesolithic [the true MSA] blades shown below. None are removed from prepared cores like those in the array immediately following the one below.

I owe a big thanks to archaeologist Anja Roth Niemi, Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Tromsö, whom I've never met, but on whose web page I found these lovely illustrations of 8,000 year old blade cores and blades from Norway (after less than a minute searching Google Images). 

     It's true that modern human groups haven't evinced prismatic-core blade industries in all places and at all times during their tenure on Earth. However, we are fairly certain that the presence or absence of such a technique has nothing to do with the cognitive abilities of the people involved--modern human decision-making and the normal constraints on behaviour often preclude such activities. Unfortunately we can't make a similar assumption about the deep time represented at Kathu Pan 1. There, say the authors, for perhaps the first time in history a group of hominids designed and manufactured blades according to a pattern that evokes the kind of deliberate actions that we all know exist in the modern human archaeological record as part of modern human cognitive abilities. 
     Because it may very well be the first time for such an activity, surely it behooves these authors to be very thorough in their description of the assemblage and in the premises that underpin their argument. That's where I'm going today [or this week, more precisely--I've been working on this on and off when I've had the opportunity, for over a week, now, which is why you've heard little from my pulpit in that time]. I intend to point out just how problematic are the assumptions on which these inferences have been made, and in so doing to demonstrate that the Kathu Pan 1 blades are nothing more than a reified category.
     At the outset, let me say that Wilkins and Chazan have done nothing wrong by identifying certain pieces of debitage and utilized flakes as blades when they have a L-W of 2 or greater. Any good lithic analyst dealing with a modern human assemblage would do no less. But, unlike the average analyst working on the technological basis of a lithic assemblage, Wilkins and Chazan stop there. They don't go on to describe those elongated flakes according to morphology. And that is where their analysis veers from the conventional path. They cite others who've worked on the MSA, including those chaps who've made similar claims at Qesem Cave (see the array of so-called blades from Qesem immediately below), but the truth is that this 'blade' classification is profoundly at odds with that of archaeologists who deal with the products of modern humans. For one thing, classic blades almost never (if ever) include cortex, as do many of those shown below.

Wilkins and Chazan and the others have decided that it's OK to define a blade as a flake having an L-W of 2 or greater, and to go no further. 
     Let me just pause here to mention that they take a simple parameter--L-W--and let it represent a conscious choice on the part of the Lower Palaeolithic hominid, and from there to represent a full-on 'industry' like the modern human blade industry I sketched a moment ago. Theirs is a leap of the variety known as Faith, and not an argument from empirical observation, much less well-warranted assumptions.
     I hesitate to go over again what makes a blade. However, I believe it's crucial to emphasize that how we define a blade produced as part of a 'blade industry' is of the utmost importance in assessing the veracity of Wilkins and Chazan's argument. 
     The difference between just a blade and a blade made as part of a blade industry is that the latter is the product of a conscious effort on the part of the flintknapper to produce only just such pieces and to do so in a repetitive series, in which each removal produces a blade of more-or-less uniform morphology from a specially prepared block of stone. A blade technology--one that could be said to be the product of a modern human--produces blades that bear lateral margins that are uniformly parallel or subparallel, and which display dorsal flake scars that testify to earlier removals that are of the same morphology. Among other analyses that can be done to demonstrate the systematic difference between such blades and just flakes, there is a clear-cut statistical difference between the things that have historically been called blades and those regarded as such by the authors.
     Wilkins and Chazan argue that their assemblage does belie an almost identical process. They argue that the difference lies in the orientation of sequential removals, such that the prepared cores are brick-like, and that the blades removed are removed by taking one or two flakes off one end and then doing the same from the other. In so doing these knappers producing flakes that were the shape intended by their maker, i.e. the finished artifact. Unfortunately for Wilkins and Chazan, not only is this a poor argument for a stone industry thats anchored in the same cognitive ability as that produced by modern humans, even their evidence falls short of demonstrating that part of their claim.
     
