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

This just in!

University of Colorado
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology
Dr. Thomas Wynn

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

Well done, Tom!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

El Pulguero Suroeste is here, in Baja California:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*catches breath*

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

* in the sense of definition #5

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Karen Ruebens, Part Two: It Was Touch And Go, But the Neanderthals Still Can't Grab a Break. Beam Me Up, Scotty, There's No Cultural Traditions Here

My last post began a critical review of 

Ruebens, K., "Regional behaviour among late Neanderthal groups in Western Europe: A comparative assessment of late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tool variability," Journal of Human Evolution (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.06.009

in which she rationalizes the various European Late Middle Palaeolithic (MP) stone bifaces. In my previous post I had a little fun with the five categories of biface that she settled on as suitable for comparison across Late MP Europe. My favourite is the fifth and final type: the Partial Biface. [For which we are given no information as to the reason for calling it that. I mean, really, whether or not its partial is irrelevant if what you're dealing with is Mousterian bifaces. If you are able to tell that it was once a larger bifacially flake artifact, it's still a biface!]

It turns out that Ruebens took an excruciatingly long path to settle on those five types. It was a journey that she could have cut short if only she'd asked me. After all of the various attributes were tabulated, the five types are just those that you would have arrived at following a traditional morpho-typological regime. Be that as it may, the author moved on. I've created a montage of the bifaces published in three photographs in the paper. They appear below.

Add caption

Having once established the five types for comparison, the author went looking for geographical patterning. In so doing she discovered what, to her, looked like three distinct regions of Europe, in which the Neanderthal inhabitants maintained a tradition (or three) of making and using artifacts only of a certain kind and in numerical proportion to one another, throughout the Late MP. That's a revolutionary claim. Unfortunately the revolution turns out to be a dud.

It seems we've caught François knapping!

The deeper I get into this paper, the more I'm disappointed that it was published in the high-impact Journal of Human Evolution. For, when I began looking closely at the fourteen sites that the author personally examined, and which appear on the map below. It shows the extent of the three "culturally" distinct regions that the author proposes—the Mousterian of Acheulean Traditon (MTA), the Mousterian with Bifacial Tools, and the Keilmessergruppen (KMG). No, the letters in the initialism MTA are not transposed. The initialism for the MTA was born in France in the mid-twentieth century, to one François Bordes, the primary author of the French palaeolithic typology. He dubbed assemblages fitting this pattern Le Moustérien de Tradition Acheuléenne. Hence MTA.



I hope it'll become clear to you, as it has to me, that this study is a total disaster. 

Big mistake. You look at the map above and you see three areas encircled by dashed lines—one yellow, one blue, and one red. And, in the absence of descriptive information [of which there seems to be in regard to this graphic] you might think that the little triangles that denote the locations of the 14 sites the author personally examined for this work. However, the reader who's interested enough to go looking, you aren't told the regional affinity of any of the 14 until the paper's done. Yep, those bits of information occur in Table A.1. There the author gives us the "General characteristics" of those fourteen sites. Table A.1 is first mentioned in the Materials and Methods section, where the author explains 

. . . detailed typo-technological attribute data was collected from 1303 late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tools from 14 case study sites. These 14 assemblages were selected to form a sample representative of the bifacial tool variation across the study area, including classic French MTA and German KMG assemblages, assemblages from other, lesser-studied areas, [AND] assemblages that do not conform to the MTA/KMG dichotomy (for an overview see Table A.1). [emphasis mine: hold that thought]

We're told that the 14 provide a 'representative' sample. We're also told that, in addition to the MTA and the KMG, there are other assemblages . . . and [those] that do not conform.

There's no subterfuge there. But unless you're aware of what's to come, those 'other' two kinds of assemblages are just there, something, presumably, for the author to deal with further on. Later on, they are referred to again, this time as "other biface bearing entities." Yet, all through the meat of the paper, we're repeatedly informed that the 1303 artifacts cluster in patterned ways in three [count 'em, three] regions. It came as a surprise to me, and I'm certain it will for everybody that's read this paper, there is, in fact, a fourth kind of assemblage that doesn't fit in the tripartite regional picture. In Table A.1 these are referred to as "Other." And, as you can see, there are FOUR OF THE EFFERS!

