Organic tools found in Stone Age camp

Sensational new archaeological find reveals paddles and bow in underwater Stone Age settlement

Keywords: Anthropology, Archaeology, History, By: Sybille Hildebrandt

This film shows the paddles being cleaned at the Moesgård Museum. The film has no sound. 

Stone Age people didn't only use tools made out of rock – they also used tools made from wood and antlers, according to a new discovery in Danish waters.

The Stone Age settlement has been hidden under water and a thick layer of sand over millennia. But over the past few years, sea currents have exposed it by pushing the seabed aside.

Settlement known for decades

The village lies deep underwater by the coast in Horsens Fjord, Denmark.

Archaeologists have known about the site since the '70s, but due to the inaccessibility, it wasn't until a recent trip to the site by an archaeology student at Aarhus University that something started to stir.

Peter Alstrup went to his nearby beach to trace old footsteps from when he used to go to the beach with his parents. As part of his frequent swims along the coast back then, he had built himself a glass box through which he could study the seabed in great detail from the surface.

He had heard about an area where a Stone Age village was supposed to be buried. He often visited this area and found flint flakes from ancient times, and this is what made him want to go on and become an archaeologist.

The 6,000-year-old paddles were found exposed on the seabed.
(Photo: Claus Skriver) 

Revisiting the underwater playground

More than a decade later, in the summer of 2010, Astrup went back to the beach, this time wearing a diving suit.

He noticed straight away that the seabed looked different, with most of the sand vanished from the subsurface. This enabled him to spot some beautifully shaped pieces of wood, which at some point had clearly been crafted by humans.

“As soon as I got home, I called up my local museum to tell them about what I had found. We agreed that I should go down and pick up few items and bring them in,” says Astrup, who is currently a PhD student of archaeology at Aarhus University.

He brought back with him undamaged antler axes, wooden knife handles and the skull of a dog.

When the archaeologists at the museum saw this, they realised they had run into something unique. They quickly assembled a group of archaeologists from the area who rushed into their digging.

The paddles had black patterns drawn on them.
(Photo: Moesgård Museum)

Ideal location for excavation site

In many ways the area is ideally placed for archaeological excavation. Located just off the coast, it's neatly hidden away from all beach activities. But since it lies in shallow waters, excavation is relatively easy, regardless of whether the archaeologists wish to dig into the underground, chart the area or simply pick up objects from the bottom of the sea.

They looked specifically in a certain sediment layer under the sand, characterised by its low oxygen levels and its ability to preserve organic materials.

Here they found objects that revealed an industrious community of hunter-gatherers. These included beautifully ornamented antler axes with well-preserved wooden shafts and a highly surprising find of a pair of wooden rowing paddles, richly decorated with black patterns.

Anoxic sediment preserves wood

The archaeologists also found a 1.6-metre high wooden bow of a hitherto unknown type. These bows have probably been used some 6,000 years ago, when large parts of Denmark were covered in woods, making it an ideal hunting ground.

In addition, they also found a piece of string made out of bast fibres, which was as thick as a woollen thread. These strings are thought to have been used for frapping tools.

Excavation leader Claus Skriver of the Moesgård Museum explains what makes these finds so special:

“When we excavate settlements on land we only find tools of stone, since all organic matter has long since rotted away. This settlement is unique because we also found well-preserved objects made out of wood and antlers, and that gives a much more nuanced insight into how people lived back then.”

Axes with well-preserved wooden handles were also found at the bottom.

(Photo: Claus Skriver)

Seasonal or permanent residence?

The excavation can also help the researchers find answers to some great questions such as whether the settlement was being used throughout the year or whether it was a seasonal dwelling place where people lived over certain periods of the year.

The archaeologists found the answer looking through their bore holes through the organic silt. Here they found an abundance of fish bones, which are remnants from the residents’ meals. They also found well-preserved seeds and hazelnut shells.

There are examples of Stone Age people moving into certain sites when, for instance, fishing prospects looked good, when it was colder than usual or when the surrounding woods were crowded with herds of animals.

“With all these bones, we can now outline in detail what these people lived on and also which periods of the year they lived there,” says Skriver.

Specifying which parts of the year the site was inhabited is a demanding task, but the new finds make it relatively easy to date the village.