[As I've said before, the subversive kind of detailed dismantling of a fallacious archaeological claim demands that no essential verbiage be spared. This is already a long blurt, and it'll get longer. Just so you know.]


Where to begin? I thought it would be useful to see just how distinctive the Kathu Pan 1 blades were in comparison with the non-blades. Unfortunately, as I pointed out previously, the authors provide no data to enable such a comparison, nor, evidently, do they think such a comparison is warranted. In my previous attempt to discredit their claim, I as much as accused them of dissembling in their paper. However, after I had a brief, civil, email exchange with Wilkins, I retracted my thinly veiled allegation of disingenuity. However, based on what I was told in the emails, I can say that I have more reason than ever to doubt their claim. 
     One of the most basic assertions that Wilkins and Chazan make is that there is an emphasis on production of flakes with and L-W of 2 or greater, which they call blades. As evidence, they point their readers to their Table 2, which I've excerpted below. 

 


     The way this table represents the assemblage underscores my discomfort. Notice first of all that the number of what are called 'Complete flakes' is about the same as that of 'Blades.' The authors here represent that blades make up 16.1% of the entire assemblage. That is more or less the same proportion of the 'Complete flakes.' This implies that there are as many blades as flakes in the assemblage. 
     However, while it isn't clearly stated in the table, it is mentioned in passing in the text, that the category 'blades' in the table above includes blades and blade fragments, while the category 'complete flakes' is just that. Excluding the flake fragments makes the proportion of 'flakes' to 'blades' appear almost equal. What happens if you lump 'Flake fragments,' 'Proximal flake fragments,' AND 'Complete flakes' and compare that number with the number of blades and blade fragments? The proportion of flakes to blades is much different, which the authors also report in their paper. They write that the proportion of blades in the total of just the 'discarded detached pieces (including flakes and flake fragments)' (N=3786) is 27%. This is now looking more like an assemblage in which blades are not so much  'emphasized.'
     From this point their presentation becomes more confusing and disconcerting. We're told that the mean length for complete blades is 70 mm. Then we're told that there's little value in presenting a breakdown of blade length, because

A frequency histogram of blade width ... [see below]... can be used to get a sense of size distribution... , providing a larger sample than length because blades often break transversely

[which I guess means that we can't know how long they were before they broke--althought it's an open question if they were ever whole, the vicissitudes of breaking stone being what they are].

KP1 blade size distribution includes blades that would technically be classified as bladelets (<12 mm in width, ... but these small blades are just at the lower end of a unimodal blade size continuum. The mean length to width ratio of the KP1 blades is 2.5:1 (n = 92, sd = 0.4).

A cartoon balloon emerges from the vicinity of my head at this point, and all it contains is a very big question mark flashing on and off like a neon sign. The number of blades in the first table above was 972. Yet, in the quote above, we're given an average L-W ratio for blades--2.5:1 (s.d. 0.4)--based on 92, not 972. This is telling us that there are in total just 92 complete 'blades.' In the paper we have only one clue as to the answer--Table 4 gives the summary statistics for blades from two excavation units.

Thus, it is probable that the number 92, given as the source of the average blade length, is correct. In the subsample described in the table above, the number of blades for which an overall length was in evidence is 113. So we would be forgiven if we settled on 'about 100' as the number of complete blades in this assemblage. 
     I'm not suggesting that you need the rest of the 'blade' to argue that a flake portion is a portion of a blade if that flake portion is 2 or more times longer than it is wide. However, given the altogether un-blade-like morphology of the so-called blades shown above from Kathu Pan and from Qesem Cave it begs the question whether the rest of these allegedly fragmentary blades were at all blade-like throughout their length.
     But, forge on we must. In the absence of (to their way of thinking) a relevant sample of complete blades from which to construct a frequency distribution of L-W, we're given instead a histogram of blade width (shown below). Keep in mind that these widths are absolute measures of a subsample of those flakes deemed to be blades, and not a frequency distribution of the widths of the entire assemblage of 'detached pieces.' 
     And when I think about it, I'm not sure what this histogram is really meant to tell us, as width only has interpretive value in this context in terms of its relationship to the length of the so-called blades. Here the number of blades is 511, because the sample that gave this result is only from 2 of the 4 excavation squares that form the entire assemblage. The authors give the average width of this subsample as 28.2 mm (s.d. 9.2) in their Table 4. In that same table the average length is given as 69.7 mm (s.d. 19.3). The histogram below clearly demonstrates that in this assemblage there is a central tendency evident in 'blade' width. That's great! Except it's next to useless unless we can see what the overall assemblage looks like on this parameter. I'd be very surprised if the just flakes produced a distribution much different from this--after all, we see variation from less than 10 mm all the way up to 60+. I doubt very much if the just flakes width distribution could look any different!