Once again I'm having to place it sideways for legibility.

The FOUR of the fourteen sites that, oh, by the way, didn't fit into one of the author's three 'cultural traditions' are: Sint-Geertruid, Grotte du Docteur, Champlost, and Abri du Musée. That's juicy. No? Four of the sites that appear in the distribution map of 'regional cultural traditions' don't belong. This paper should have had an epigraph: Caveat emptor. So, we're down to nine sites that Ruebens has used to construct her cultural 'typology.' But, the revelations don't stop there.

EVEN MORE DISTRESSING, Table A.1 informs us that the 'assemblages' from Sint-Geertrud, Bois-du-Rocher, and St-Julien de la Liègue were all surface collections amassed unsystematically over the past, oh, century or so. *big exclamation mark emerges from writer's head* What? That's really bad.

So, I think there'll be no detractors if I toss out the four sites that Ruebens deems to be 'other,' and ignore the surface collections from Bois-du-Rocher and St-Julien de la Liègue.

If you're keeping score, six of the fourteen "Case Study" site collections have just shown themselves to be worthless. That leaves eight that are, we're told are, really, really, comparable and useful for such regional comparisons. Oh, yeah. I remember, Ruebens also included insights drawn from publications dealing with 67 other sites across Europe. That sounds good, I know. And it might have rescued her thesis if it hadn't been for this, which the author leaves behind as she breezes past in a vapour,

In many [of the 67 other] site reports, exact numbers are not given for the different types of bifacial tools. 

 Wait for it . . .

Therefore for comparison purposes the occurrence of bifacial tools was divided into four categories: absent (blank), low (<15 and="" high="" medium="">50%).

Quelle desastre! Who knows how much weight the author gave to these so-called data? It's a good thing we don't need to know. This whole house of cards comes down right before your eyes, and just a little further down.

After ferreting out the details that are only to be found in Appendix A, someone more critical than I might understandably suspect that, in the distribution map (repeated below), the author might appear to be being disingenuous. I don't say that. But some might. Simply because there is no fine-grained discussion of this crucial graphic. If there had been, I might not have been duped by what I see in this map. I shows all 14 of the 'Case study' sites personally examined by the author [which we now know to be, in fact, eight in total.]



See all those sites within the boundary of the MBT? Does it surprise you that TWO of them are classed as MTA: Bois-du-Rocher and Saint-Just-en-Chaussée. In fact, only two of those sites illustrated within the MBT area are classified as MBT. And one of them we have already tossed—St-Julien de la Liègue—because it was all collected from the surface over the past century or so. The remaining three sites shown within the bounds of the MBT 'cultural tradition' area are from the "Other" category, i.e. cannot be assigned to any of the three 'traditions' that Ruebens has erected in this paper. Meet me after this map. So, you see, this map is almost completely misleading.

Okay. Where do we go from here? There are still eight 'Case Study' sites and the information from the 67 published assemblages. Do they still tell the same story? In a word? No. And I'll show you why right now!

The two images that follow are based on a geological map, which I serendipitously found while searching on the Google for Europe+map+karst. The areas shown in blue are karst. They are the only places on that map where bipedal apes would have found flint. In the map immediately below I've plotted [as nearly as I could] those fourteen sites from the Ruebens map, above. The second map shows Europe without the six collections that we've had to toss out.

BEFORE. Yellow dots: MTA. Green dots: MBT. Red dots: KMG. Purple dots (!): OTHER. Source give in the next caption.

And after the six unsuitable sites are dropped.

AND AFTER. Ruebens 'Case Study' sites after culling the sic that are unsuitable for these purposes. Yellow dots: MTA.  Green dot: MBT. Red dots: KMG  Source: University of Aukland, School of Environment, "World Map of Carbonate Outcrops 3.0."

