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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2008. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed May 15, 2008. Technique used: Cranial vault analysis. Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-85).

The role of plants in Neanderthal subsistence is less well known than the role of animals due to differences in preservation and a subsequent lack of study. Phytoliths, the silica infillings of plant cells, are more durable than organic components of plants and can be used to reconstruct human activities, local plant ecology, and diagenetic alteration of archaeological sediments. This dissertation, comprising three articles, examines the relationship between Neanderthals and plants during the Middle Paleolithic (ca. 100,000-40,000 BP) of southwest France using phytolith analysis. The first article provides an analysis of the phytoliths recovered from the cave site of Roc de Marsal, relating phytolith concentrations and identifications to environmental change, natural deposition, and Neanderthal pyrotechnology. The analysis of 115 phytolith samples provides evidence for spatial patterning in plant remains related to hearth features and diachronic change in plant use coincident with a shift from warm stadial to cold glacial conditions. The second article applies morphometric statistics to a specific class of phytoliths, grass cells known as bilobates, to understand the range of variation within and among grass genera and to compare these results with an archaeological phytolith assemblage. More than 200 archaeological bilobates from Roc de Marsal are compared with those from seven modern reference specimens to assess these links. The analysis of the modern material indicates that some species are good candidates for morphometrics, but others should be avoided. The range of variation and lack of patterning in the archaeological assemblage suggest that Neanderthals at this site used multiple grass species. The third article presents the analysis of 102 phytolith samples from Pech de l’Azé IV in comparison to those from Roc de Marsal. The two sites are similar in terms of chronology, stratigraphy, artifacts, and preserved combustion features, but there are key differences in the structure/morphology of hearths and phytolith densities. The comparison of these two sites highlights variation in Neanderthal pyrotechnology and fuel use. The analysis also indicates that different phytolith recovery protocols are needed to maximize phytolith extraction due to differences in formation processes between sites and should be evaluated on a site by site basis. / 2019-11-27T00:00:00Z

The science of human origins, known formally as ‘paleoanthropology’, was effectively born in the fierce late nineteenth century debate as to the human status of Neanderthal. Critical social theory on ‘scientism’ has generated a wealth of research on the ways the various human sciences contribute to the structuring and organizing of social relations. This includes Foucault’s well-known genealogical studies of clinical medicine, which have provided sociologists with crucial insight into how classifying and ordering practices actually create ‘Man’ in the way they operate as a field – or “technology” – of power (Foucault 1970). However, as yet there has been very little produced by sociologists interested in the impacts of science on society with regards to paleoanthropology specifically. This is especially surprising considering that Neanderthal, the quintessential ‘missing link’ and the hub of paleoanthropology’s speculative and explanatory universe, clearly occupies a central place in the socio-historical emergence of ‘humanness’ as an ontological category. Moving forward from the basic observation that the original 1856 discovery of fossilized Neanderthal remains in a cave in Germany’s Neander Valley generally coincided with the end of the colonial period, my dissertation seeks to fill a void in sociology via a genealogical study of paleoanthropological science. Drawing largely upon the insight of Foucault but also that of Saïd, I undertake a discourse analysis of the early debates surrounding Neanderthal with an aim toward shedding light upon the ways in which Neanderthal propagated or concealed certain anxieties, particularly as they relate to biological kinships. This is then applied to an exploration of how the debates surrounding Neanderthal were in turn pivotal to the emergence of today’s prevailing paleoanthropological models of human origins. The profound ontological and epistemological tensions embodied by these models, I argue, wholly reflect the inherently ambiguous nature of the missing link as both concept and metaphor. The result is that missing links, because of the discursive field in which they function, are a powerful source of normativity and stratification. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2014-02-04 12:53:52.631

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Anthropology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 422-458).

The economic life of Europe's Middle Paleolithic inhabitants is poorly known; at only a few sites have the relationships between subsistence behavior and other variables been studied in any detail. The deeply stratified site of Combe Grenal, Dordogne, France, provided an opportunity to study one part of this problem in one of the archaeologically best-known areas of Western Europe. Three aspects of animal exploitation (species preference, carcass use, and butchering techniques) were examined in relationship to each other and to three other variables (climate, associated lithic assemblages, and time). The results of this study, supported by data from Middle Paleolithic sites in the rest of Europe, provide an overall picture of the nature of Mousterian subsistence systems. Middle Paleolithic economies were based on a purposeful, eclectic, and internally diversified set of activities. These show a remarkable persistence through time and a remarkable independence from changes in both climate and lithic industry, while showing little evidence of evolutionary development. The striking conservatism in behavior has implications both for our evaluations of the efficiency of Mousterian technologies and for our concepts of the nature of Middle Paleolithic culture.