     So, you and I want to know if the authors' blades were in any measurable way distinctive from just plain old flakes. Since the Kathu Pan 1 'blades' clearly don't exhibit a uniform morphology beyond the L-W of >2, it wasn't clear to me why we weren't offered a similar set of data for the un-blade-like flakes. So I wrote to Wilkins:

I'm very interested in the length-to-width ratios that you reported, and I was wondering if it would be possible to acquire the raw data for the 1800 or so 'complete flakes' and 'blades.' You published the mean ratio for the blades, but not for the flakes, and you didn't publish the frequency distribution of length-to-width ratios for either the blades or the complete flakes. Moreover, while you did publish the frequency distribution for blade widths, you didn't publish the frequency distribution of their lengths, and you published neither for the 'complete flakes.' 

From the reader's standpoint, on the basis of your published observations,  it's an open question as to whether or not the distincitveness of your 'blades' isn't simply an artifact of the arbitrary definition of a blade.  

Wilkins was kind enough to glean her data to give me a histogram of the 'complete flake' and 'complete blade' L-W ratios (N=920). It's given below. And it's a far cry from the sense that one gets from the histogram above. 

The first thing I noticed when I saw the L-W ratio distribution for the assemblage as a whole was that complete flakes with a L-W ratio >2 (i.e. what the authors call 'blades') are a minority compared to those <2, and that in no way do they display the unimodal distribution that the blade width histogram above did. As I look at this histogram I don't see a unimodal, bimodal, or a normal distribution. I see that about 700 of the 920 are 'flakes' (i.e. with a L-W of between 0.8:1 and 2.0:1). That works out to about a .76 probability that any piece of rock that was detached from a core and discarded in the excavated portion of Kathu Pan 1 would have had a length to width ratio of between 0.8:1 and 2:1! More fascinating, when you remember the authors' conclusions, is that the distribution of flakes with L-W between 0.8 and 2:1 is close to that of a continuous uniform distribution. A uniform distribution occurs when one is tracking a variate that is varying randomly, as would be the case if one was sampling from a continuous variable (with replacement), and not constrained to any discrete value, such as would be the case in a game of dice. This Kathu Pan 1 distribution of the L-W ratios of all complete 'detached pieces' is not perfectly uniform, to be sure. But when one can predict an outcome inside 25% of the range 75% of the time, we're talking anything but 'normal.'
     As well as being platykurtic this distribution is heavily skewed to the lower L-Ws. As for those flakes that Wilkins and Chazan would call blades, the numbers taper off to the right much as would be the case in any platykurtic normal distribution. This is to be expected even in a distribution that is close to uniform for a portion of the range. You simply wouldn't expect a strongly, but imperfectly random process to suddenly drop to zero at any point. Thus, the shape of the distribution for the longer flakes is what you'd expect, even from a process that was more random than not. 
     I believe that the L-W ratios of complete blades and flakes data more or less destroy the authors' contention that 'blades' were preferentially removed, relative to just plain old L-W <2 flakes. There's nothing distinctive whatsoever about their blade dimensions when compared along with the rest of the assemblage. I fully expect a similar outcome if we were ever to see the frequency distribution of all 'detached pieces,' both fragmentary and complete, whether called 'flakes' or 'blades' by Wilkins and Chazan.