We're not through, yet. Even if, and I mean IF, the data from the 67 published collections made this paper a slam dunk, the only map that matters is the one right up there. And now I'll tell you why, if you haven't already figgered it out.

In addition to the 'data' that I've been discussing to this point [including yesterday's post], Ruebens's gives us a half-dozen morphological comparisons that I'm choosing not to worry about right now. I don't think they'll help the argument one bit. During her discussion of the THREE 'regional traditions,' we get the following graph, showing the relative proportion of raw material types found in the fourteen "Case Study" sites that I've been discussing thus far. Oops! I meant to say eight! No worries!

Figure 5. Proportional occurrence of different bifacial tool concepts across different macro-regions based on the data from 14 case study sites (Table 9) and 67 comparison sites (Table B.2). ‘Northeast’ relates to the German sites (n: 15), ‘Southwest’ to the sites from southwest France (n: 13) and ‘Central Northwest Europe’ to the sites from the Netherlands (n: 3), Belgium (n: 19), Britain (n: 7), northern France (n: 8), western France (n: 7), and eastern France (n: 9). [taken verbatim from Ruebens 2013]

For those of you who are red-green colour-blind, the stacked bars illustrate the relative proportions of the five artifact concepts/types/traditions that Ruebens has defined, from left to right, and darkest to lightest. NOTE: here Ruebens employs the entire corpus of 14 'Case Study' sites and the 67 published reports. So, this graph is the only place you'll see what the author has used to construct and instantiate the three [not four] Neanderthal 'cultural traditions.'You'll see on the bottom bar that in the region the author terms the 'southwest' the numbers of hand axes approaches 90 percent of the overall assemblage. For the central area the hand axe proportion is just over 60 percent. In the northeast it's less than 10 percent.

Ruebens concludes that these apparently persistent assemblage patterns are a clear indication of cultural traditions, and Neanderthal smarts.

Culture. Yep. Neanderthal culture. Cultural traditions. Time-honoured traditions. Dad and Mum showing little Eva and Adama how to make little sharp rocks from big dull ones.

Sorry. But Ruebens paints a completely erroneous picture with these data.There is really no evidence to support her thesis. And there is a perfectly good explanation for the distributions she has inadvertently come across.

Now, have a look at this map of Europe showing areas where one might acquire flint, by far the best material available, and perhaps, on balance, the best, all-round knapping rock of them all. The circles roughly outline the northeast (red), central (green) and southwestern (blue) regions used in the graph shown above.

Remember that the blue bits are sources of flint. 

What do you see within those three areas that Ruebens obviously did not see, much less consider? Yeppers. Blue stuff. Flint-bearing rock. So, now what do you think best explains the relative proportion of hand axes in each of the three circled regions—culture? Nope. I have a rock-solid alternative explanation. Lithic analysts call it curation, I believe.

In the northeast (red circle), where good chipping rock is really, really scarce, I'm proposing that if you live in that red circle, whether you're a Neanderthal or one of us, any worthwhile lump of flint that you could get your mitts on would be used, retouched, used, retouched, used, retouched, and used to within an inch of its imperishable life. Moreover, if the FAF is correct, and I believe it is, the dearth of workable rock in Germany meant that if you got to the stage where in the southwest the lump would yell "Hand Axe" to unwitting palaeoanthropologsts, you wouldn't stop to admire it's symmetry.

On the other hand, if you lived in the central portion (green circle), where good rock is abundant, but not ubiquitous, depending on your location you'd either think you were in flint heaven and be a total profligate, or conserve, conserve, conserve like those poor buggers in Germany.

As for the southwest of France. Le magnifique Sud-Ouest! Wine. Great food. An equable climate, which would have come in handy to a Neanderthal as the world descended into the last major ice age. Again, depending where you are, you'd have to be stingy or you could say forget it, as, no doubt those in the yellow dots near the Dordogne Valley must have done. 

I think I can stop here. I was gonna go into great [and, frankly, mind-numbingly boring] detail about the metric comparisons, but I don't think it's necessary at this point.