“We’re trying our hardest to date the settlement using the Carbon-14 method,” says the researcher. “But the design of the site suggests that it’s from the middle or late Ertebølle period [see factbox]. The oldest section of the site was habited some 6,700 years ago.”

A sea of objects left to explore

The excavations are currently limited to only a few square metres of seabed.

Most of the objects discovered so far have come loose from the subsurface as a result of ocean currents. This means that the archaeologists manage to find new and exciting objects every time they visit the site.

The objects need to be picked up carefully. Wood that has been in water for long periods has had all its cell membranes dissolved. So when the wood dries up, there is nothing left to hold it together, and after only a few hours in dry air, the wood starts to crumble and fall apart.

Settlement known internationally

Peter Alstrup has taken part in all the excavations so far and is excited about the next visit to the site:

“The settlement is no longer something I can keep to myself – now I’m just happy to share it with others,” he says.

“Thanks to our excavations, this site has now entered the top 10 list of the best archaeological finds in Denmark in 2011 and is already a much discussed topic in international archaeological circles.”

in sciencenordic.com

Quaternary International

Volume 262, Pages 1-88

7 June 2012

West African Paleoecology and Human Responses: West African Quaternary Research Association (WAQUA) Edited by Izuchukwu M. Akaegbobi

Volume 263, Pages 1-172,

14 June 2012

Late Quaternary morphodynamics in East Asia

Edited by Margot Böse, Christopher Lüthgens, Jiun-Chuan Lin and Chia-Hung Jen

Volume 264, Pages 1-134

20 June 2012

Common Problems, Uncommon Solutions: Zooarchaeological Contributions to Understanding Dietary Change in Mediterranean-Type Environments

Edited by Tiina Manne and Britt Starkovich

HOMO - Journal of Comparative Human Biology

Volume 63, Issue 2, Pages 81-152

April 2012

The Top Four Candidates for Europe’s Oldest Work of Art

Someone painted this rhinoceros on a wall in France's Chauvet Cave about 30,000 years ago.
Image courtesy of Wikicommons.

In 1940, a group of teenagers discovered the paintings of bison, bulls and horses adorning the walls of France’s Lascaux Cave. Roughly 17,000 years old, the paintings are Europe’s most famous cave art, but hardly the oldest. This week archaeologists announced finding in another cave in France art dating to about 37,000 years ago, making it a candidate for Europe’s most ancient artwork. Here’s a look at the new discovery and the other top contenders for the title of Europe’s oldest work of art.

Image: Nerja Cave Foundation

• Nerja Caves (possibly about 43,000 years ago): In February, José Luis Sanchidrián of Spain’s University of Cordoba declared he had found paintings of seals on stalactites in southern Spain’sNerja Caves. The paintings themselves have not yet been dated. But if they match the age of charcoal found nearby, then the art might be 43,500 to 42,3000 years old, New Scientist reported. That would make the Nerja Cave art the oldest known in Europe—and the most sophisticated art created by Neanderthals, the hominids that lived in this part of Spain some 40,000 years ago.

Photo: Raphaëlle Bourrillon

• Abri Castanet (about 37,000 years ago): In 2007, among the rubble from a collapsed rock shelter at the Abri Castanet site in southwestern France just six miles from Lascaux, archaeologists found an engraved chunk of rock. The engravings on the 4-foot-by-3-foot slab, once part of the rock shelter’s ceiling, depict female genitalia and part of an animal. With the help of radiocarbon dating, Randall White of New York University and colleagues estimate the art was made sometime between 36,940 and 36,510 years ago by the Aurignacians, the modern humans who lived in Europe at this time. The researchers reported their findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Venus of Hohle Fels (35,000-40,000 ye

  

  Photo: H. Jensen / University of Tübingen

  ars ago): In Nature in 2009, Nicholas Conrad of Germany’s University of Tübingen described the discovery of a 2-inch figurine carved from a mammoth tusk. The tiny sculpture was recovered from Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany’s Swabian Jura mountain range. The figure depicts a woman with large, exaggerated breasts, buttocks and genitalia. Radiocarbon dated to at least 35,000 years ago, it is the earliest known Venus figurine. Also in the Swabian Jura, archaeologists have found the Lion Man of Hohlenstein Stadel, an ivory sculpture dated to roughly 30,000 years ago.