     Alas, I wish I could say that we're finished. We still have to deal with the authors' contention that there are these prepared cores and that the 'blades' frequently demonstrate 'bi-directional' flake removals, which the authors would say was analogous to the prismatic cores that we see produced by modern humans. 
     When I asked as to what it was besides the L-W ratio that distinguishes the flakes they call blades as blades, Wilkins replied   

the majority of the detached pieces that are twice as long as they are wide have bidirectional dorsal scars (relating them to the bidirectional cores that we describe)

I comes down to this, then. Even if the L-W ratio isn't an acceptable criterion to allow most lithic analysts to spot the 'blades' in the assemblage, the authors nevertheless infer that a 'blade industry' existed at Kathu Pan 1 at 500 Ka. They infer that the blades are being removed from 'bi-directional' cores. This, they suggest, is evidence that the 'blades' were sought after, and that the cores were prepared so that the hominids of the time could employ a bi-directional technique to ensure that they removed a series of elongated flakes. 
     Let's look closer at their contention. I don't know any other way than to display what the authors have given us, at a scale that makes sense. These views of the so-called bi-directional cores are more or less actual size. After admiring the lovely layered effect of banded ironstone in the photo, have a look at the drawing labelled 'c.'

A 'bi-directional core'

I think if I were holding the lump of rock illustrated in 'c' I couldn't have found very many more places from which to strike off flakes. And, regardless of the hard sell that the authors are perpetrating, I think you'd have to be pretty generous to say that the 'directions' of the flake removals do anything but point to the central mass of this core from a variety of angles. As an example of a prepared bi-directional core, this leaves a lot to be desired.

     Think on this. These drawings no doubt represent the best examples of what the authors want to call bi-directional cores, drawn from the approximately 700 cores in the entire assemblage. The authors need to hope that there are better examples if they want to convince anyone but themselves and the Journal of Archaeological Science's referees that there is any merit whatsoever in their argument. 

Now have a look at e, above. I see the same story repeated. No preferred orientation of flake removal, except that the knapper appears to have been aiming at the central mass of this lump of rock, somewhere near its geographic centre. The same story is repeated in the following examples. Bi-directional cores? My ass.

Same story.

A little more ambiguos, but still...

Finally! A 'core' with only 'bi-directional' flaking. Sadly, it's on a small bit of rock that only truly lent itself to end-on flaking, and to the removal of a small number of flakes.

But that's still not all. The authors aver that the flakes they call blades show dorsal flake scarring indicative of at least one previous removal going in the opposite direction--i.e. evidence of having been struck off one of their fantasy bi-directional cores. They say that even the complete flakes don't show the same dorsal morphology. Here's what I think.

     Let’s imagine a core with a long axis of x cm. The knapper is removing flakes from either end so as not to end up with a useless wedge in short order. Flakes of length < X/2 will in all likelihood exhibit unidirectional dorsal flake scars, while flakes in excess of X/2 will in all likelihood exhibit bi-directional flake scars.  I fail to see how the authors' observations imply anything other than that long flakes struck from brick-like cores are more likely to display bidirectional flake scars because they're longer than those flakes called just flakes. 
     And if you don't believe me about the brick-shaped core thing, just listen to what Wilkins and Chazan say about their wonderful, prepared, bi-directional cores.

The authors use the term idealized a lot in this illustration. Go figure! Here they provide no evidence of the presumed preparation of a chunk of rock to produce such a shape from which to strike off elongated flakes bi-directionally. And even if you give the hominids the benefit of the doubt (the half-million year old ones, not the authors), all we're seeing here is, perhaps, the result of a choice as to which of the four 'sides' to exploit. 
     
     Of course, what I think doesn't matter a hill of beans. The palaeoanthropological 'community' will think whatever they want to think, regardless whether the evidence is real or trumped up. So, I'm gonna go back to the store now and get me some more vegetable juice!
     Cheers! Chimo!




* Wilkins, J., Chazan, M., Blade production ~500 thousand years ago at Kathu Pan 1, South Africa: support for a multiple origins hypothesis for early Middle Pleistocene blade technologies, Journal of Archaeological Science (2012), doi:10.1016/ j.jas.2012.01.031

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Handax, Schmandax!