I trust that you've enjoyed this trip to Late Mousterian Europe. Join me next time for another trip down Mythopeoia Lane.

Your comments will always be welcome. It's Miller time.

Adios, muchachos!

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.

More Re: Karen Ruebens* and Neanderthal Lithic Cultural Traditions [?]—Part The First

Over the last two years I've barked at and bitten the referees and editors of most of the journals we depend on for new knowledge of us and our origins: Science, Nature, Quaternary Research (QR), QR International, QR Science, Journal of Archaeological Science, PNAS, and the hapless PLOS ONE.

Moving right along . . .

The other day I promised more detail as to why I think Karen Ruebens's arguments in the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) couldn't stand up to critical scrutiny. Today, I'm fulfilling that promise. This must be your lucky day!

Go here to access the paper.

I'm finding that I'm spending a lot of time on this critique. I suppose it's worthwhile to suggest a good reason as to why I should expect you or anyone else to follow me down this path. I think there's a really, really, important reason for both.

Karen Ruebens is claiming to have achieved what could not be achieved by others in the . . . oh . . . hundred-plus years that archaeologists have been seriously studying the Middle Palaeolithic (MP).

Think about it. It's akin to a fossil hunter revising the entire bipedal ape taxonomy and phylogeny. It's no small thing. And the media are already running with it, and in many languages.

It's for this reason it's imperative that we take a very close look at the premises, the evidence, and the arguments used in support of Ruebens s claims. If her claims becomes orthodoxy, those of us on this side of the palaeoanthropological fence will be rolling it uphill on an even steeper slope.

Get it?

Got it?

Good!

This paper deals with the "late" MP, about 115,000 ka to about 35,000 ka [i.e. Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 5d–3, see below]. It was a time during which the Neanderthals had the run of Ice-Age Europe and western Asia—at the same time as the global climate was deteriorating. As you can see from the graphic below, the late MP started off at the height of the last interglacial. Initially the Neanderthals enjoyed a climate much like that of today. But, by the time Neanderthals disappeared from the fossil record, Earth's climate was on its way to being the coldest it had been for several hundred thousand years. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) occurred considerably later, and by that time our direct ancestors had been the sole inhabitant of Europe for some 20,000 years.

Marine Isotope Stages of the last 300,000 years. Dashed yellow line marks the division between warmer and colder global climate. Dashed grey lines delineate the late Middle Palaeolithic period discussed in the Reubens paper.

Actually, as I began reading this paper I had high hopes, because of what motivated the author: to unjumble the tangle of lithic technological terms and local and regional temporal and typological nomenclature used throughout Europe by palaeolithic archaeologists. Ruebens focusses on bifacially flaked stone artifacts from the last 20 kyr or so of the MP [from about 60 ka to about 40 ka], and a broad swath of Europe including France, England, the low countries, and Germany.

Data collection was aimed at acquiring observations on

1. artefact condition [oddly, not defined, nor does it form part of the presentation];
2. technology—raw material, blank, cortex, back, cross section, shaping and edge angles;
3. typology—both bifacial tool concept and bifacial tool type;
4. measurements and ratios. 

I put the terms concept and type in italics for a good reason: those words are a red flag to me. A concept can reside in the mind of the archaeologist; or, its use can bely the presumption or interpretation that a concept was formed in the head of, in this case, a Neanderthal rock knocker. As for the notion of a type, many of the 50 or so MP types defined by François Bordes are now seen as representing a stage in a time-transgressive sequence of flake removals that had no object other than to create and maintain a useful cutting edge. Many of Bordes's types were erected due to what's come to be known as the Finished Artifact Fallacy (FAF)—the idea that although we are able to group like with like, the group's constituents need not result from deliberate action. Harold Dibble's careful work on lithic reduction sequences gave us the best illustration of the FAF.

From Harold L. Dibble, "The Interpretation of Middle Paleolithic Scraper Morphology," American Antiquity 52:109-117, 1987.

