Abstracts

Wednesday 15/01/2020 – 5pm

Dr Suzy White, UCL Anthropology

Title: Revisiting the Muddle in the Middle: ‘Homo heidelbergensis’ and the origin of Homo sapiens.

Abstract:

The name ‘Homo heidelbergensis’ was resurrected in the latter part of the last century, arguably as a way to resolve the issue of a complex pattern of similarity and regional differences in Middle Pleistocene hominins across Africa, Europe and Asia. In reality, this has done little to clarify the taxonomic and evolutionary position of these hominins. Current research indicates that they played a key role in the speciation of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, either as the last common ancestor or as representing early members of both lineages. It is also possible that this group may encompass the enigmatic Denisovans, whose cranial morphology is currently unknown, as well as other evolutionary side branches of similarly unknown taxonomic status.

There have been renewed efforts to understand the speciation of Homo sapiens, with a reiteration of a possible (Pan) African Multiregional model in recent years. This, however, has been complicated by the fragmentary African fossil record. A complex mosaic of archaic and derived craniofacial traits is visible in the scattered hominin fossil sites throughout the African Middle Pleistocene and into the early Late Pleistocene, encompassing the likely period in which our species originated. This talk will present a reassessment of the fossil record, including both quantitative and qualitative analysis, and explore the implications of the currently favoured origin models. It will also comment on the likely taxonomic classification of the Middle Pleistocene hominins in Africa and Eurasia, with a view to clarifying the muddled evolution of our species.

Wednesday 22/01/2020 – 5pm

Nick Ashton, British Museum

Title: 80 years of research at Barnham. From culture history to millennial-scale changes in material culture in the Lower Palaeolithic.

Abstract:

When TT Paterson excavated Barnham in the late 1930s, the site became central to his model of culture history, elaborated to a global scale through deep time and led to the site being at the heart of the Clactonian-Acheulean debates. In the context of processual archaeology, our excavations in the 1990s sought alternative explanations, examining the role of raw materials and site function, concluding that an assemblage with handaxes was geologically contemporary with an assemblage without this technology and that different functional areas of the site could be identified. New excavations since 2013 have refined the stratigraphy, allowing us to identify a small time gap between the core and flake assemblage and that containing handaxes. The talk discusses how we can interpret these changes in material culture within the context of Europe, and due to the millennial time-scale begin to identify cultural groups on an ethnographic scale.

 

Wednesday 29/01/2020 – 5pm

Dr Natasha Reynolds, University of Bordeaux

Title: The structure of the European Upper Palaeolithic archaeological record: a new look.

Abstract: 

The Upper Palaeolithic of Europe is often studied using a framework of well-known technocomplexes: Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Epigravettian, and more. We use these terms to help organise our knowledge and for communication purposes, but they are also widely understood to reflect essential differences between various stages of the Upper Palaeolithic. Hence, archaeologists frequently discuss the differences between e.g. “the Gravettian” and “the Solutrean” on the assumption that these are meaningful units in terms of past human culture, and perhaps identity. These terms also have profound connections with population concepts, and the transitions between technocomplexes are often seen as reflecting population replacements.

In this talk, I will discuss these terms and their historical and theoretical bases, using evidence from several intellectual traditions (Anglophone, French and Russian). I will argue that our current chronocultural framework has developed in an ad hoc and contingent manner, and does not provide a good model of variation in the Upper Palaeolithic archaeological record. The shortcomings that I will discuss are in fact widely known and these terms have been subject to well-founded criticism for many years. However, the absence of a convincing alternative model has meant that these terms have remained ubiquitous, even as their theoretical underpinnings have become more fragile and their usages have become more contradictory.

Here, I want to argue for a different way of describing the Upper Palaeolithic archaeological record, one that is firmly bottom-up and that derives directly from our descriptions of individual sites and assemblages. I will argue that by accurately describing the spatiotemporal distributions of carefully, explicitly defined features of the archaeological record – lithic artefact types, technological features, personal ornaments, construction styles, etc – a more accurate (and complex) framework will emerge. This will allow us to move beyond the current model, and enable significant new perspectives on cultural variation and change during the European Upper Palaeolithic.

Wednesday 05/02/2020 – 5pm

Dr James Coles, University of Brighton

Title: The Origins of Us: Latest developments in human evolution

Abstract:

Our understanding of human evolution continues to develop at an astonishing rate. This talk will focus on the origin of our species (Homo sapiens) from around 300 thousand years ago, and how we interacted with our closest human ancestors such as the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. The talk will give the latest knowledge from the human fossil, the archaeological and the palaeogenetic records and show that the movement of our species across the globe, and our biological and cultural encounters with other human species have helped to define who we are in the modern world.

