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Though hundreds of caves are known across Mongolia, few have been subject to systematic, interdisciplinary archaeological surveys and excavations to understand Late Pleistocene and Holocene environments. Previous cave excavations in Mongolia have demonstrated their potential for preservation of archaeological and biological material, including Palaeolithic assemblages and Holocene archaeology, particularly burials, with associated organic finds. In other cases, cave surveys found that stratigraphic deposits and archaeological materials are absent. The large number of caves makes the Mongolian Altai Mountain Range a potentially attractive region for human occupation in the Pleistocene and Holocene. Here we present the results of an interdisciplinary survey of caves in four carbonate areas across the Gobi-Altai Mountains. We report 24 new caves, some of which contain archaeological material recovered through survey and test excavations. Most caves presented limited sedimentation, and some were likely too small for human habitation. Six caves showed evidence of palaeontological remains, most likely from the Late Holocene and recent periods. The most notable anthropogenic findings included petroglyphs at Gazar Agui 1 & 13. Gazar Agui 1 also contained lithics and a bronze fragment. Tsakhiryn Agui 1 contained 31 wooden fragments that include an unused fire drilling tool kit and items commonly found in association with medieval burials. We observed that the caves remain in contemporary use for religious and economic purposes, such as the construction of shrines, mining and animal corralling. Water samples from the caves, and nearby rivers, lakes, and springs were analysed for their isotopic compositions (δ18O, δD, δ17O, 17Oexcess, d-excess) and the data, combined with backward trajectory modelling revealed that the Gobi-Altai region receives moisture mainly from western sources. These results form a baseline for future archaeological, palaeoclimate and palaeoecological studies about regional seasonality and land use.

Rapid environmental change is a catalyst for human evolution, driving dietary innovations, habitat diversification, and dispersal. However, there is a dearth of information to assess hominin adaptions to changing physiography during key evolutionary stages such as the early Pleistocene. Here we report a multiproxy dataset from Ewass Oldupa, in the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania, to address this lacuna and offer an ecological perspective on human adaptability two million years ago. Oldupai’s earliest hominins sequentially inhabited the floodplains of sinuous channels, then river-influenced contexts, which now comprises the oldest palaeolake setting documented regionally. Early Oldowan tools reveal a homogenous technology to utilise diverse, rapidly changing environments that ranged from fern meadows to woodland mosaics, naturally burned landscapes, to lakeside woodland/palm groves as well as hyper-xeric steppes. Hominins periodically used emerging landscapes and disturbance biomes multiple times over 235,000 years, thus predating by more than 180,000 years the earliest known hominins and Oldowan industries from the Eastern side of the basin., Oldupai Gorge, Tanzania is a key site for understanding early human evolution. Here, the authors report a multiproxy dataset from the Western basin of Oldupai Gorge dating to 2 million years ago, enabling the in situ comparison of lithic assemblages, paleoenvironments and hominin behavioral adaptability.

The intensity of reduction on lithic assemblages has implications in the understanding of hominin behaviors such as mobility patterns, type and intensity of occupations, raw material management and cognitive abilities, as well as in the formation of lithic assemblages. In the last decades, numerous methodological proposals have been developed aimed at estimating the reduction intensity in retouched tools and cores. Regarding the analysis of the reduction in cores, several studies have focused on technical parameters, in many cases without considering the different reduction strategies used. In this paper, we present the results of a sequential experimental program aimed at evaluating the effect of two different reduction strategies (unifacial unipolar and bifacial multipolar centripetal), as well as the size of the original nodules, in the estimation of the intensity of reduction on cores. Our results show that both, the core reduction strategies and the size of the nodules, affect the estimation of reduction intensity. Therefore, we pose the necessity of considering a series of aspects, such as the perimetric development and faciality of the exploitation, as well as the size of nodules, to more accurately infer the intensity of reduction in cores.

Understanding the evolution of technological complexity is a major goal in the study of prehistoric lithic industries. This has led to the development of different methods to examine both archaeological items and their production processes. These methods have attempted to segment the actions that form an operational sequence, usually with the aim of quantifying the complexity involved in lithic knapping. However, to date, no study has been capable of cataloguing these actions to the point of characterizing the elements that comprise them. In this work, we propose an approach to identify the smallest unit of any knapping action: the manual gesture. Our goal is to provide a homogeneous language allowing the characterization and quantification of 1) the variability between lithic industries, and 2) the evolution of technological complexity, from both synchronic and diachronic view. As a proof-of-concept, we designed a pilot experiment to characterize the manual gestures involved in making choppers, chopping-tools and handaxes. Our results confirm the reliability of this approach. In addition, it points to the existence of a gestural primordial core that lasted throughout the Oldowan and the Acheulean –as knapping sequences increased in complexity- and the potential to identify some specific traits of the individual knappers