The Ruebens paper's major claims are concisely laid out in the abstract, a snippet of which is reproduced below.

     Results indicate a high level of variation among individual bifacial tools and assemblages. Each bifacial tool concept is correlated with various methods of production, resulting in large degrees of morphological variation. Despite such variation, a distinct three-fold, macro-regional pattern was identified: the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition (MTA) in the southwest dominated by handaxes, the Keilmessergruppen (KMG) in the northeast typified by backed and leaf-shaped bifacial tools, and, finally a new unit, the Mousterian with Bifacial Tools (MBT), geographically situated between these two major entities, and characterised by a wider variety of bifacial tools.
     Differing local conditions, such as raw material or function, are not sufficient to explain this observed macro-regional tripartite [word missing? division?]. Instead, the MTA and KMG can be viewed as two distinct cultural traditions, where the production of a specific bifacial tool concept was passed on over generations. Conversely, the MBT is interpreted as a border zone where highly mobile groups of Neanderthals from both the east (KMG) and west (MTA) interacted. [emphasis added]

This isn't the first time the author uses the term correlated, and while it's denotatively correct in this context, the reader's thoughts instantly presume that some robust statistical analyses will be presented. They never materialize. [Further down, these correlations will figure prominently.] Then the other shoe drops. We learn that the author has found evidence of cultural traditions in her research. I was on pins and needles to see the data! 

But, before getting into the gritty business of typologies, I want to pause and consider what the abstract tells us about the primary finding of Ruebens s work. I don't know about you, but after I read the abstract and consulted the map at left, my first impression was that what's identified as "a border zone," and a third "distinct cultural tradition"—the MBT—appears to be anything but. Seriously, the MBT is not a "border zone," even if it says so in the paper. The MBT spans the breadth of the MTA, yet it overlaps the KMG only for about half the length of the total overlap between the MTA and KMG. Moreover, this reader is wondering just how the author managed to distinguish between the two 'cultural traditions,' MTA and MBT, if the MBT is superposed. I say to author Ruebens: "Do tell!"

As I pored over the text and tables in this paper, it became clear to me that results are squarely based on the a priori presumption that the shiny biface thingies called different names in different places WERE, in fact, the result of concepts in the Neanderthal consciousness—she accepts, holus-bolus, the reality of the various artifact types. Having mentioned the FAF in her introduction, the author completely ignores it for the remainder of this paper. So, she addressed the 25 differently named biface types, lumped like with like, and arrived at five categories, or types, concepts, cultural traditions—you name it. 

Okay. Let's look at what the author distilled from the plethora of counter-productive local nomenclature and typologies. [Sorry to have to put up the entire table in what follows.]

Ruebens states that the five divisions are 

"defined by a diagnostic combination of technological and typological attributes, including the location and extent of the bifacial shaping and/or retouch, the number of cutting and backed edges, the cross section of the piece and its overall outline shape (Table 3). All five concepts can be viewed as rather distinct, with only few transitional forms being present in the archaeological record. Since each concept is based on least common denominators, morphological variation is present within each category, as expressed by differences in size and exact outline shape."

I know exactly what the term lowest common denominator means in arithmetic. However, I have no idea how I'm to understand its use in this context. I'm guessing it must be used figuratively. Unfortunately, it's never mentioned again. Table 3 follows. I had to put it sideways to make it legible. Sorry.

After having a look at Table 3, I think I might have a better understanding of what the author is trying to tell us when using the term correlation. I believe it's that her five concepts share many traits among them, but that each one has a unique 'signature.' Let's look closer at Table 3, although I have to say off the bat that it doesn't inspire confidence. 

Call me a pedant, if you want. But, I believe we can toss out the category "Location of shaping/retouch." Why? Because Ruebens has told us she's undertaking a study of bifaces! So, there's not much point in using ?bifaciality? as one of the diagnostic criteria. No. Wait! She's at least partly justified in using this parameter—one of the five type/concept/cultural traditions is bifacial  only some of the time. Hold the phone. What, fer gawd sakes, is a "partial biface?" A lump of rock is either a bifacially flaked something-or-other, or it's not! More reason to toss out the category.

