Richard Yerkes

The results of a microwear analysis of samples of fan scrapers and fan scrapers spalls from late Pottery Neolithic (PN) and Early Bronze Age (EBA) occupation layers at Ein Zippori, Lower Galilee, Israel are presented. The goal of the microwear analysis was to determine the function of the fan scrapers and compare the visible usewear on the scrapers found in late PN and EBA lithic assemblages. The results indicate that during both periods most of the fan scrapers were used to skin and butcher animals, while some were also used for hide processing and bone working. The working edges of the fan scrapers had sharp, moderate, or steep edge-angles, and different edges were used for different tasks. Edges with microwear from scraping meat, bone, and hides (including some hides that may have been treated with abrasives) had steep edge-angles, while there were moderate or sharp edge-angles on the edges of fan scrapers used for cutting. Two sub-types of fan scrapers were identified, flat cort...

Fan (or tabular) scrapers are a diagnostic  tool type in Chalcolithic Ghassulian and Early Bronze Age lithic assemblages from  the southern Levant. To date, only small numbers of fan scrapers have been reported from the Late Pottery Neolithic Wadi Rabah culture. In this paper we present a techno-typological analysis of a fair sample of fan scrapers and fan scrapers spalls from Wadi Rabah and Early Bronze Age layers at Ein Zippori, Lower Galilee, Israel. Techno-typological similarities and differences of Wadi Rabah, Chalcolithic Ghassulian and Early Bronze Age fan scrapers from Ein Zippori and other sites in the region are presented, trends of change along time are noted, and an updated definition is proposed. Our results indicate that fan scrapers are highly efficient tools for accurate and prolonged animal butchering and hide working. The main advantage of fan scrapers is their mostly flat, thin morphology and large size that permits the creation of several relatively long working ...

Among the first questions that individuals ask archaeologists is, how do you know where to dig? The answer to that query usually includes three typical ways of identifying sites. The first is accidental exposure that results both from natural events, such as erosion, the uncovering of remains by wind, and so forth, and from human activity, including construction and farming. Next is the use of informants who may have a detailed knowledge of local site locations and content. The third is systematic survey undertaken by trained archaeologists. The difference between the first two ways and the third way is that in systematic survey, researchers are able to devise a research design with explicit questions that can be addressed by particular methods of field investigation, rather than the serendipity of the other two forms of data collection. We have adopted a set of theoretical approaches that have guided both our techniques for collecting information in the field and its interpretation...

Abstract Why did the early farming societies of south-east Europe ‘collapse’ and become apparently less complex at the end of the Neolithic? Stable isotope analysis of human bone collagen from Late Neolithic and Copper Age cemeteries in eastern Hungary provides new insights into this question by exploring dietary changes during this key transitional period. Results show that diet did not change significantly over time, and there was no evidence that individuals of different sex or social status were consuming privileged diets. The changes of this period appear to indicate a reorganisation of society, perhaps based around extended families, with greater dispersal across the landscape, but without reliance on dairying or the emergence of powerful leaders.

Compared to other parts of the Old World, nu-cleated, tell-based settlements emerged late in the evolution of Neolithic villages in the Car-pathian Basin. This article presents the results of recent research conducted by the Körös Regional Archaeological Project and examines the long-term trajectories of two tell-based settlements in the Körös Region of the Great Hungar-ian Plain. In this article, we describe the various non-invasive investigative techniques that were employed to reconstruct the organization of Neo-lithic tell-based settlements at Szeghalom

This paper presents a new techno-typological analysis of a sample of small flakes that were produced through recycling from discarded blanks at the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age site of Ein-Zippori, Lower Galilee, Israel. This study shows that the systematic production of small flakes from previously discarded blanks was not related to a scarcity in raw materials, but rather to specific decisions concerning the types of tools needed to complete necessary tasks. These results are supported by use-wear analysis noted briefly here and presented in more detail in a separate paper. The results indicate that recycling was a significant lithic production trajectory during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Recycling also contributes to the variability in lithic assemblages from those cultural periods.

