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.

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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"We Didn't Start The Fire" (Billy Joel, Storm Front, 1989)

You already know what I might be gonna say. Don't you?
     I've much more to say about the Beaumont Current Anthropology article that I began blurting about earlier this week. His field and post-excavation observations are, to my ear and eye, Byzantine. And I'm enjoying poking holes in and fun at his meandering piece on Wonderwerk Cave.
But, you'll have to wait, I'm afraid, because at the moment I'm having a very pleasant conversation with a not-inexpensive 2010 Sonoma County Chalk Hill Chardonnay produced by the Rodney Strong Estate Vineyards. The label describes it as 'displaying yellow apple and pie spice with a hint of minerality on a long finish.' I couldn't agree more. I don't have much of an olfactory due to chronic rhinitis, but even I can add to that description 'hints of butter and butterscotch.' This is not a cheap wine. And, in contrast to the manner in which I drink my Crane Lake vinifera, I'm savoring every moment of this one.
     Don't panic! I haven't lost what's left of my left-side brain. It was a gift from someone who appreciates the work I do in my lowly day job. In defense of my lowly position, I at least share something with all of the other pay grades at my university--a very comfortable package of benefits that means I needn't worry about health care, or much else, and which also includes a pension. I'd gladly take the poor pay in exchange for the extremely and unusually good total compensation package!

     TTFN!

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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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Updated: 20th Century Fertilizer Mining in Wonderwerk Cave!

 I'm working furiously on the rabbit hole that Wonderwerk Cave is rapidly showing itself to be. Last year, long-time worker at Wonderwerk publishes this:

…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 (Current Anthropology, 52, 585-595, 2011).

WTF? I can assure you its wasn't owl poop they were mining. It was, yes, bat guano.

     No bat guano in Wonderwerk Cave just became 'Whatever happened to the bat guano in Wonderwerk Cave?'

     This isn't over.


Oops! Almost forgot. This just in. Nature, yesterday, publishes an article titled Evolutionary anthropology: Homo 'incendius', by Bert Roberts and Michael Bird. Fire at 1 Ma is not just big news, it's as big as it gets. And it's all gonna fall.
     Next up: Prometheus unfounded.

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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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It's Not Monday! It's Fry-Day.

I just pressed send on an email to Francesco Berna and Paul Goldberg, asking them to respond to my argument just the other day that they shouldn't have expected to see Berlinite in the fire-affected sediments at Wonderwerk Cave. Viz.

Berna, et al. 2012. Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. PNAS April 2, 2012. Published online before print April 2, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.1117620109

Remember? They argued that the fire had to have been deliberately introduced to the cave by hominids because they found nothing that would suggest that spontaneous combustion of bat guano was responsible. They erroneously believe that bat guano spontaneous combustion necessarily produces Berlinite. But they are tripped up by an empirical bump in the road. They report finding the effects of heat, but only up to 550 degrees Celsius. Unbeknownst to them, Berlinite forms at 583. Thus, their claim for fire use at 1 Ma is baseless. 
     I'm hoping that the direct approach will coax them either to overcome the shortcomings of their empirical findings or publish a retraction of their huge claim that at 1 Ma hominids were using fire.

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I MUST BE BAT-GUANO CRAZY!

All right. I'm working on the dregs of a halfway decent boxed chardonnay. I'm waiting for the washing machine to be free. I'm ready. It's time to turn up the heat on the claims emanating from Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, South Africa. There's a fatal flaw in the argument that there's evidence for the controlled use of fire in the Acheulean (i.e. Lower Palaeolithic) levels, at about 1,000,000 years BCE [and I'm not talkin' 'bout Brigitte Bardot].
     Wonderwerk Cave's located where there's a diamond labelled WK in the heart of the photomap below.

After Henshilwood and Dubreuil. 2011. The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort, 77–59 ka: Symbolic Material Culture and the Evolution of the Mind during the African Middle Stone Age. Current Anthropology, 52, 361-400.

I'm seeing all these news reports! This story is everywhere you look. If you watch the news ticker up top for a few minutes, you'll see not only the English-speaking media reports, but also those from areas where they speak Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Scandihoovian and some I don't even recognize. In words of one syllable this is big news to a lot of folks. And well it should be, if it were true. As you now know, I have have reason to counter the claim.
     I may not be a geochemist or a micromorphologist, but I am sentient. And when I see an extraordinary claim... Well, you know how it goes. I do what I can to learn enough to achieve a minimal level of critical ability and then assess the extent to which the claimants attempt--successfully--to rule out natural processes. In the case of this Lower Palaeolithic Prometheus, the chemistry and the technology are my stretch domains. However, logical argumentation is my comfort zone. So, with a little Googling and some gumption, that's where I'm headed today. 
     I'm talking about a paper, recently published in PNAS.

Berna, et al. 2012. Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. PNAS April 2, 2012.

 Published online before print April 2, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1117620109

[Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a(nother) rabbit outa my hat!]

The authors contend that their findings provide 'the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.' [At this point all of you readers will, automaton-like, voice the pre-eminent subversive question: 'Did they rule out natural causes before imputing their discoveries to humans or other hominids?' Pat, pat. Good little Subversive! Here's a biscuit.]