It's been awhile since I blurted about the completely fanciful myth of the so-called handaxe. My metaphorical slumber was interrupted the other day when I came across a really quite lovely bit of banded ironstone from South Africa's Kathu Pan (see below). Kathu Pan, you'll remember, caught my eye back in February after some rather exaggerated claims about a blade industry at a half a million years BP [about which I'll have more to say in the next day or so]. In the case of this bifacial core, the same crew is claiming perhaps the most perfectly symmetrical handax that's ever been discovered from this or any other period. 

I'll agree it's pretty, and irrefutably symmetrical, but I'm reminded of an old saw: If you have an infinite number of chimpanzees and an infinite number of typewriters, eventually you're going to find a Shakespeare sonnet amongst the infinitely large stack of incomprehensible scrabble. You are free to disagree, but if Lower and Middle Palaeolithic archaeologists ever see fit to acknowledge the full range of bifacially flaked pieces in their assemblages this most symmetrical handax EVER, would be seen for what it is--a one in a million fluke.  
     To illustrate a point [cough] that I've made before, I spent about a half-hour this morning Googling images using terms such as Acheulean handax, cleaver, pick and discoid, which if memory serves are the four official categories of Lower Palaeolithic bifaces. Half an hour! Imagine what I could show you if I had some serious time to examine every biface that ever came out of a Lower Palaeolithic site. You can see a smallish version of the collage below. If you'd care to see it a bit larger, just go here. 


 There are at least three kinds of variability in evidence. First is likely due to the raw material. Quartzite [thanks, IainS] doesn't release nice little flakes, so you end up with something that looks like the one shown at the middle of the right hand edge of the above array. On the other hand, micro- or cryptocrystalline material is more amenable to large and small flake removals. So you tend to see the kind of morphology exhibited in the centre left, where if you focus on the hand resting on a table you'll see the difference a fine-grained material makes. You'll also see the second kind of variability that's illustrated here--overall size. The four bifaces in this image range from palm sized to clipboard-sized dimensions. Just to show you how ridiculous this typology is, have a look at another artifact from the Kathu Pan area.

Look at the size of it! Not even as long as a ball-point pen! And don't get any ideas about it's being a 'point' because it's about as thick ventro-dorsally as it is wide from margin to margin. The wonder of it all is that no one seems to care! No one seems to notice that some of these so-called handaxes are almost too big to heft, much less wield effectively as a cutting tool. Check out the guy up above, middle right near the top. He's demonstrating exactly why the idea that any of these bifaces are finished artifacts is a laughable myth. Come on, people!
     The third kind of variability about which archaeologists are in desperate need of acknowledging is the abundance of different shapes that Lower Palaeolithic bifaces can take. Don't, please, let the old four-fold classification colour your perception. When, for instance, Louis Leakey showed up in National Geographic in the 1960s he had to give the rocks he'd found some kind of function that you and I could apprehend, and so he called some picks, some cleavers, some discoids, and some handaxes. I think you'd have to be blind or simply obstructionist to view the variability that's in evidence above as anything other than an expression of the continuous variability of Lower Palaeolithic bifaces from 'amorphous lump' to the shining example from Kathu Pan. 
     Face it! Are all of those shapes the result of mental templates in the Palaeolithic hominids' heads? You must be joking! If you persist in thinking that way, then you'll want to come up with something better than the four-fold classification with which we've all 'grown up.' Nothing short of several dozen nomina would do to describe half the variability in evidence here. And don't waste my time trying to tell me that the ones that don't fall neatly into the handax, cleaver, pick and discoid classes fail because they were imperfectly made. If you think that, you'll want to rethink the idea of a mental template, since the only seemingly constant amongst all of the above is that they exhibit flake removals on both faces. They're BIFACES, fer gawd's sake! 
     The only thing that distinguishes one from another is planted firmly in the mind of the thoroughly indoctrinated archaeologists who perpetuate this farce of a classification system. What, pray tell, would one do with the one that's one frame in from the left edge about half way down? It looks like nothing so much as a flaccid penis! What about the one that looks like a sawfish bill, second row from the top, three in from the right? And look at the size of it! It's like half a metre long! I think it's time for a fifth category--chain saw! For reals? For reals. 
     Handax? Schmandax!
     GIVE ME AN EFFING BREAK!
Get over it.