A microwear analysis of recycled lithic artefacts from late Pottery Neolithic Wadi Rabah and Early Bronze Age layers at Ein-Zippori, Israel included cores-on-flakes (COFs) which are discarded blanks made into cores, and the flakes detached from them. COFs may have microwear traces that formed before they were recycled. The focus here is on how blanks removed from recycled COFs were used. Discarded flakes were not used as cores to produce small blanks at Ein-Zippori because lithic raw material was scarce, but were COFs recycled so that small tools could be produced for specific tasks? Visible wear traces were present on 19 of 44 blanks produced from COFs. Microwear traces were similar to use wear Lemorini et al. (2015) observed on much older Lower Paleolithic recycled flakes from Qesem Cave, Israel. Most flakes struck from COFs had been used to cut and scrape meat and fresh hide (42%, n=8), but four were used to work wood (21%) and four others were used to cut, scrape, or whittle bon...

This paper presents a new techno-typological analysis of a sample of small flakes that were produced through recycling from discarded blanks at the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age site of Ein-Zippori, Lower Galilee, Israel. This study shows that the systematic production of small flakes from previously discarded blanks was not related to a scarcity in raw materials, but rather to specific decisions concerning the types of tools needed to complete necessary tasks. These results are supported by use-wear analysis noted briefly here and presented in more detail in a separate paper. The results indicate that recycling was a significant lithic production trajectory during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Recycling also contributes to the variability in lithic assemblages from those cultural periods.

Abstract While a doctoral student at Oxford University in the early 1970s, Lawrence H. Keeley refined the high powered technique for microwear analysis. When the results of his “blind test” with Mark Newcomer were published, even skeptical researchers realized that it was possible to determine the function of ancient stone implements from microscopic examination of use wear traces. Beginning with his first student, Patricia Anderson, his Lithic Analysis Workshop in 1980, and until his death, Keeley's influence on microwear analysis extended to the far corners of the world. Keeley's contributions are outlined, and a few highlights of his distinguished career are summarized here. In his research on Lower Paleolithic assemblages and collaborations with numerous colleagues and students, Keeley engaged in cutting-edge research that combined rigorous experimental replication, refitting, residue analyses, and microscopic examination of ancient artifacts. His results provided remarkable new details and insights about the lives of ancient people, from ancient hominins at Koobi Fora, Kenya to foragers and farmers in the Old and New Worlds. In 1995, he received the Society for American Archaeology's Award for Excellence in Lithic Studies, however his real legacy is the outstanding research conducted by the new generation of scholars that he inspired.

A B S T R A C T Innovations in tool technology during the early Holocene in the North American midcontinent are related to construction of a new human niche focusing on woodlands, water travel, and improved aquatic and terrestrial resources. Production and use of early Holocene Dalton adzes and other tools from sites and caches exemplify these adaptations. Subsistence remains are not abundant, but microwear and technological analyses of flaked stone tools can be used to infer production of dugout canoes and document trends that reflect new sustainable and resilient lifeways and complex social networks. The functions of tools from Dalton sites and tool caches in Illinois and Arkansas are contrasted with typical Clovis tools. Technological and microwear analyses reveals that the Dalton adze was made and used for heavy-duty woodworking—felling trees and likely for manufacturing dugout canoes. Dalton toolkits are highly formalized, consisting of adzes, scrapers, awls, and points used bo...

ABSTRACT The transition from the Neolithic to the Copper Age is a remarkable period in the prehistory of the Great Hungarian Plain. The changes in this period fundamentally transformed nearly all aspects of social life in the region. Recent research conducted by the Hungarian-American Körös Regional Archaeological Project in the Körös Valley of southeastern Hungary has yielded a wide variety of information with respect to this transitional period. The multi-scalar approach proposed in this chapter helps us model how Late Neolithic and Early Copper Age settlements were used and organized at the regional level, as well as how social boundaries and the nature of interaction changed over time. We discuss the constraints and possibilities of interpreting data about the paleoenvironment, material culture, economy and social organization of the region and propose a model for explaining the changes that occurred on the Great Hungarian Plain around 4500 BC. We argue that regional analyses are most productive – and informative – when they incorporate several scales of analysis, including local and regional scales. Such studies, however, are limited to those areas that have been the subject of not only intensive survey, but also extensive excavations, which permit these various analytical scales to be explored using different archaeological datasets.

