Lithics 37 MASTER DOCUMENT

2 downloads 24 Views 16MB Size Report
duly visited at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH), the Pitt Rivers. Museum, Oxford, Bristol City Museum and. Wells and Mendip Museum.
John Wymer Bursary

JOHN WYMER BURSARY 2016 EXPLORING LATE NEANDERTHAL LOCALES: PRELIMINARY REANALYSES OF MIDDLE PALAEOLITHIC ASSEMBLAGES FROM THE AXE VALLEY Frederick W.F. Foulds1 Recently, White & Pettitt (2011) put forward the concept of Local Operational Areas (LOAs) for several regions in late Middle Palaeolithic Britain. They suggested that local clusters of sites and findspots represent regional areas in which Neanderthals operated, possibly in conjunction with seasonal occupations. They also noted that British Neanderthal raw-material acquisition occurred over a local scale, with flint generally acquired within 5 km of findspots and never further than ~30–40 km, consistent with Geneste’s (1985; 1989) local and regional scales of rawmaterial transfer, indicating a potential constraint on landscape use. Furthermore, they

posit whether LOAs were part of a wider network of Neanderthal occupation and relocation throughout Britain. Three LOAs have been argued for in Britain: the Axe Valley; the Gower Peninsula; and Creswell Crags and its limestone heritage area. The project that I am currently undertaking aims to explore the LOA hypothesis by conducting in-depth analyses of these localities. This will include addressing the lithic, environmental and landscape data from existing sites in the context of regional operational systems. The final intention is to produce a wider synthesis of Neanderthal

Figure 1. Photograph displaying both sides of implements from the Hyaena Den, Wookey Hole. Numbers 2, 4 and 6 have are correlated to Tratman et al.’s (1971) numbers 9, 13 and 11 respectively (Figures 42(9), 44A(13) and 43(11)). The remaining artefacts are attributed to Tratman et al.’s numbers 31-35, although there are only four present (Photograph from the James Parker Collection, OUMNH and copyright of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History). ¹Department of Archaeology, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK. [email protected]

79

Lithics 37

landscape use within the British Isles through the comparison of regional activity, landscape selection, and lithic technologies. Recent work assessing cultural groups using lithic artefacts from France and Belgium (Ruebens 2013; Ruebens & Wragg Sykes 2016) also provides a backdrop that will allow the notion that these LOAs represent movement of Neanderthal groups within Britain to be interrogated. The Axe Valley was selected for the pilot study for this project. The aim is to investigate landscape use by exploring raw material and site selection through the analysis of lithic assemblages and viewshed data from sites within this proposed LOA. Generous funding from the John Wymer Bursary has allowed the initial data collection, which is integral to this pilot, to begin. Analysis of the lithic assemblages from sites within this area, including Wookey Hole, Picken’s Hole and Uphill Quary Caves was deemed necessary due to the sparse publication history associated with these collections and the limited illustration and description of the availabled artefacts.

Figure 2. Photographs from the James Parker Collection. The artefacts have been correlated to Tratman et al.’s (1971) record as follows: Top = number 3; Middle = unknown, but probably number 7; Bottom = number 30 (Copyright of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History).

The Hyaena Den, Wookey Hole, was the primary focus for the funded data collection, as it is by far the most dispersed collection. First excavated in 1859 by Dawkins (1862; 1863), and most recently by Tratman (Tratman et al. 1971) and Jacobi & Hawkes (1993), this site is one of the more famous Late Pleistocene sites in Britain. Tratman et al.’s (1971) description of the stone artefacts from the site was used as a basis for locating the assemblage and for identifying indvidiual pieces. Fortunately, the location of the collections have not changed since Tratman published this paper, and so collections were duly visited at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH), the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Bristol City Museum and Wells and Mendip Museum. This allowed for the majority of the extant assemblage to be viewed, as well as photographs of missing material in the James Parker Collection at OUMNH to be examined.

addition, it highlighted several points that would have remained unknown had this visual assessment not be carried out. First, the location of several artefacts thought lost by Tratman et al. were established using notes left in the OUNHM collections and James Parker Collection by Roger Jacobi. A small biface (Tratman et al. 1971, figure 43(6)) was located in the Kent’s Cavern collections at OUMNH by Jacobi in the 1980s and is now returned to the Hyaena Den collection; Roger also left notes in the James Parker Collection concerning several missing artefacts recorded in photographs therein that have been traced to Brighton Museum. Upon examining the James Parker Collection, a discrepancy was also noted in the description of the assemblage recorded by Tratman et al. There was a record of six artefacts that were shown only in photographs (artefact numbers 7 and 31–35 in Tratman et al. 1971, 258–264).

