Middle Palaeolithic toolstone procurement behaviors at Lusakert Cave 1, Hrazdan valley, Armenia

Abstract

Strategies employed by Middle Palaeolithic hominins to acquire lithic raw materials often play key roles in assessing their movements through the landscape, relationships with neighboring groups, and cognitive abilities. It has been argued that a dependence on local resources is a widespread characteristic of the Middle Palaeolithic, but how such behaviors were manifested on the landscape remains unclear. Does an abundance of local toolstone reflect frequent encounters with different outcrops while foraging, or was a particular outcrop favored and preferentially quarried? This study examines such behaviors at a finer geospatial scale than is usually possible, allowing us to investigate hominin movements through the landscape surrounding Lusakert Cave 1 in Armenia. Using our newly developed approach to obsidian magnetic characterization, we test a series of hypotheses regarding the locations where hominins procured toolstone from a volcanic complex adjacent to the site. Our goal is to establish whether the cave's occupants procured local obsidian from preferred outcrops or quarries, secondary deposits of obsidian nodules along a river, or a variety of exposures as encountered while moving through the river valley or across the wider volcanic landscape during the course of foraging activities. As we demonstrate here, it is not the case that one particular outcrop or deposit attracted the cave occupants during the studied time intervals. Nor did they acquire obsidian at random across the landscape. Instead, our analyses support the hypothesis that these hominins collected obsidian from outcrops and exposures throughout the adjacent river valley, reflecting the spatial scale of their day-to-day foraging activities. The coincidence of such behaviors within the resource-rich river valley suggests efficient exploitation of a diverse biome during a time interval immediately preceding the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic "transition," the nature and timing of which has yet to be determined for the region.

Evidence for Middle Palaeolithic occupation and landscape change in central Armenia at the open-air site of Alapars-1

“…Most obsidian exploitation appears to have been associated with mobility and foraging forays within the daily exploration territory, while the longest obsidian transport distance was likely related to the social landscapes that extend beyond the immediate foraging scales (Tindale, 1974; Gamble, 1999). At the penecontemporaneous site of Lusakert-1 cave in the Hrazdan River valley and at the open-air site of Barozh 12 near the Arteni obsidian sources, similar raw material economies were observed (Frahm et al, 2016; Glauberman et al, 2016).…”

“…The MIS 4–3 artefact assemblages are produced on both local and distant obsidian sources, suggesting an obsidian exploitation territory that extended over a wide geographic area (the most distant raw material is located more than 100 km away on foot). It is worth noting that obsidian sourcing at regional MP sites indicates the long-distance exploitation of the same obsidian sources, with overlapping artefact transports among source areas and archaeological sites (Frahm et al, 2014, 2016; Glauberman et al, 2016, 2020). This pattern suggests that extensive social networks were well established in this region during MIS 4–3.…”

“…The current MP record indicates that throughout the fluctuating environmental conditions of MIS 5–3 hunter-gatherers were well adapted to a diverse array of biomes that were segregated by sharp topographic gradients. MP sites of variable size and density with artefact and faunal assemblages have been documented in palaeo-lake margins in basins, fluvial/floodplain settings in a variety of topographic positions, and ecotones between mountain ranges and basins (Adler et al, 2006; Ghukasyan et al, 2011; Pinhasi et al, 2011; Gasparyan et al, 2014; Moncel et al, 2015; Egeland et al, 2016; Frahm et al, 2016; Sherriff et al, 2019; Glauberman et al, 2020). Alapars-1 documents repeated but variable high-elevation occupations, thus broadening our understanding of the range of niches MP hominins were capable of exploiting in the rugged and ecologically diverse terrain of the Armenian highland.…”

The “Flint Depot” of prehistoric northern Israel: Comprehensive geochemical analyses of flint extraction and reduction complexes and implications for provenance studies

“…Is the phenomenon described here the result of embedded or direct procurement (Binford, , ; or “special purpose”: Frahm et al, )? We would like to note that all E&R complexes include an extensive area used for flint extraction from a single geological formation that was visited repeatedly in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic and much later in the Neolithic/Chalcolithic periods to procure high quality stone from primary geological sources needed for the production of large‐volume flint items.…”

Pleistocene volcanism and the geomorphological record of the Hrazdan valley, central Armenia: linking landscape dynamics and the Palaeolithic record

“…A feature of all Palaeolithic sites identified in the Hrazdan valley, is that artefacts assemblages are produced almost entirely on obsidian, which geochemical data suggest was overwhelmingly sourced (>90% in each case) from the flows W and S of Gutansar and Hatis (Adler et al, 2012(Adler et al, , 2014Frahm et al,2014aFrahm et al, , 2014bFrahm et al, , 2016; Figure 13). Furthermore, as discussed in Section 6.1, the K-Ar chronology for the main phase of obsidian extrusion is c. 480 ka, thereby suggesting that the presence of late Lower and Middle Palaeolithic sites is no coincidence.…”