This is the latest in a series of books on environmental change that are designed to show that environmental science is "big science," just as worthy of "big funding" as the hard sciences. The authors of Environmental Archaeology argue that studies of environmental change are central components of archaeological research, not narrow specializations. They define archaeology as, "the study of people and their relationship with the environment through time" (p. 1). They suggest that even in these times of "cultural wars" (Taylor, 2003), environmental archaeology can serve as a bridge between the sciences and the humanities and that empirical studies of physical remains can be reconciled with postprocessual examinations of cultural perceptions. The proper study of human cultural and biological evolution calls for the integration of humanistic and scientific approaches (Ehrenreich 1996; Hall 1977, 1997), and pointless confrontations between "scientific" and "anthropological" archaeologists serve no useful purpose. The authors of Environmental Archaeology are to be commended for their attempts at reconciliation, even if their discussion of the search for the true past is somewhat disjointed. In their view, science is limited to the search for universal laws. They do not distinguish between experimental sciences (such as chemistry and physics) and historical sciences (such as biology, geology, and archaeology). All types of science employ the sdentific method to form hypotheses from observed facts through induction. Predictions based on these hypotheses (by deductive reasoning) must be tested with new observations , and the hypotheses may be rejected. The proper application of the scientific method can produce historical narrative explanations of past events and generalizations about phenomena and processes, as well as covering laws (Mayr, 1982). The authors claim that there is no such thing as "true history" (p. 2) (since all history is based on subjectiv·~ selective interpretation) and that the effects of human agency undermine the uniforrnitarian concepts at the foundation of environmental archaeology (p. 3). If this is so, what is left? Catastrophic models of a past with no modern analogs? Is human agency so individualistic that it denies the very existence of general patterns in human behavior? Environmental Archaeology is not a collection of papers by specialists, but a review of method, theory, and applications that draws on the ideas and experiences of the authors. Unfortunately, the book seems to have been written for a restricted audirnce of archaeologists and archaeology students in the United Kingdom. In the first of their five chapters, Branch et al. define environmental archaeology as, "the study of the environment and its relationship with people through time" (p. 8). This counterpoint to their definition of archaeology (p. 1) lacks the depth and breadth of Dincauze's (2000:40, 497) characterization of environmental archaeology as the employment of an anthropocentric palaeoecological approach in the study of paleoenvironments and human habitats (also see, Farrand, 2001). Branch et al. provide a brief review of the history of environmental archaeology (which incorporates the fields of archaeobotany, geoar-chaeology, and zooarchaeology), and outline the variable (logarithmic) mega, macro, meso, and micro scales for space, time, landforms, flora, and fauna that Dincauze (2000) introduced in her more comprehensive book on the subject. Branch et al. mention several key developments in environmental archaeology that have benefited from new and improved data collection and analytical methods, including (a) chronology, stratigraphy, and site.formation processes; (b) studies of human origins, migrations, and adaptations; and (c) greater understanding of the processes involved in plant and animal domestication and the establishment of systems of food production. However, their discussion of changes in climate, environment, and material culture oYer time is superficial, and they do not provide adequate definitions of many key terms and concepts in cultural ecology, evolutionary ecology, ecosystems research, and pale-oclirnatology (there is no glossary in their text). Each chapter is followed by a list of references, and although many recent studies are cited, several well-known standard works are not (e.g., the publications ofR.A. Bryson, just to mention a few). The second chapter in Environr.iental Archaeology deals with stratigraphy, sediments, soils, and excavation methods. Most of the tenninology and concepts are pretty basic and all but one of the examples comes from the United Kingdom. Quite a bit of space is devoted to Harris matrix analyses, much less