The spatial arrangements of artifacts and features within archaeological sites have often been used to isolate activity areas and draw inferences about site function. This approach assumes that objects found in close proximity were used for the same task, and that artifacts are usually discarded where they were used. However, the location of artifact abandonment often has more to do with patterns of discard and use/reuse of the site throughout time than with the function or location of activities. This dissertation uses a comparative framework to address how the observed spatial structure of Middle Paleolithic sites in France sites was formed through centrifugal dispersion of lithic artifacts, i.e. the displacement of artifacts between their creation and the final location of their abandonments. Seven Middle Paleolithic sites were included in this study. The sites were excavated over large areas, from 200 to more than 2000 m². They range from small single component occupation sites to lithic raw material workshops with assemblages of more than 15,000 artifacts. The movement of artifacts is tracked through an analysis of sets of refitted lithics and through comparisons of the distributions of multiple classes of artifact across areas of the sites with differing artifact densities. Studying the distribution of lithic technological classes and tracking their movement through refitting sets provides new perspectives on the ways Paleolithic archaeological assemblages and sites were formed. The temporality of site use had a much greater impact on site structure than did activities that took place at any one point during a site's occupation. These data enabled me to assess the relative lengths and numbers of occupations for the seven sites in this study. The approach taken in this study not only provides a clearer understanding of site formation and structure than do studies that strive to isolate "activity areas," but it also provides information about the sizes of past human groups and the ways they moved among different localities on the landscape. Such insights are integral to the study of land use, mobility and economic adaptations among Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.

This study developed an informative model of a nasal cavity of a Neanderthal and Anatomically Modern Human (AMH) hybrid based on the morphological measurements and nonmetric features of nonhuman primate hybrids. This study examined morphometric measurements and nonmetric traits of the interior nasal cavity of two species of baboons (olive and yellow) and their first generation hybrids to determine how hybridization affects the internal anatomy of the nasal cavity. The nasal cavity was chosen because the nasal cavities of Neanderthals and AMH are recognized as uniquely different in size and shape. This study found that functionally different regions within the baboon nasal cavity are altered in size and shape in response to hybridization. Changes in size and shape due to hybridization occurred in three regions, at the rhinion, choana, and mid-nasopharynx. In regions of more complex physiological function, the mid-bony cavity and the posterior nasopharynx, no size or shape response was observed, except a wider lateral recess. Males and females responded differently to hybridization; males showed heterosis and females showed heterosis in most areas, though dysgenesis in the inferior meatus. The opposing male and female trends may contribute to the greater sexual dimorphism observed in hybrids compared to parental taxa. This study found that frequencies of nonmetric traits in the baboon hybrid nasal cavity were no different from frequencies in parental taxa, nor were regional frequency differences observed because anterior and posterior nonmetric traits occurred at the same frequency. However, males expressed a significantly higher frequency of nonmetric traits than females. Assuming Neanderthal and AMH hybrid nasal cavities follow the trends observed in the baboon hybrid model, the Neanderthal and AMH hybrid nasal cavity would have a different shape and larger size at the rhinion, choana, and mid-nasopharynx, while the mid-bony cavity and posterior nasopharynx remained unchanged compared to parental taxa. However, because Neanderthals and AMH have been diverged for a longer time period, the traits of the nasal cavity may be very different in parental taxa due to adaptations to local conditions, which may result in hybrids with traits from one parent or the other. Further, an analysis of different hybridization scenarios between Neanderthals and AMH, based on observed hybridization in baboons and paleoanthropological evidence, suggests rapid gene swamping of the Neanderthal population by AMH during hybridization, as other authors have also concluded.

abstract: This research uses Peircean Semiotics to model the evolution of symbolic behavior in the human lineage and the potential material correlates of this evolutionary process in the archaeological record. The semiotic model states the capacity for symbolic behavior developed in two distinct stages. Emergent capacities are characterized by the sporadic use of non-symbolic and symbolic material culture that affects information exchange between individuals. Symbolic exchange will be rare. Mobilized capacities are defined by the constant use of non-symbolic and symbolic objects that affect both interpersonal and group-level information exchange. Symbolic behavior will be obligatory and widespread. The model was tested against the published archaeological record dating from ~200,000 years ago to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in three sub-regions of Africa and Eurasia. A number of Exploratory and Confirmatory Data Analysis techniques were used to identify patterning in artifacts through time consistent with model predictions. The results indicate Emergent symboling capacities were expressed as early as ~100,000 years ago in Southern Africa and the Levant. However, capacities do not appear fully Mobilized in these regions until ~17,000 years ago. Emergent symboling is not evident in the European record until ~42,000 years ago, but develops rapidly. The results also indicate both Anatomically Modern Humans and Neanderthals had the capacity for symbolic behavior, but expressed those capacities differently. Moreover, interactions between the two populations did not select for symbolic expression, nor did periodic aggregation within groups. The analysis ultimately situates the capacity for symbolic behavior in increased engagement with materiality and the ability to recognize material objects can be made meaningful– an ability that must have been shared with Anatomically Modern Humans’ and Neanderthals’ most recent common ancestor. Consequently, the results have significant implications for notions of ‘modernity’ and human uniqueness that drive human origins research. This work pioneers deductive approaches to cognitive evolution, and both strengths and weaknesses are discussed. In offering notable results and best practices, it effectively operationalizes the semiotic model as a viable analytical method for human origins research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Appendices A-N: Spreadsheets / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2016

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