Leading Lam to the Laughter--Her Teachers, Not Me!

From the AAAS web site

There is no way I'm gonna let this go without a response. Mimi Lam, graduate student at one of my alma maters, UBC, has been much in the news of late. She purports to argue that the 'handaxe' was the 'first commodity,' and that its persistence in the archaeological record was due to meaning with which it came to be imbued, including what she calls 'cultural power,' whatever that is. Lam's brand of scholarship is the kind that makes me squirm in my seat when I hear it in person, and makes me scream out loud when I'm reading it in private. It's at least twice removed from the reality of actual Lower and Middle Palaeolithic scholarship, and makes so many perilous leaps of faith as to take one's breath away.
     Although I 'published' this a few minutes ago, it occurred to me as I was walking away that none of this is, strictly speaking, Ms. Lam's fault. In fact, this is about the best 'object lesson' I could think of to illustrate what the Subversive Archaeologist is all about. Ms. Lam bases her entire argument on 'knowledge' that she, no doubt, received from her anthropology instructors--perhaps even her own advisor. That 'knowledge' has led Ms. Lam to construct an elaborate argument that, were any of its assumptions in reality true, she may (maybe) have a cogent argument. I'm talking about the notion that there is a thing called a handaxe that was the desired end-product of a lithic reduction sequence performed by, in the earliest times, by Homo erectus (and variations thereof), and later by Homo neanderthalensis. She would also have been taught, unequivocally, that the 'handaxe' was the product of a mental template in the mind of the maker. That mind may well have been capable of language, and 'culture' and so on.
     So, in what follows, please keep in mind that, but for the occasional grammatical issue (which can easily be forgiven in a conference abstract), the problems that I point out in Ms. Lam's presentation are, on the whole, the fault of her teachers and mentors, and those whose work she has read, and that she is in no way culpable for having constructed this argument on that basis. As such, her paper is an example of just what happens if you let your anthropology babies grow up to be carbon copies of people who peddle conventional wisdom using hackneyed course notes and stenographic repetition of mantra-like presumptions about the hominid past.
     So far the only published version of her oral presentation at the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting is the abstract that's published on the conference web page. I think it contains quite enough grist for my mill. Enough, at least, to obviate the need to read any longer version that might (improbable though it seems to me) make it into print. Lam's words are shown in white. Mine will be subversive yellow. In her own words: 

I argue that the ability to build

'Build' is not an accurate description of making a stone artifact. It is a subtractive process, and can in no way be considered a 'construction' or something that is 'built.'

portable,

This is hardly a useful addition to this sentence, given that portability was not a question for about a million and a half years. For portability to make any sense at all there must be an alternative, and as far as we know, with the possible exception of nests made in trees or refuges that were used repeatedly, there was no alternative to portability.

durable

The durability is likewise of no relevance here--we're talking about 'tools' made of stone, not, presumably, the ability to choose between making a 'handaxe' out of stone vs. malleable or perishable material. 

artefacts may trace the evolution of human cognition.

This almost goes without saying. 

Hominins evolved a complex suite

In the whole history of Hominidae (or Hominini, if you prefer) this may be true. But for the first 2 million years the 'complexity' of stone tool making amounted to smacking one rock against another such that a sharp chip was removed. True 'complexity' came much later, and depending on whom you canvass, might have occurred during the tenure of Neanderthals and their contemporaries, or not until the advent of modern humans. 

of stone tools, which reflected both emerging individual cognition

I am at a loss to know what is meant by 'individual' cognition? I was unaware of any other kind. 

and embodied knowledge.

To say that 'knowledge' was involved in this acitivity is to presume a level of cognitive ability on a par with our own, which is by no means a secure position. 