I'Ily~GcuI and Chemical W'eathuing in Gcwhem~~ni I 'ph. the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute of the same name, is a somewhat misleading title as a much wider range of topics is covered in this book than the title would suggest. There are a number of excellent review chapters on recent work which would interest people concerned with global biogeochemical cycles. Most of the sixteen chapters concern the earth surface. water-mediated sedimen-tary cycle: physical and chemical weathering. the transport and de-position of dissolved material and suspended sediments [products of physical and chemical weathering) in rivers, lakes, estuaries and the ocean, and the long-term cycling of sediments. The time scale of the subjects discussed ranges from the present, including human effects on chemical and physical weathering, and the transport of dissolved and suspended material, to the geologic or long-term sedimentary cycle on a scale of IO8 to IO9 years. A. Lerman in his introduction summarizes the rates of a large number of surficial processes mentioned in the volume. The chapters on chemical weathering include one on the rate control of silicate weathering (R. Wollast and L. Chou) and an excellent review of the role of microorganisms in weathering and redeposition of minerals in various different natural environments (J. Berthelin). H. D. Holland and E. Zbinden discuss the use of iron behavior in pre-Cambrian paleosols (ancient soils) to suggest that the 0: content of the atmosphere 2 billion years ago was less than toda). Several chapters are of interest to those concerned with human effects on the environment. R. F. Wright reviews the influence of acid rain on chemical weathering rates and concludes that acid rain causes only small changes in the pH ofsoil solutions and, thus. changes in chemical weathering rates due to changes in soil chemistry may be minor (but are poorly known). The cycling of carbon between various organic and inorganic forms in river systems and the impact of organic pollution, nutrient loading. and river damming are discussed by S. Kempe. M. Meybeck gives an updated budget for river transport of organic carbon to the oceans. He also discusses methods for establishing river budgets for various elements and gives updated examples for major elements, trace elements, and suspended matter. A chapter by R. H. Meade reviews recent work on suspended matter transport by rivers and discusses scdlment storage in river banns. and human effects on the sediment load as the) relate 10 the USC i,t river data in long-term sediment fluxes. R. I 1 homas discussch changes in lake sediments as an indicator ofhuman.lnduced change\ in soil erosion rates. There is also a discussion r:i the relation&p between erosion, sediment storage and suspended sediment load (0 Slaymaker), and the formation of locss (windblown silt) prim&l;. 01 glacial origin (J. A. Catt). Most suspended sediment transported by rovers IS depositccl in estuaries or nearshore marine environments. D. Eisma reviews recent work on the fate of riverine-suspended sediment in these arcas and other suspended sediment sources there. Similarly. certain disstrlvcd constituents of river water, such as silica, iron, and manganese, undergo removal in estuaries through hiogenic processes, scavenging on mineral particle surfaces, and/or oxidation-reduction reactions (J. D. Burton). Consideration ol'processes in the nearshore marine environment are, thus, important in geochemical budgets. A chapter by R. F. Stallard relates tropical chemical and physicai weathering rates to uplift rates in tectonically active areas and to sea level changes in stable cratonic areas. An extreme cw ofa tectonic@, active area is Taiwan where a complete sedimentan cycle oferosion. deposition, subduction, uplift, and re-erosion takes only IO " to IO years. Turning to long-term sediment cycling, R. M. i;arrels discusses modelling the Phanerozoic transfer of material beitcren the majo] lithologic reservoirs of carbon and sulfur (carhonatc rocks, organli matter, evaporites, and sedimentary iron sulfides). Similarly on a long time scale, J. Veizer estimates ihe half-life of major sedimentat) units such as oceanic sediments. oceanic crust. various continental tectonic realms. and continental crust based on a sediment recycling model and uses this information to estimate the half-lift of oil and coal reserves. 'The regulation of the strontium balance of the oceans by the deposition and diagenesis of shallow-water CJrhonatcs undel the control of sealevel changes is discussed in ri <%;iptcr h\ S. 0.