On the origins of human technological innovations, the Late Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in the Levant

About

This project aims to investigate the demands of technological changes observed in one of the most important changeovers in our history the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition. This project explores an innovative approach to this scientific debate by focusing on the study of how stone tools were used over time in a key geographic area: the Levant. The human evolutionary journey is marked by technologies that helped humans successfully adjust to the Pleistocene dynamics. Such adaptations have triggered changes in human technological repertoires. Therefore, how stone tools are designed and used is descriptive of social and cultural dynamics shaping the evolution of human behaviour across time. The drivers of technological changes can be diverse, but ultimately the use of stone tools is key for a toolkit to be retained and consequently modify the dynamics of a given population.

In the archaeological record, the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition, ca. 50 ka to 35 ka cal BP, concerns one of the most important changeovers in our history. From a technological perspective, during this transition, changes are observed through the progressive replacement of surficial Levallois flake technology over into UP volumetric elongated technologies (blade and bladelets). Understanding the demands for such technological changes has the potential to untangle, major processes involved in the evolution of human technological behaviours. Use-wear studies investigate how stone tool tools were used, and are, therefore, crucial to identifying the trigger mechanisms of behavioural shifts and reconstructing the causes of technological change. Based on use-wear analysis, this project aims to test whether stone tool changes during the LMP-UP transition are related to different activities, processed resources, or related to constraints of social and cultural history (no change on tool use). By addressing aspects that cannot be assessed by technological and typological studies, this project has the potential to elucidate the correlation between changes in the production, design, and use of stone tools during a key transitional process in our evolutionary journey.

{width="441”}

Research agenda and goals

Complemented by technological and typological studies (supported by the listed collaborations), this study also holds the possibility of recognizing, based on function (differences in tool use even when technology and typology are retained), new classificatory features that can be used to identify (when), categorize (how) and interpret (why) changes that occur in the archaeological repertoire. Therefore, the project will seek the following objectives: - Identify and characterize changes in tool use, and correlate these with changes in tool morphology and design. For this, data on technology, typology, raw material, experiments, and use-wear analysis will be cross-referenced. - Combine these with site-specific behavioural data (e.g., fauna, occupation patterns) and ecological setting (e.g., type of site, landscape) to infer differences in hunting strategies, mobility, and settlement patterns. Use-wear data will be integrated into the existing data for each site and in close collaboration with the different researchers.

For this, the project focuses on well-preserved lithic assemblages which have been recently excavated from stratified contexts and dated chronologically. The included key LMP, IUP and EUP (Ahmarian) case studies from the Levant are: Boker Tachtit (IUP), Far’ah II (LMP), B37 (LMP), B27 (LMP) and Al-Ansab 1 and 2 (IUP-EUP) in the south, and Manot (EUP) and Amud (LMP) from the northern region (see Fig. 1 and Tab. 1, appendix, for more details). Combining fields of quantitative artefact microwear analysis, lithic technology, and typology with experimental reference libraries, will facilitate an interdisciplinary methodology to characterize and document the different signatures for tool use. In this study, standardised data collection, similar analysis protocols and experimental designs that aim to increase cross-assemblage comparability will be used to test a series of empirically based hypotheses:

• Hypothesis 1 (H0): No difference in tool use between assemblages. Human technological changes are due to ecological constraints. Prediction: It is expected that technological changes are diachronically and geographically linked to differences in tool use. Macro and micro traces of use-wear will be different among LMP IUP and EUP stone tools, showing that these were used to process different materials, perform different tasks, or both.
• Hypothesis 2 (H1): Significant difference in tool use between assemblages Technological innovations are likely to be due to the constraints of social and cultural history. Prediction: If true, no significant link between tool types and their use or performance is observed among LMP and IUP stone tools.

{width="466”}

Team

PI - João Marreiros, MONREPOS. LEIZA, Mainz

Collaborators - Mae Goder-Goldberger, Department Archaeology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev - Erella Hovers, Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Israel. - Eduardo Paixão, ICArEHB, Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution Human Behaviour, University of Algarve - Ariel Malinsky-Buller, Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Israel.

Most recent publications related to the project

• Hovers, E., 1998. The lithic assemblages of Amud Cave: implications for understanding the end of the Mousterian in the Levant. In Neandertals and modern humans in western Asia (pp. 143-163). Boston, MA: Springer US.
• Goder-Goldberger, M., Gilead, I., Boaretto, E., Edeltin, L., Horwitz, L.K., Jacoby-Glass, Y., Lavi, R., Neumann, F.H., Porat, N., Toffolo, M.B. and Van Aardt, A.C., 2023. Living in an ecotone: Late Middle Palaeolithic occupations in the lower Besor Basin, north-western Negev Desert, Israel. Antiquity, 97(394), p.e20.
• Goder-Goldberger, M., Barzilai, O. and Boaretto, E., 2023. Innovative technological practices and their role in the emergence of Initial Upper Paleolithic technologies: a view from Boker Tachtit. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, 6(1), p.11.
• Goder-Goldberger, M. and Malinsky-Buller, A., 2022. The Initial Upper Paleolithic and its place within the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition of Southwest Asia: What hides behind the curtain of taxonomies?. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, 5(1), p.2.
• Martisius, N.L., Spasov, R., Smith, G.M., Endarova, E., Sinet-Mathiot, V., Welker, F., Aldeias, V., Horta, P., Marreiros, J., Rezek, Z. and McPherron, S.P., 2022. Initial upper paleolithic bone technology and personal ornaments at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria). Journal of Human Evolution, 167, p.103198.
• Hublin, J.J., Sirakov, N., Aldeias, V., Bailey, S., Bard, E., Delvigne, V., Endarova, E., Fagault, Y., Fewlass, H., Hajdinjak, M. and Kromer, B., 2020. Initial upper palaeolithic homo sapiens from bacho kiro cave, Bulgaria. Nature, 581(7808), pp.299-302.