Photo: Jean Clottes

• Chauvet Cave (about 30,000 years ago): Discovered in 1994, Chauvet Cave’s paintings stand out among Europe’s cave art for their subject matter. In addition to depicting animals that Stone Age people hunted, such as horses and cattle, the wall art shows predators like cave bears, lions and rhinos. The cave’s paintings are exceptionally well preserved because tourists—and the damaging microbes they bring—aren’t allowed inside. But you can still enjoy the breathtaking art by taking avirtual tour of the cave or watching Werner Herzog’s 2011 documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. 

In blogs.smithsonianmag.com

Relembrando o achado arqueológico de navio português na Namíbia, em 2008

Colóquio Recintos e práticas funerárias

Mais em http://www.era-arqueologia.pt/coloquio/

Humanity's Best Friend: How Dogs May Have Helped Humans Beat the Neanderthals

Over 20,000 years ago, humans won the evolutionary battle against Neanderthals. They may have had some assistance in that from their best friends.

Credits: Shutterstock/Pedro Jorge Henriques Monteiro

One of the most compelling -- and enduring -- mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along.

They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away.

What happened? What went so wrong for the Neanderthals -- and what went so right for us humans?

The cause, some theories go, may have been environmental, with Neanderthals' decline a byproduct of -- yikes -- climate change. It may have been social as humans developed the ability to cooperate and avail themselves of the evolutionary benefits of social cohesion. It may have been technological, with humans simply developing more advanced tools and hunting weapons that allowed them to snare food while their less-skilled counterparts starved away.

The Cambridge researchers Paul Mellars and Jennifer French have another theory, though. In a paper in the journal Science, they concluded that "numerical supremacy alone may have been a critical factor" in human dominance -- with humans simply crowding out the Neanderthals. Now, with an analysis in American Scientist, the anthropologist Pat Shipman is building on their work. After analyzing the Mellars and French paper and comparing it with the extant literature, Shipman has come to an intriguing conclusion: that humans' comparative evolutionary fitness owes itself to the domestication of dogs.

Yep. Man's best friend, Shipman suggests, might also be humanity's best friend. Dogs might have been the technology that allowed early humans to flourish.

Shipman analyzed the results of excavations of fossilized canid bones -- from Europe, during the time when humans and Neanderthals overlapped. Put together, they furnish some compelling evidence that early humans, first of all, engaged in ritualistic dog worship. Canid skeletons found at a 27,000-year-old site in Předmostí, of the Czech Republic, displayed the poses of early ritual burial. Drill marks in canid teeth found at the same site suggest that early humans used those teeth as jewelry -- and Paleolithic people, Shipman notes, rarely made adornments out of animals they simply used for food. There's also the more outlying fact that, like humans, dogs are rarely depicted in cave art -- a suggestion that cave painters might have regarded dogs not as the game animals they tended to depict, but as fellow-travelers.

Shipman speculates that the affinity between humans and dogs manifested itself mainly in the way that it would go on to do for many more thousands of years: in the hunt. Dogs would help humans to identify their prey; but they would also work, the theory goes, as beasts of burden -- playing the same role for early humans as they played for the Blackfeet and Hidatsa of the American West, who bred large, strong dogs specifically for hauling strapped-on packs. (Paleolithic dogs were big to begin with: They had, their skeletons suggest, a body mass of at least 70 pounds and a shoulder height of at least 2 feet -- which would make them, at minimum, the size of a modern-day German Shepherd.) Since transporting animal carcasses is an energy-intensive task, getting dogs to do that work would mean that humans could concentrate their energy on more productive endeavors: hunting, gathering, reproducing.

The possible result, Shipman argues, was a virtuous circle of cooperation -- one in which humans and their canine friends got stronger, together, over time.

There's another intriguing -- if conjecture-filled -- theory here, too. It could be, Shipman suggests, that dogs represented even more than companionate technologies to Paleolithic man. It could be that their cooperative proximity brought about its own effects on human evolution -- in the same way that the domestication of cattle led to humans developing the ability to digest milk. Shipman points to the "cooperative eye hypothesis," which builds on the observation that, compared to other primates, humans have highly visible sclerae (whites of the eyes). For purposes of lone hunting, sclerae represent a clear disadvantage: not only will your pesky eye-whites tend to stand out against a dark backdrop of a forest or rock, giving away your location, but they also reveal the direction of your gaze. It's hard to be a stealthy hunter when your eyes are constantly taking away your stealth.

