An Analysis of Earlier Stone Age Bifaces from Gadeb (Locality 8E), Northern Bale Highlands, Ethiopia

The Early Middle Pleistocene Site of Gombore II (Melka Kunture, Upper Awash, Ethiopia) and the Issue of Acheulean Bifacial Shaping Strategies

“…13 Conceptual scheme of the twisted bifaces production excavation surface. The resulting data can hardly be placed alongside contemporary East African Acheulean contexts since, except in the case of Isenya (Mourre 2003;Roche and Texier 1991;Texier 1989), the lithic series have been analysed using morphometrical and/or typological approaches (Clark and Kurashina 1979;Gowlett Fig. 14 Gombore II 5. Twisted bifaces, obsidian 1993; Gowlett and Crompton 1994;Isaac 1977;Leakey and Roe 1994) and not in terms of technical achievements.…”

“…The nearest primary source of obsidian is located 100 km to the West of Gadeb. Clark and Kurashina (1979) assumed that the exotic nature of this material strongly suggests that these obsidian bifaces were carried up to the plateau in the course of seasonal movement by groups exploiting localities around Lakes Ziway and Langano and the Gadeb Paleo-Lake basin on the high plateau. Rare use of obsidian for artefact manufacture is documented at the Middle Acheulean sites of the Dawaitoli Formation, Middle Awash, Ethiopia, dated about 0.64 myr (Schick and Clark 2003).…”

“…This proportion is common between the end of the Lower Pleistocene and the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene at other Melka Kunture and East African sites (Clark and Kurashina 1979;Gowlett 1980Gowlett , 1993Isaac 1977;Leakey and Roe 1994), except at Isenya level VI where the number of cleavers is more than twice that of bifaces (Mourre 2003). All the analysed cleavers are made from large flake blanks: one from the flaking of an aphyric basalt slab and six resulting from the flaking of large blocks (four of microdoleritic basalt and two of welded ignimbrite).…”

“…Instead, bifaces and cleavers have been most commonly classified adopting morphometrical and/or typological approaches (Clark and Kurashina 1979;Gowlett 1993;Gowlett and Crompton 1994;Isaac 1977;Leakey and Roe 1994). The adoption of different methodological approaches in the analysis of lithic collections has strongly conditioned the understanding of the variability of the African Acheulean.…”

Levallois Lithic Technology from the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya: Acheulian Origin and Middle Stone Age Diversity

“…Economizing behaviors related to changing mobility strategies, raw material conservation, and the need for flake blanks of specific shapes have all been suggested as causes for the adoption of Levallois methods of flaking (e.g., Brantingham and Kuhn, 2001;Chazan, 2000;Dibble, 1997;White and Pettitt, 1995). Throughout most of Africa, Levallois flake production apparently developed from existing Acheulian traditions of the manufacture of large blanks for handaxes and cleavers (e.g., Clark and Kurashina, 1979;Biberson, 1961;Dauvois, 1981;Isaac, 1977;McBrearty, 2001;Texier, 1996a;Toth, 2001;Van Riet Lowe, 1945; see also Madsen and Goren-Inbar, 2004). Cleavers are by definition large flake tools characterized by unretouched distal ends, whose production may require careful prior preparation of the core.…”