You are the weakest link! Say goodbye to "Location of shaping/retouch."

I also think we can toss out the attribute of backedness? I mean, once you've recognized a feature of some artifacts, and called it backing, you shouldn't NEED any other criteria to distinguish backed things from things having no back. "Back" is an especially shaky criterion if three of the types may or may not be backed [which is what I take the term 'variable' to mean in this context]. Thus, this category is useful only useful, all of the time, to help distinguish hand axes from backed bifaces. What good is that?

Dave, what parting gifts do we have for "Back"?

Number of cutting edges seems another tosser. 'Cause, if backed bifaces and bifacial scrapers can have 1 or 2 cutting edges, and the other three can have only 2, then we're talking about seven types, not five. Fat lot of good that does! "Cutting edge" [which this research isn't, by the way] is only useful for distinguishing between the three that always have 2 cutting edges and the four other types that can't seem to make up their minds.

Gong! Get that talentless "Cutting edge" off the stage.

So, where does that leave us? Let's re-jig Table 3 using the criteria left once the unhelpful ones are tossed out.

Once the array is culled to this point, it's clear that "outline shape" is capable—all by itself—of uniquely identifying the five concepts that Reubens has proposed.

I guess it's all right if Ruebens wanted to go to so much trouble to substantiate the five concept type traditions. Problem is: to be usefully critical of this paper, this poor reader was compelled to go through the truly painful process that I've just dragged you through. Worse, others might be tempted to ask the question, "Where was the editor when this paper was undergoing review for its publishability? Where were the referees?" I'd never ask such questions. But others might.

So, you've just seen the author find a very strenuous way to replace good, old fashioned, typology.

It's time we saw some of those shiny bifacial thingies.

I extracted these images from each of the three figures in Ruebens's  paper, resized them to the same scale, and placed 'like with like.' Here's what I got. Look long and hard, but not too. Your head might explode.

As you can see, the objects in the left part of the frame are all termed hand axes. The others fall under what the author refers to as "backed and leaf-shaped bifacial tools," which comprise the other four concept/type/traditions. Can you see the same things I see? For example, how do you get a leaf shape out of any of those objects on the right? No plant that I know of has such asymmetrical leaves! And, frankly, the whole issue of the so-called backed artifacts gives me hives. I could easily see any of the 'backed' artifacts in this array arising from continued flake removals on a 'hand axe' such that it ceases to look like a hand axe. [Remember the Dibble diagram up top?]

Logically, the proximal—butt—end of the 'hand axe' that's been whittled down to something resembling the bottom four on the right. That butt would be identified as the backed portion, and the final flake removals on the opposite margin created one final cutting edge before it was dulled beyond usefulness and discarded.

Tell me I'm wrong. Isn't that what the FAF is all about? Regardless of your position on hand axes, it's straightforward: if the FAF is in play with hand axes, logically we should be able to see the results of gradual further reduction along the lines that we saw in Dibble's work with MP scrapers.

Fellow FAFsters, start your engines!

[By the way, no doubt because I'm Anglophone and geographically deprived, I'd never heard of either the Keilmesser or the Faustkeilblatt before today. Live and learn.]

Table 3 isn't all that this paper is about. If it were, I'd be breathing easier. Instead, Ruebens goes on to consider other parameters of European MP bifaces in an effort, one imagines, to bolster her identification of the five concept/type/traditions and to set the stage for the new map of MP Europe. I'm keeping an open mind. [As if.]

So, we've come to the point where I sum up this installment of my remarks on the Ruebens paper.

Here it comes. The summary.

I hope that the referees and editors are squirming by now. This story doesn't have a happy ending for the JHE crew, and it's not the fault of the author.

Next time I'm gonna get into the metrics of this revision of the MP of Europe. Hold on to your hat!

* I apologize for spelling the author's name incorrectly throughout the earlier version of this piece.