The manufacture of robust,

again, meaningless against a backdrop of stone, stone, and more stone.

standardized

This is where Lam starts to stray into areas she ought not to have strayed into. While it's true that many, many archaeoalogists have historically held to the idea that the handaxe represented a 'standardized' form, there is by no means a consensus on the question, and indeed very good reason to doubt the assertion. Those who've been visiting the Subversive Archaeologist since its inception will remember this, and this, and this, where I attempt to take apart the idea that there is anything standard, or even purposeful, about the shapes of bifacial cores in the archaeological record until the Upper Palaeolithic.

artefacts may have enabled their trade

Creation of whatever is implied by the 'handaxe' 'may' also have enabled their use as door stops, but that would entail the further inference that doors existed in those times--hardly a reasonable assertion. To say that there would or could have been 'trade' at that time depth is speculative, at best, and cannot be considered a serious hypothesis, much less a well-warranted assumption. Also, whether or not the artifacts were robust or standardized they would nonetheless be tradable. So, this statement is either really ambiguous or truly nonsensical. You choose.

and imbued them,

This is purely a pedantic observation. As the sentence is constructed, the 'manufacture imbued the biface with cultural meaning.' I think not.  

over time, with cultural meaning within hominin social groups.

Again, the 'meaning' of an object or of its manufacture is something that you and I are quite able to grasp, because we give meaning to everything in our world. Whether or not previous hominid forms were capable of having this conversation, and thus able to give an arbitrary meaning or meanings to a given object is still a very open question.

Here, the longevity,

The persistence through time and space of the 'handaxe' can be explained by hominid cognition or the absence thereof, and is therefore a non-question. 

ubiquity,

The wide distribution of 'handaxes' can only be explained by the ubiquity of the hominids, and not the intrinsic or semiotic attributes of the things themselves. 

durability,

The preservation of handaxes cannot be explained by anything other than that they are made of extremely durable material. It's a crying shame that all of the wood handaxes didn't preserve. But that's the archaeological record for you! 

and stability in design

There is nothing stable about the 'design' of a handaxe other than the stability of the paradigm with which archaeologists have viewed them through time and in distinguishing the 'handaxe' from other bifacially flaked pieces that do not conform to the mental template in the mind of those archaeologists. 

of Acheulean handaxes is explained by viewing handaxe construction in three temporal phases, co-evolving with the human niche:

More pedantry, I'm afraid. I fail to see how 'handaxe construction' could 'co-evolve' with the 'human niche.' According to Lam the construction and shape both remained static over immense time and space, and in fact did not 'evolve.' 

first, as iconic

To label the 'handaxe' 'iconic' presumes that their hominid creators had the cognitive ability to 'see' such things as other than lumps of hard stuff. 

multipurpose

The function of the handaxe has always been and continues to be the subject of endless speculation, and it is by no means a certainty that it had any purpose beyond that of a source for sharp chips of stone with which to cut or scrape. 

functional tools,

I believe this is a straightforward redundancy. 

fashioned by ancestral hominins

Finally a well-warranted assumption! 

; second, as standard

Ditto on the whole 'standard' thing. 

indexical commodities

Again, this presumes the hominids that left the 'handaxes' had the ability to conceive of such things, which is by no means a given, especially amongst what Lam goes on to label as 'pre-linguistic' hominids. 

exchanged in social relationships, perhaps as a paleocurrency among pre-linguistic hominins; and third, as symbolic of cultural power, carried and exchanged as gifts by modern humans within socially constructed niches, now filled with shared meanings and language.

I hope that Lam is describing the circumstances that would surround, say, one of my friends getting a hold of a real archaeological 'handaxe,' knowing that I'm a palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist, and giving it to me as a gift, whereupon I would display it on my mantle. Ascribing such behaviour to any 'hominid' other than cognitively modern humans is a huge leap of faith. In fact, the entire abstract, and no doubt the entire paper is no more than a giant leap of faith. In no way does it represent the level of scholarship, even, in the matters about which it claims to have something to say.