Expressive eyes, however, for all their competitive disadvantage, have one big thing going for them: They're great at communicating. With early humans hunting in groups, "cooperative eyes" may have allowed them to "talk" with each other, silently and therefore effectively: windows to the soul that are also evolutionarily advantageous. And that, in turn, might have led to a more ingrained impulse toward cooperation. Human babies, studies have shown, will automatically follow a gaze once a connection is made. Eye contact is second nature to us; but it's a trait that makes us unique among our fellow primates.

Dogs, however, also recognize the power of the gaze. In a study conducted at Central European University, Shipman notes, "dogs performed as well as human infants at following the gaze of a speaker in tests in which the speaker's head is held still." Humans and their best friends share an affinity for eye contact -- and we are fairly unique in that affinity. There's a chance, Shipman says -- though there's much more work to be done before that chance can be converted even into a hypothesis -- that we evolved that affinity together.

"No genetic study has yet confirmed the prevalence or absence of white sclerae in Paleolithic modern humans or in Neanderthals," Shipman notes. "But if the white sclera mutation occurred more often among the former -- perhaps by chance -- this feature could have enhanced human-dog communication and promoted domestication."

Which is another way of saying that, to the extent dogs were an evolutionary technology, they may have been a technology that changed us for the better. The old truism -- we shape our tools, and afterward our tools shape us -- may be as old, and as true, as humanity itself.

In theatlantic.com

An antler sickle from the Neolithic site of Costamar at Cabanes (Castellón) on the Mediterranean Spanish coast

Enric Flors, Juan F. Gibaja, Juan José Ibáñez & Domingo C. Salazar-García

Figure 1. Location of Costamar on the

Mediterranean coast of Spain.

Introduction

Archaeological excavations at the settlement of Costamar (Figure 1) between 2006 and 2008 by the Fundació Marina d'Or uncovered an area of 57 905m² containing 683 archaeological features belonging to Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iberian, Roman, Islamic, late medieval, modern and contemporary times.

The Neolithic features belong to two phases (Figure 2). The first, with 203 storage pits, is characterised by the presence of pottery with incised-impressed decoration combined with plastic decoration and pigmentation with red ochre. One outstanding nearly complete vessel is decorated with an anthropomorphic motif (Figure 3). This phase has been dated by a cattle bone (Bos Taurus) to 5996±38 (4990–4790 cal BC at 2σ) and by a grain of barley (Hordeum sp.) to 5965±25 BP (4933–4786 cal BC at 2σ). The second phase is represented by two pits and 69 other negative features, with a radiocarbon determination for a secondary burial in Structure GE 90 of 4095±28 (2860–2500 cal BC at 2σ). A further 116 features with sparse finds have been attributed to the Neolithic, although it was not possible to assign them to either of the two phases, while another 118 features yielded no finds and have been classified as indeterminate.

Figure 2. Aerial view of the first phase of excavation
at Costamar.

An antler sickle found in a pit of the first Neolithic phase, an exceptional find as few examples are known from Europe (Flors 2010), forms the subject of this short note.

Figure 3. Neolithic pottery decorated
with an anthropomorphic motif.

The sickle

A red deer antler sickle was found in Structure GE 398-651 (Figure 4), on the base of a circular pit with diameters of 1.08m and 0.79m at its opening and base respectively, and a depth of 0.31m. The sickle was found together with five undecorated base sherds of a recipient with red ochre remains on its outer surface (Figure 5). The vessel surface treatment is reminiscent of the combing technique seen at other sites in eastern Iberia in the transition period from the sixth to fifth millennium cal BC.

Figure 4. The sickle at the time of discovery in pit GE 398-651.

The sickle is a compound tool with a total length of 370mm (Figure 6). The antler was cut off at the handle end, or proximal part, of the implement. The distal end conserved one of the antler points, which would have been used to gather up the stalks. The most interesting feature of this tool is in the centre of the lateral face where there is a groove 25mm long and 8mm wide at its distal end, narrowing to 4mm. This groove was possibly formed by abrasion and on its left-hand side several incisions were caused by the manufacturing process. This groove must have been made to hold a single flint blade inserted diagonally.

