The study of stone artifacts can provide crucial insights into various aspects of past human adaptation. Knowledge of the geographic provenance of the raw materials, in particular, can inform us of... Show moreThe study of stone artifacts can provide crucial insights into various aspects of past human adaptation. Knowledge of the geographic provenance of the raw materials, in particular, can inform us of the mobility and resource exploitation strategies employed by past human groups. However, it is difficult to reliably infer dynamic human behaviours from the frequencies with which different raw material are represented at archaeological sites, particularly when the latter reflect the activities of individuals belonging to an extinct human species whose cognitive and physical abilities may have been markedly different from our own.This dissertation provides a new approach for understanding aspects of human adaptation in the Middle Palaeolithic on the basis of toolstone provenance. The approach centers on computer simulations and it is designed to maximize the potential of toolstone provenance information while minimizing reliance on possibly unfounded assumptions about human behaviour derived from studies of present-day societies. The approach is applied to the French Middle Palaeolithic site of the Bau de l’Aubesier, revealing, amongst other things, that the Neanderthal occupants of the site possessed excellent spatial memory and navigational abilities, regularly exploited a surprisingly large area, and appear to have treated stone resources in a strictly utilitarian manner. Show less
This study wants to help Central Italy claim its place in Bronze Age studies and make a crossover between landscape and network approaches in archaeology. It starts from a methodological... Show moreThis study wants to help Central Italy claim its place in Bronze Age studies and make a crossover between landscape and network approaches in archaeology. It starts from a methodological consideration of archaeological synthesis in Bronze Age studies. Approaching landscapes as networks of places, this study advocates a data-rich form of synthesis of Bronze Age trajectories, one that avoids a selective focus on particular places. This data-rich synthesis of the Early Bronze Age in Central Italy takes all types of place making up cultural landscapes and social networks into account, in this case metalwork deposition, burial, cave use and settlement patterns. Following changing relationships between all of these places, network changes are charted and substantiated from the Copper Age to the Middle Bronze Age. What Central Italy offers to Bronze Age studies, is the emergence of metallurgical spheres based on regional copper sources at the transition from copper to bronze metallurgy. Therefore the focus lies on metalwork-related network changes that can be situated in the historical context of late Bell Beaker networks and, subsequently, the introduction of true bronze metallurgy in the form of Vollgriffdolche in the context of Early Bronze Age networks. The latter highlight the integration of distinctive metallurgical spheres into a single, larger Central Italian sphere, in the overall context of network changes at the Early-Middle Bronze Age transition. Early Bronze Age trajectories paved the way for the full integration of Central Italy in supra-regional connectivity in the Middle Bronze Age, fulfilling the condition of possibility of its strategic position between Europe and the Mediterranean. This study wants to help Central Italy claim its place in Bronze Age studies and make a crossover between landscape and network approaches in archaeology. It starts from a methodological consideration of archaeological synthesis in Bronze Age studies. Approaching landscapes as networks of places, this study advocates a data-rich form of synthesis of Bronze Age trajectories, one that avoids a selective focus on particular places. This data-rich synthesis of the Early Bronze Age in Central Italy takes all types of place making up cultural landscapes and social networks into account, in this case metalwork deposition, burial, cave use and settlement patterns. Following changing relationships between all of these places, network changes are charted and substantiated from the Copper Age to the Middle Bronze Age. What Central Italy offers to Bronze Age studies, is the emergence of metallurgical spheres based on regional copper sources at the transition from copper to bronze metallurgy. Therefore the focus lies on metalwork-related network changes that can be situated in the historical context of late Bell Beaker networks and, subsequently, the introduction of true bronze metallurgy in the form of Vollgriffdolche in the context of Early Bronze Age networks. The latter highlight the integration of distinctive metallurgical spheres into a single, larger Central Italian sphere, in the overall context of network changes at the Early-Middle Bronze Age transition. Early Bronze Age trajectories paved the way for the full integration of Central Italy in supra-regional connectivity in the Middle Bronze Age, fulfilling the condition of possibility of its strategic position between Europe and the Mediterranean. Show less
