Distinguishing between Artifacts and Geofacts: A Test Case from Eastern England

Peacock, Evan

doi:10.1179/009346991791548645

Cited by 38 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Cobbles were scored using a list of 18 lithic attributes (Table I) derived from a survey of the literature (Warren, 1905;Barnes, 1939;Patterson, 1983;Schnurreberger and Bryan, 1985;Luedtke, 1986;Peacock, 1991;Chlachula and Le Blanc, 1996;Driver, 2001). These researchers showed that no single attribute is sufficient for differentiating between artifacts and geofacts, and some attributes are more subjective than others.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Eighteen lithic attributes from the known natural and cultural assemblages were subjected to chi-square tests (Peacock, 1991;Evans, 1998). Only 16 attributes showed statistically significant differences between the known natural and the known cultural assemblages.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A few researchers have applied more quantitative approaches (e.g., Payen, 1982;Simpson, 1982;Peacock, 1991), although these focused on debitage rather than whole tools. Because many proposed pre-Clovis sites contain simply flaked stone cobbles, a technique for differentiating naturally and culturally produced cobble tools is needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Distinguishing between naturally and culturally flaked cobbles: A test case from Alberta, Canada

2004

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Distinguishing between naturally and culturally produced, simply flaked cobbles has been a problem for proponents of a pre-Clovis occupation in the Americas. Several sites in Alberta have been assigned a pre-Clovis status based on the presence of simply flaked cobbles found in Late Pleistocene till deposits. Historically, these types of assemblages have been assigned a cultural status based on subjective criteria and appeals to the analyst's expertise. To determine the archaeological status of two such assemblages from Alberta (Varsity Estates and Silver Springs), they were compared to a known natural assemblage and two known cultural assemblages. Chi-square testing was used to evaluate several lithic attributes. Only those attributes that statistically differentiated between natural and cultural assemblages were used for further analyses. All cobbles were then scored using these attributes. A point was awarded when a statistically significant attribute of human-manufacture was present. These points were then totaled, providing an aggregate score for each cobble. These scores were plotted to determine whether the test assemblages had closer affinities with the known natural or known cultural assemblages. The results indicate that the proposed pre-Clovis assemblages have closer affinities to known natural assemblages than to cultural assemblages. Our results suggest that these sites provide no evidence for a pre-Clovis occupation in the Americas.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Distinguishing between naturally and culturally flaked cobbles: A test case from Alberta, Canada

2004

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“…The first occupants of Europe seem to have done without handaxes, the earliest European assemblages only comprising stone flakes, rarely retouched, cores, and core-like tools, with a lack of standardised design and usually with limited modification only (Moyano et al 2011;Ollé et al 2015;Parfitt et al 2010). This gives special importance to the study of the geological context of inferred early sites: rocks can fracture naturally and edges can be modified by natural processes in sediments such as cryoturbation, transport, and volcanic activities, and a wide variety of such processes has been documented to mimic hominin modification and to produce Bartefact-like^geofacts (Gillespie et al 2004;Lubinski et al 2014;Nash 1993;Peacock 1991;Raynal et al 1995;Warren 1914Warren , 1920Wiśniewski et al 2014) (see also below, BDiscussion^). Interestingly, the emergence of the Acheulean signal in southern (Villa 2001) as well as northwestern Europe from 600 to 700 ka (Moncel et al 2013(Moncel et al , 2015Pereira et al 2015) onward is in the same time range as the current estimate for the beginning of the Neandertal lineage (Meyer et al 2016).…”

Section: Introduction the Earliest Occupation Of Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Uneven Data Quality and the Earliest Occupation of Europe—the Case of Untermassfeld (Germany)

Roebroeks

Gaudzinski‐Windheuser

Baales

et al. 2017

J Paleo Arch

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The database regarding the earliest occupation of Europe has increased significantly in quantity and quality of data points over the last two decades, mainly through the addition of new sites as a result of long-term systematic excavations and large-scale prospections of Early and early Middle Pleistocene exposures. The site distribution pattern suggests an ephemeral presence of hominins in the south of Europe from around 1 million years ago onward, with occasional short northward expansions along the western coastal areas when temperate conditions permitted. From around 600,000-700,000 years ago, Acheulean artefacts appear in Europe and somewhat later hominin presence seems to pick up, with more sites and now some also present in colder climatic settings. It is again only later, around 350,000 years ago, that the first sites show up in more continental, central parts of Europe, east of the Rhine. A series of recent papers on the Early Pleistocene palaeontological site of Untermassfeld (Thuringia, Germany) makes claims that are of great interest for studies of earliest Europe and are at odds with the described pattern: the papers suggest that Untermassfeld has yielded stone tools and humanly modified faunal remains, evidence for a 1 million years old hominin presence in European continental mid-latitudes, and additional evidence that hominins were well-established in Europe already around that time period. Here, we evaluate these claims and demonstrate that these studies are severely flawed in terms of data on provenance of the materials studied and in the interpretation of faunal remains and lithics as testifying to a hominin presence at the site. In actual fact, any reference to the Untermassfeld site as an archaeological one is unwarranted. Furthermore, it is not the only European Early Pleistocene site where inferred evidence for hominin presence is problematic. The strength of the spatiotemporal patterns of hominin presence and absence depends on the quality of the data points we work with, and database maintenance, including critical evaluation of new sites, is crucial to advance our knowledge of the expansions and contractions of hominin ranges during the Pleistocene.J Paleo Arch (2018) 1:5-31 https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-017-0003-

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“…In both the Old and the New World, only a few attempts were made to address this issue (e.g., Dies, 1981;Patterson, 1983;Schnurrenberger & Bryan, 1985;Peacock, 1991). Most of those, however, concern very fine-grained, high-quality isotropic raw materials, and some of the defined attributes may not be observable on coarse-grained rocks and minerals.…”

Section: Natural/cultural Stone Flakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geoarchaeology of Palaeo-American Sites in Pleistocene Glacigenic Deposits

Chlachula¹

2012

Archaeology, New Approaches in Theory and Techniques

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Distinguishing between Artifacts and Geofacts: A Test Case from Eastern England

Cited by 38 publications

References 24 publications

Distinguishing between naturally and culturally flaked cobbles: A test case from Alberta, Canada

Distinguishing between naturally and culturally flaked cobbles: A test case from Alberta, Canada

Uneven Data Quality and the Earliest Occupation of Europe—the Case of Untermassfeld (Germany)

Geoarchaeology of Palaeo-American Sites in Pleistocene Glacigenic Deposits

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