Wednesday 12/02/2020 – 5pm

Dr Rob Hosfield, University of Reading

Title: Surviving in Lower Palaeolithic Europe: four seasonal perspectives.

Abstract:

Survival in Lower Palaeolithic Europe remains a key case study for understanding the wider colonisation of Old World mid-latitudes by pre-Neanderthals. While large-scale factors (e.g. the Early-Mid Pleistocene Transition; widespread appearance of the Acheulean in western Europe) are often highlighted with reference to the delayed occupation north of the Alps (the modified short chronology or punctuated long chronology^1,2), the ecology of life on the ground may also be worth considering. This paper explores four challenges and requirements of survival in the European Lower Palaeolithic from a seasonal perspective, focusing on reproduction (spring), knowledge transmission (summer), stockpiling (autumn), and cultural insulation (winter), and considers whether it is really possible to discuss the hominin ‘lived experience’.

Wednesday 26/02/2020 – 5pm

Dr Lesley Blundell, UCL Institute of Archaeology

Title: Not quite what they seem? How far does Lower-Middle Palaeolithic archaeological findspot distribution really reflect early human landscape preference?

Abstract:

Our understanding of early human behaviour has always been and continues to be predicated on an archaeological record unevenly distributed in time and space. More than 80% of British Lower-Middle Palaeolithic findspots were discovered during the late nineteenth century, the majority from lowland fluvial contexts. As a result, those areas of landscape outside the river valleys are considered to have only limited archaeological potential. Focusing on the Chalklands of southeast Britain and taking the ‘Unified Palaeolithic landscape’ approach first advocated by Pope et al. 2016, in this talk I will address the imbalance between the perceived significance of the upland and river valley archaeological records and bring back into consideration the role played by plateau, interfluve and escarpment-edge locations.

I will explore the effects of geomorphology and nineteenth/early twentieth century industrialisation, with its corollary of antiquarian collecting, on artefact preservation and release and consider the extent to which such external factors have introduced bias into the Lower-Middle Palaeolithic archaeological record, distorting its apparent distribution across the landscape. This has clear implications for the use of archaeological distribution patterns to interpret early human landscape preference and I will argue that only by treating the archaeology of plateau, slope and valley bottom as parts of a single geomorphological and sedimentary system can we hope to arrive at more fully rounded behavioural interpretations.

Wednesday 04/03/2020 – 5pm

Professor Nick Barton, University of Oxford

Title: New perspectives on the epipalaeolithic of the North African Maghreb and wider comparisons

Abstract:

This talk will describe new findings from Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt (Morocco) covering the period 23,000 to 12,500 years ago. It will focus on environmental and behavioural changes, culminating in a major broadening of the food spectrum at around 15,000 years ago. This seems to have been accompanied by technological innovations but, perhaps surprisingly, conservatism in other practices. In considering these aspects I shall re-examine some of the shortcomings of existing theoretical models that have been applied to prehistoric foraging societies. The talk will also discuss the impact and implications of recent DNA and dietary studies undertaken on buried human remains from the adjoining cemetery in the cave.  Some new ideas about the origins of the Iberomaurusian (epipalaeolithic) in the Maghreb will also be explored.

Wednesday 11/03/2020 – 5pm

Katarina Almeida Warren, University of Oxford

Title: Ecological and foraging contexts of chimpanzee nut-cracking: insights into early hominin landscape use.

Abstract:

Since the discovery of the first Oldowan tools, lithic assemblages have played an important part in discerning early hominin behaviour. Nevertheless, some of the most fundamental questions remain unanswered: How did early hominins exploit the landscape? What does the spatial distribution of assemblages represent in terms of hominin behaviour? Studying tool-use in our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes sp.), particularly their nut-cracking behaviour, offers a unique opportunity to tackle these questions, as it leaves an archaeological footprint akin to the earliest hominin record. Ecological features such as availability of raw materials, resources, water and shelter are hypothesised to have shaped spatial patterns of early hominin tool-use. Thus, understanding these contexts in our closest living relatives can inform how tool sites may have formed across the landscape and help reconstruct patterns of early hominin landscape use and resource exploitation. Previous studies of chimpanzee nut-cracking have identified that raw material availability and proximity to water influence site location and re-use, as well as frequency and distance of tool transport. However, few studies have explored how non-human primate tool-use fits in to the broader ecological and foraging landscape. Using a Primate Archaeology approach, we investigate, at a landscape-scale, the ecological drivers of chimpanzee nut-cracking behaviour at the long-term field site of Bossou (Guinea).

Wednesday 25/03/2020 – 5pm

Dr Katerina Douka, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Title: Yet to be announced