Knowing to what extent lithic cores have been reduced through knapping is an important step toward understanding the technological variability of lithic assemblages and disentangling the formation processes of archaeological assemblages. In addition, it is a good complement to more developed studies of reduction intensity in retouched tools, and can provide information on raw material management or site occupation dynamics. This paper presents a new methodology for estimating the intensity of reduction in cores and tools on cobbles, the Volumetric Reconstruction Method (VRM). This method is based on a correction of the dimensions (length, width, and thickness) of each core from an assemblage. The mean values of thickness and platform thickness of the assemblage’s flakes are used as corrections for the cores’ original dimensions, after its diacritic analysis. Then, based on these new dimensions, the volume or mass of the original blank are reconstructed using the ellipsoid volume formula. The accuracy of this method was experimentally tested, reproducing a variety of possible archaeological scenarios. The experimental results demonstrate a high inferential potential of the VRM, both in estimating the original volume or mass of the original blanks, and in inferring the individual percentage of reduction for each core. The results of random resampling demonstrate the applicability of VRM to non size-biased archaeological contexts. Introduction Methods - The Volumetric Reconstruction Method - Experimental design - Statistical procedures - Resamples Results - Geometric formulas - Reduction strategy and size - Resampling (randomly biased record) - Resampling (size bias) - Measuring the effect of number of generations Discussion and conclusions

Environmental change is key for human evolution, especially at times of anatomical and behavioral change in life histories, such as the origin of meat consumption, economic diversification, and dispersal. However, for the earliest phase of human evolution featuring the technology-dependent hominins that shaped our lineage since 2.6 Ma, the Oldowan, there is a dearth of archaeological evidence directly associated with rich chronostratigraphic and environmental datasets amenable to tracking ecological change and adaptation to new physiographic conditions. One place where this type of information has been recently retrieved is the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania. We explore habitat range by Oldowan-bearing hominins amidst extremely diverse ecosystems throughout a stratified sequence 235 ka-long, thus predating by >180 ka the earliest landmark fossil hominins and classic Oldowan from the Eastern side of the basin. Our study provides multi-proxy evidence of environmental adaptability, demonstrating colonisation of fresh volcanic landscapes and occupation of fast-changing biomes by 2 Ma.

For many years, the scientific community has considered the production of lithic artifacts as a unique characteristic of the genus Homo. However, recent discoveries made in African sites have provided results that seem to put this issue in doubt, delaying the appearance time of the first stone industries to beyond the 2.6 Myr. posed by the deposits of Kada Gona. This paper aims to make a review on these sites, trying to consider the possible authorship of that early technologies, which are framed in a high complexity paleoanthropological context, and perhaps are attributable to members of other genres.

Over the last years, functional analyses and projectile fracture analyses on non-chert tools are becoming widespread and are drawing more attention in the archaeological literature. The actual tendencies of conducting holistic studies of the archaeological sites and their materials is allowing to obtain a better quality of data and a better understanding of the subsistence patterns of hunter-gatherer societies. In this way, rock crystal and other types of minerals and rocks of the quartzose group are getting a significant presence in the literature. In this paper, we intend to address a comprehensive approach, both macroscopic and microscopic, to an assemblage of experimental rock crystal projectiles to shed light on the identification of the diagnostic features of the use of small rock crystal pieces as projectile points. Aiming to avoid misidentifications, we did not only follow a sequential experiment design, but also carried out a comparative analysis between impact fractures and knapping fractures, marks from bipolar knapping on an anvil, and intentional bending fractures. Besides, in the elaboration of the experimental projectile assemblage we used different sets of targets to document possible differences in the quantity and disposition of the wear impact traces. This research is framed in the PGC2018-093925-B-C32 (MICINN-FEDER), the 2017SGR1040 and 2017SGR836 (AGAUR) and the 2018PFR-URV-B2-91 (URV) projects. Research at IPHES is framed in the CERCA program. J.L.F.M. is beneficiary of PhD research fellowship FPI MINECO/FSE (BES-2015-074931) associated with the MINECO project HAR2014-55131. D.L. is a beneficiary of PhD research fellowship AGAUR/FSE “L’ FSE inverteix en el teu futur” (2020 FI_B2 00164). R.H. is a beneficiary of a PhD research fellowship URV-Martí-Franquès Research Grant (2019PMF-PIPF-59). I.C. is beneficiary of a PEJ grant (PEJ2018-005226-P) funded by the Spanish National System of Garantía Juvenil and the European Social Fund.

Durante muchos años, la comunidad científica ha considerado la producción de artefactos líticos como privativa del género Homo. Sin embargo, recientes hallazgos realizados en yacimientos africanos han aportado unos resultados que parecen poner en duda esta cuestión, retrasando la cronología de aparición de las primeras industrias líticas hasta más allá de los 2.6 Ma. planteados por el yacimiento de Gona. A partir de una revisión de estos yacimientos, el presente trabajo pretende realizar una reflexión sobre la posible autoría de estas primeras tecnologías, enmarcadas en un contexto paleoantropológico de creciente complejidad, y quizás atribuibles a miembros de otros géneros. For many years, the scientific community has considered the production of lithic artifacts as a unique characteristic of the genus Homo. However, recent discoveries made in African sites have provided results that seem to put this issue in doubt, delaying the appearance time of the first stone industries to beyond the 2.6 Myr. posed by the deposits of Kada Gona. This paper aims to make a review on these sites, trying to consider the possible authorship of that early technologies, which are framed in a high complexity paleoanthropological context, and perhaps are attributable to members of other genres.