Examination of the assemblage proved to be exceptionally fruitful. Aside from allowing for visual analysis for comparative purposes, it also established a familiarity with the material that cannot be gained from the literature. In 80

John Wymer Bursary

Figure 3. Biface from the Hyaena Den, Wookey Hole. Several incipient cones of percussion are present in the centre of one side, as displayed in the left-hand photo (Accession number1884.122.532. Photograph copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford).

However, on examining these, only five of the lithics depicted could not be attributed to extant material (see Figures 1 and 2).

being attempted forthcoming).

(Foulds

&

White

Further work on the Hyaena Den is needed to conclude the examination of the entire assemblage. A single biface, currently held at Manchester Museum, as well as the artefacts originally considered lost by Tratman, but which are now known to be at Brighton Museum, remain to be examined. The pilot study will then progress to the assemblages from Uphill Quarry Caves and Picken’s Hole, as well as an identification of Middle Palaeolithic artefacts resulting from findspots within the Axe Valley region. The results of the lithic analysis will then be synthesised alongside the viewshed analysis of the landscapes surrounding each site. It is also planned for a complete database of the material from the Axe Valley to be made available to all of the museums holding the collections to help aid in future research.

Finally, the single biface held at the Pitt Rivers Museum was found to have several incipient cones of percussion in the centre of one face (Figure 3). This damaged pattern was, presumably, identified by Tratman et al. as ‘zones of severe damage, attributed to use’ and can just be seen in the drawing of this artefact (1971, 258 and figure 42(1)). However, it would not have been clearly identified battering damage without viewing the artefact. This pattern of localised battering carries some importance and is the first instance from the Middle Palaeolithic that is known to the author. Similar damage patterns have only been noted on Lower Palaeolithic hand-axes from Boxgrove, Caddington and Swanscombe. However, the cause of such damage is still unknown, although experiments to identify what this might be are

81

Lithics 37

Geneste, J.-M. 1989. Economie des resources lithiques dans le Moustérien du sudouest de la France. In M. Otte (ed.), L’Homme de Neanderthal. Vol 6: La Subsistence, pp. 75– 97. Liege: ERAUL. Jacobi, R.M. & Hawkes, C.J. 1993. Archaeological notes: work at the Hyaena Den, Wookey Hole. Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society 19(3): 369– 371. Reubens, K. 2013. Regional behaviour among late Neanderthal groups in Western Europe: a comparative assessment of late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tool variability. Journal of Human Evolution 65(4): 341-362. Reubens, K. & Wragg Sykes, R.M.W. 2016. Spatio-temporal variation in late Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal behaviour: British bout coupé handaxes as a case study. Quaternary International 411: 305–326. Tratman, E.K., Donovan, D.T. & Campbell, J.B. 1971. The Hyaena Den (Wookey Hole), Mendip Hills, Somerset. Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society 12(3): 245–279. White, M.J. & Pettitt, P.B. 2011. The British Late Middle Pleistocene: an interpretative synthesis of Neanderthal occupation at the northwestern edge of the Pleistocene world. Journal of World Prehistory 24: 25–97.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank the Lithic Studies Society for generously providing funding for the preliminary stages of this project. I am also indebted to the following for their help with access to collections: Eliza Howlett and Kate Diston of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History; Gail Boyle of the Bristol City Museum; Nicholas Crowe and Jeremy Coote of the Pitt Rivers Museum; and David Walker and Barry Lane of the Wells and Mendip Museum. Many thanks to Rebecca Wragg Sykes for her help with locating material from Uphill Quarry Caves and for providing further information about the material from Picken’s Hole. REFERENCES Dawkins, W.B. 1862. On a hyaena-den at WookeyHole, near Wells. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 18: 115–126. Dawkins, W.B. 1863. On a hyaena-den at WookeyHole, near Wells. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 19: 260–274. Geneste, J.-M. 1985. Analyse lithique des industries Moustériennes du Périgord: une approche techno-logique du comportement des groupes au Paleéolithique moyen. Thesis, Université de Bordeaux.

82