Characterizing Quartz Artefacts: A Case Study from Manitoba's Northern Boreal Forest

Bruggencate, Rachel ten; Fayek, Mostafa; Milne, Brooke; Brownlee, Kevin

doi:10.1111/arcm.12092

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The reader is referred elsewhere for preliminary information on the assemblage's techno-typological composition (see Prieto et al 2022). The method followed herein emulates the approach taken by ten Bruggencate et al (2013Bruggencate et al ( , 2014 in that geochemical data, specifically major oxides and trace elements using ED-XRF, were compared according to macroscopically defined groups. The reader is referred elsewhere for information on the macroscopic groups and spectroscopic analytical conditions (see Soto et al 2020a).…”

Section: Combining Multi-analytical Data For Raw Materials Sourcingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sourcing Oldowan and Acheulean Stone Tools in Eastern Africa

Favreau¹

2022

Preprint

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Eastern Africa’s Plio-Pleistocene sedimentary record has shaped our understanding of human evolution and the development of stone tool technologies. Over the years, raw material sourcing has emerged as a key research topic in lithic analysis as it can allow for the identification of resource extraction points together with anthropogenic transport distances across palaeolandscapes as a means to infer other aspects of hominin behaviour. The goal of this article is to review and synthesise the aims, methods, challenges, and current knowledge on the sourcing of Oldowan and Acheulean stone tools from Plio-Pleistocene archaeological contexts in Eastern Africa, namely Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Beginning with the theoretical framework of lithic sourcing, a systematic, comprehensive, and multifactorial methodology is presented, which is applicable across archaeology’s sub-disciplinary boundaries. From thereon, the geology of Eastern Africa is reviewed to establish the range of available rock types during the Plio-Pleistocene along with the processes that led to the formation of primary and secondary raw material sources. Several drivers are identified to have affected the distribution, availability, and prehistoric utilisation of raw materials across Eastern Africa, including Precambrian tectono-thermal events, planation, and subsequent uplift, followed by Cenozoic volcanism, extensional faulting, subsidence, sedimentation, and geomorphological forcing. The following section comprises of a comprehensive review of Oldowan and Acheulean raw material provisioning in Eastern Africa to identify the state of knowledge and methodological trends. Four important patterns are identified: (1) Oldowan and Acheulean toolmakers regularly exerted selective criteria when choosing raw materials; (2) the spatio-temporal fragmentation of technological activities across the palaeolandscape emerged before the first appearance datum of the Acheulean; (3) hominin toolmakers preferentially utilised igneous rock types followed by metamorphic and sedimentary lithologies mirroring Eastern Africa’s lithostratigraphic sequence; and (4) Acheulean toolmakers largely mimicked their Oldowan counterparts in terms of raw material provisioning until the late Early Pleistocene, when they began to engage in qualitatively different behaviour best evidenced by anthropogenic stone transport over increasingly longer distances. Another informative pattern that emerges from the foregoing section is the limited efforts that have been historically devoted in sourcing lithic raw materials of Plio-Pleistocene age. This can be attributed to several factors, not least of which are a suite of interpretive challenges such as time-averaging, recycling, sourcing, and identifying selection criteria, which are featured in the ensuing section. The foregoing discussion also serves to preface a devoted section on the array of analytical methods that can be successfully employed by archaeologists to source lithic raw materials. Proven and innovative analytical methods are identified by bringing into dialogue key factors such as accuracy, precision, reproducibility, discriminatory power, sensitivity, destructiveness, throughput, cost, ease, and the question of spatial scale. It is also found that characterising non-obsidian lithologies is best accomplished using more than one analytical method with the understanding that once positive baseline results are obtained, subsequent archaeological testing can be narrowed down methodologically. Regardless of the analytical method of choice, it is imperative to implement effective means to analyse the resulting data, which constitutes the main topic addressed in the following section supplemented by two case studies. It is found that variably sophisticated forms of multivariate statistics are usually required to discriminate non-obsidian sources to probabilistically source stone tools, and it is argued that reporting is best done following the principles of open science. The final section reviews ethnographic and archaeological literature on sourcing, mobility, and geospatial modelling to outline their potential to enhance the interpretive remit of traditional raw material studies. Ultimately, this article reviews the state of knowledge about raw material sourcing in the Earlier Stone Age across Eastern Africa and highlights means through which archaeologists can garner the full potential of a non-renewable record.

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Section: Combining Multi-analytical Data For Raw Materials Sourcingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…identified(ten Bruggencate et al 2014). In a separate study,Nazaroff et al (2013) combined macroscopic criteria with ED-XRF spectroscopy to distinguish chert sources and recognise provisioning patterns using artefactual data from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey).…”

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confidence: 99%

Sourcing Oldowan and Acheulean Stone Tools in Eastern Africa

Favreau¹

2022

Preprint

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“…Nevertheless, recent studies are revealing the potential of the analysis of "the other" raw materials, to understand resource exploitation and quartz (e.g. ten Bruggencate et al 2014Bruggencate et al , 2013 and quartzite (e.g. Prieto et al 2019Prieto et al , 2020 selection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quartz and Quartzite lithic raw material studies: problems and challenges

Abrunhosa¹,

Santonja²,

Pérez‐González³

et al. 2023

Proceedings of the 2022 IMEKO TC4 International Conference on Metrology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage

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Most of the lithic tools made during Prehistory in the Iberian Peninsula are mainly composed of three main siliceous rock types: chert, quartzite, and quartz. While the methodologies for the characterization and provenance of raw materials made on chert (and obsidian) have been developed with well-established and widely used protocols, the same does not apply to quartzite and quartz veins. Here we present recent developments in characterization and provenance analysis of quartzite and quartz through two case studies: (1) establishing and testing an analytical protocol for the quartzite available in the Côa River Valley region (Portugal) to be applied in future archaeological studies; (2) understanding the quartzite variability within the archaeological assemblage of the El Sotillo site (Spain). These two case studies allow us to highlight some of the main problems and challenges linked to the study of quartzite (raw material and lithic industry) in Paleolithic contexts.

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