Fluvial deposits as an archive of early human activity: Progress during the 20 years of the Fluvial Archives Group

Abstract

Fluvial sedimentary archives are important repositories for Lower and Middle Palaeolithic artefacts throughout the 'Old World', especially in Europe, where the beginning of their study coincided with the realisation that early humans were of great antiquity. Now that many river terrace sequences can be reliably dated and correlated with the globally valid marine isotope record, potentially useful patterns can be recognized in the distribution of the find-spots of the artefacts that constitute the large collections that were assembled during the years of manual gravel extraction. This paper reviews the advances during the past two decades in knowledge of hominin occupation based on artefact occurrences in fluvial contexts, in Europe, Asia and Africa. As such it is an update of a comparable review in 2007, at the end of IGCP Project no. 449, which had instigated the compilation of fluvial records from around the world during 2000e2004, under the auspices of the Fluvial Archives Group. An overarching finding is the confirmation of the well-established view that in Europe there is a demarcation between handaxe making in the west and flakeecore industries in the east, although on a wider scale that pattern is undermined by the increased numbers of Lower Palaeolithic bifaces now recognized in East Asia. It is also apparent that, although it seems to have appeared at different places and at different times in the later Lower Palaeolithic, the arrival of Levallois technology as a global phenomenon was similarly timed across the area occupied by Middle Pleistocene hominins, at around 0.3 Ma.

Determining the Age of Terrace Formation Using Luminescence Dating—A Case of the Yellow River Terraces in the Baode Area, China

“…Fluvial terrace deposits and landforms can provide important information about river incision, tectonic activity, climate change and archaeological traces of hominid activity [1][2][3][4][5], and terraces record different stages of fluvial evolution and sedimentation. Yet, understanding the formation of terraces is a perennial problem in geomorphology and has been hampered by the exact timing of terrace formation.…”

Fossils from Quaternary fluvial archives: Sources of biostratigraphical, biogeographical and palaeoclimatic evidence

“…It should be noted, of course, that this potential can only be realized in areas conducive to the preservation of fossils, and that fluvial sequences are subjected to the same taphonomic complications known to affect other Quaternary sedimentary archives. Much of the recent palaeontological research summarized here has been undertaken as part of multidisciplinary projects, often driven by archaeologically-motivated research questions (see Chauhan et al, 2017). In Europe and Asia, these have often focussed on the timing of hominin occupations relative to changing Pleistocene climate and environments (e.g.…”

ESR and ESR/U-series chronology of the Middle Pleistocene site of Tourville-la-Rivière (Normandy, France) - A multi-laboratory approach

“…The lower part of the sequence (units A-D) consists of periglacial coarse sands and gravels units with intercalations of fine-grained interglacial fluvial or estuarine sediments. The upper part (units E to J) corresponds to successions of fine-grained sediments, gravels and paleosols, covered by periglacial slope deposits (units K and L) (Lautridou, 1985 ;Jamet, 2015 ;Chauhan et al, 2017). Chronological data available before 2014 (ESR on mollusk shells, Stremme, 1985; Amino acid racemization (AAR) also on mollusk shells, Ochhietti et al, 1987; thermoluminescence (TL) and Infra-red stimulated luminescence (IRSL) on sediments, Balescu et al, 1997; see data in Table 2) correlated the fluvial and estuarine deposits to the Saalian stage and place the deposition of units B and D1 during MIS 9 and 7, respectively.…”