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Working . . . on K. Reubens's Neanderthal Artifact/Behavioural Regions.

It's a hard slog. However I'm working on a paper that promises to demonstrate broad regional similarities in the presumed formed tools of the Middle Palaeolithic (MP). These regional groupings, as was ever the case, are interpreted as probably more than one could legally say about Neanderthals and culture. But, hey. The author has examined a huge number of collections. So, if there were regional patterns you'd certainly expect them to stick out. My early reconnaissance, however, leaves me sceptical. [Gee. Fair dinkum?]

Ruebens, K., "Regional behaviour among late Neanderthal groups in Western Europe: A comparative assessment of late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tool variability," Journal of Human Evolution (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.06.009

I'll tease you with a map, some shiny artifacts, and a portion of Reubens's data. That oughta keep you busy!

The outlines of Reubens's hypothesized regions.

A and B are termed backed knives: C is called a leaf-shaped biface.

Some quite lovely so-called hand axes. 

A is a cordiform hand axe. 

B is a triangular hand axe. 

C is a bout coupée hand axe.

Oh, for a complete set of data, and not just the means and sigmas. To me, on these parameters, this looks like a metrically homogeneous group of artifacts. The mean lengths for the various named, formed tools are astonishingly similar. With a data set this paper's readers could easily test the hypothesis that, once again on these parameters, each uniquely named collection of artifacts could be compared with the others to see if they could have been randomly drawn from the same sample. That is, a simple MANOVA would speak volumes. The width and thickness means are also remarkably tightly grouped. Hell, if I didn't know better I'd guess that, despite the author's [and every other middle palaeolithic archaeologist's since Adam, mind] desire to groups the chipped lumps of stone into neat categories, it'd be an uphill battle to justify the classification based on these metrics!

TTFN!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More North American 'Hand Axes'

Okay, okay. I've mentioned the 75 'hand axes' discarded at El Pulguero, Baja California. I can tell you from personal observation that Baja has plenty of similar 'Acheulean' archaeological occurrences. Shortly after I moved to Berkeley, California to take up my Ph.D. preparation at UC Berkeley I was invited to a holiday celebration at the then offices of the Institute for Human Oranges Origins and the Berkeley Geochronology Laboratory, just north of campus. I met Garniss Curtis and Carl Swisher that night, along with Don Johanson and Bill Kimball. Besides my companion for the night, the most memorable moments were when someone off-handedly mentioned a tray of hand axes that had been collected in Baja California. They were every inch hand axes, if calling large bifacial cores by that name is your habit.
     Such artifacts aren't unique to the Baja peninsula, either, to which the objects in the photo below will attest. Those below, from the Topper site in the Carolinas, scream HAND AXE to me. How 'bout you?

Source: Ashley M. Smallwood. "Clovis biface technology at the Topper site, South Carolina: evidence for variation and technological flexibility." Journal of Archaeological Science 37:2413--2425, 2010.

I don't normally like rubbing other people's noses in the stuff they peddle. However, in the case of North America's spitting-image-of-hand-axes bifaces, I simply can't help myself. There are yet more. Those illustrated below arise from the GS Lewis site, also in the Carolinas. These, too, are referred to as "preforms," although the reduction sequence, if one existed for these 'facts, isn't well represented in this graphic, which was presumably intended to do just that. The upper 'fact is cleaver shaped, while the lower is hand axe shaped. It's hard for me to see how the one arises from further reduction of the other in this scheme.

Sassaman, Kenneth E., Randy Daniel, and Christopher R. Moore. "GS Lewis-East: Early and Late Archaic Occupations Along the Savannah River, Aiken County, South Carolina." Savannah River Archaeological Research Program, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 2002.

So, my astute archaeological acolytes, what's a subversive to do, save to continue inching the knife inward at the same time as twisting it ever so slightly to remind the victim that one is serious about the intended outcome? Or, do I ease off, hoping that I've made my *cough* point?

Final word of the day: If you keep coming back, I'll keep on trying to give you something to compensate you adequately for your effort. TTFN!

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.