The sickle would have been used by holding it at the proximal end, gathering up the stalks with the transversal antler point and holding them in the other hand. At this stage, the sickle would have been turned 90°, so that the stalks could be cut with the blade hafted in the sickle. The analysis of use-wear marks on the Costamar sickle has revealed that the internal face of the distal antler point is intensely polished by friction, presumably when the stalks were gathered up.

Figure 5. Potsherd found in pit GE 398-651.

Nine sickles of the same form, but made of wood, have been recovered at the lake-side site of La Draga (Banyoles, Girona, Spain). These sickles consist of a main shaft with a hole in the centre and a transversal branch at 90° to the hole, like the specimen from Costamar. One of the sickles from La Draga still has a flint blade fragment inserted diagonally (Bosch et al. 2006; Palomo et al. 2011).

The Costamar sickle is a significant find in the context of harvesting technology in the Neolithic. The parallels at the site of La Draga and the documentation of flint blades used as oblique insertions in south-east France and the centre-northeast of the Iberian Peninsula suggest that this model of sickle was used over a wide area of the western Mediterranean basin in the early Neolithic (Ibáñez et al. 2008).

Figure 6. The antler sickle, with detail of haft.

Acknowledgments

The sickle has been studied within the framework of the projects of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación (HAR2011-23149) and the European Research Council (ERC-AdG-230561) .

References

• BOSCH, A., J. CHINCHILLA & J. TARRÚS. 2006. Els objectes de fusta del poblat neolític de La Draga. Excavacions 1995–2005(Monografies del Centre d'Arqueologia Subaquàtica de Catalunya 6). Girona: Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya.
• FLORS, E. 2010. Torre la Sal (Ribera de Cabanes, Castellón). Evolución del paisaje antrópico desde la prehistoria hasta el medioevo(Monografies de Prehistòria i Arqueologia Castellonenques 8). Castelló de la Plana: SIAP, Diputació de Castelló.
• IBÁÑEZ, J.J., J.E. GONZÁLEZ, J.F. GIBAJA, A. RODRÍGUEZ, B. MÁRQUEZ, B. GASSIN & I. CLEMENTE. 2008. Harvesting in the Neolithic: characteristics and spread of early agriculture in the Iberian peninsula, in L. Longo and N. Skakun (ed.) Prehistoric technology 40 years later: functional analysis and the Russian legacy (British Archaeological Reports international series 1783): 183–95. Oxford: Archaeopress.
• PALOMO, A., J.F. GIBAJA, R. PIQUÉ, A. BOSCH, A. CHINCHILLA & J TARRÚS. 2011. Harvesting cereals and other plants in Neolithic Iberia: the assemblage from the lake settlement at La Draga. Antiquity 85: 759–71.

Authors

*Author for correspondence

• Enric Flors, Fundació Marina d'Or de la Comunitat Valenciana, ARX. Arxivística i Arqueologia S.L., Castellón, Spain
• Juan F. Gibaja*, CSIC–IMF, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, C/Egipciaques, 15, Barcelona 08001, Spain (Email: jfgibaja@imf.csic.es)
• Juan José Ibáñez, CSIC–IMF, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, C/Egipciaques, 15, Barcelona 08001, Spain
• Domingo C. Salazar-García, Department of Human Evolution, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany

Mais em antiquity.ac.uk/

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

15 May 2012; Vol. 109, No. 20

Journal of Archaeological Research

Volume 20, Number 3 / September 2012

Quaternary Science Reviews

Volume 42, Pages 1-86

24 May 2012

O estaleiro naval da actual Praça de D. Luís I, em Lisboa

Workshop de Arqueologia Experimental

Decorrerá na FLUP nos próximos dias 16, 17 e 18 de Maio um Workshop de Arqueologia Experimental organizado pelo Núcleo de Arqueologia da Universidade do Porto. Em anexo segue o cartaz com todas as indicações pertinentes.

Geomorphology

Volumes 157–158, Pages 1-192

1 July 2012

Special Issue

Zoogeomorphology and Ecosystem Engineering Proceedings of the 42nd Binghamton Symposium in Geomorphology, held 21-23 October 2011

Edited by David R. Butler and Carol F. Sawyer

Investigadora de Leiria comprova teoria que pode explicar a razão de andarmos em pé.

In Região de Leiria 4 de maio 2012