Paul Goldberg and Francesco Berna

I've been seeing similar claims from Middle Palaeolithic contexts since the late 80s, almost always accompanied by Paul Goldberg's micromorphological analysis and Steve Weiner's or Francesco Berna's Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry of the phosphate minerals. I've been skeptical all along, which is my proclivity, nevertheless I've been reluctant to mount a critique. Until now. The stakes have finally grown too great to remain silent. 
     I've known Paul since the mid 80s. We spent time together at Keatley Creek, in B.C. Then after a month-long stint at Kebara Cave in '89 he toured me around the south of Israel, at which time I met Arlene Rosen, and during which I got hotter than I can remember ever being before or since, in the Dead Sea Depression. 
     I had a job once when I was at SFU. I was to impregnate a bunch of micromorphology samples from the Keatley Creek site with fibreglass resin. Unfortunately the vacuum chamber I was using was a little short of breath and some of the samples turned out crap. But that's beside the point. [Really, Rob? What IS the point of all this reminiscing?] The point is that I know Paul. I know his work. He [quite literally] wrote the book on the micromorphological study of archaeological sediments. I accept his findings. Nevertheless, when all's said and done in the authors' analysis of Wonderwerk Cave, it's not Paul's micro-study that's at fault. Nor is it Francesco Berna's FTIS results. It's the way they argue on the basis of their findings at which I baulk.

Wonderwerk Cave [er, the entrance, at any rate]

In case there are one or two of you who're wondering what's so special about fire, I would just remind you that the controlled use of fire has always been considered one of the hallmarks of human achievement [remember Prometheus?]. It's the same in human evolution. Making and using fire is as human as it gets. That there are numerous articles propounding its use in the Middle Palaeolithic is at odds with other evidence of cognitive evolution [there's much subversion yet to be done there]. That's bad enough for this subversive; the claim from Wonderwerk Cave could set back empirical enquiry into the true first use of fire by a hundred years. 

     At Wonderwerk a deeply stratified deposit contains an abundance of what are referred to as 'rubefied' [or reddened] sediments. This should come as no surprise, since the deposits are made up almost exclusively of aeolian sand that's encrusted with iron oxide [=rust]. However, there are also places where the excavators recovered floral ash and burned faunal fragments. Bat caves are capable of building up prodigious deposits of guano--they've been mined, historically, for fertilizer--and those deposits are known to burst into flame spontaneously. So, why couldn't the fire-affected traces be the result of naturally occurring fire(s)? After all, the authors report no features at the site that might be construed as hearths.
     To their credit, Berna et al. have succeeded in mounting a convincing argument that enough heat was generated here and there in the deposits to have altered the chemistry of plant and animal remains, leaving ash and burned bone and plant remains. They infer that temperatures higher than 550 °C were not in evidence. 
     They base their refutation of the spontaneous combustion argument on the work of one geologist from one cave in Romania, Cioclovina. The authors conclude that natural, spontaneous combustion of bat guano had not occurred in Wonderwerk Cave. 
     This is the shape their argument takes

a) When bat guano spontaneously combusts it transforms some of the guano's aluminum phosphates into two very rare forms: Berlinite and hydroxylellestadite.

 b) FTIS found no Berlinite or hydroxylellestadite in the samples from Wonderwerk cave.

c) Therefore no spontaneous combustion of bat guano can explain the fire-affected flora and fauna in the cave.

Here are some brutal facts up against which this argument cannot stand.

1. The discovery of Berlinite in unconsolidated sediments at Cioclovina Cave is unique. All the rest of the Berlinite known in the world occurs in the form of ore. At Cioclovina the Berlinite formed during one or more episodes of very high temperature combustion of bat guano--so hot, in fact, that a stratum of sediment was fused solid (Onac, Effenberger and Breban, High-temperature and “exotic” minerals from the Cioclovina Cave, Romania: a review, Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai, Geologia, 52, 3- 10, 2007).

2. The discovery of hydroxylellestadite at Cioclovina Cave is equally unique. 

3. Berlinite forms at 583 °C (http://www.mindat.org/min-633.html) [I was able to find no empirical data on the temperature at which hydroxylellestadite forms].

4. Bat guano degrades normally to form phosphate minerals including, but not limited to Brushite, ardealite, monetite, Taranakite, variscite, crandalite, sasaite, hydroxylapatite, whitlockite, vivianite, Hopite, sampleite, and churchite (Encyclopedia of Caves, 2nd Edition, by W.B. White and D.C. Culver, Academic Press, 2012).

5. Under great pressure and very high temperatures bat guano will form Arnemhite, Berlinite, and Pyrocoproite [and is now known to form hydroxylellestadite] (Encyclopedia of Caves, 2nd Edition, by W.B. White and D.C. Culver, Academic Press, 2012).

Berna et al. have argued that because no Berlinite was found at Wonderwerk Cave they were able to rule out spontaneous combustion of bat guano at the source of the heat that altered the floral and faunal remains they examined. However, the same authors have determined that at Wonderwerk Cave combustion occurred at temperatures below 550 °C. Mineral science teaches us that Berlinite and hydroxylellestadite form at temperatures at or above 583 °C. No such temperature was reached in Wonderwerk Cave. Ipso facto, prest-o change-o, Berna et al. have erred in presuming that Berlinite would have formed at Wonderwerk Cave.
     Berna et al. state the following

Moreover, micromorphology and mFTIR did not show evidence for remains of guano and/or high-temperature phosphate mineral phases (i.e., berlinite and hydroxylellestadite); these minerals characteristically form during spontaneous combustion of bat guano—a rare event but one documented inside caves. 

I would be verrry interested to see the complete results of the FTIS analysis of the Wonderwerk sediments. Given that there are Chiroptera remains in the sequence it's likely that there would have been at least some guano lying around at some time during the hominid use of the the cave. And, as you prolly know, bats are known to aggregate in the gabillions in some caves. I'd be surprised to find NO evidence of the phosphate minerals that would belie the earlier presence of bat guano--burned or not.
     So, there you have it, Paul and Francesco [we've never actually met, Francesco, but I hope you won't mind me using your first name--they always told me I should act like a grown-up once I got my Ph.D., and so I try now and again to follow their advice]. 
     The gauntlet is thrown down. 
     Gentlemen! Show me the monetite!