INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

camp, carrying the child and the bag of plants obtained and seven months pregnant! She is
averaging many km per day in obtaining the needed resources.
Why is it important to model the earliest human social organization? How can this have any
importance for us today, so far removed from those small early creatures in our ancestry? Since
characteristics are attributed to humans based on our supposed evolutionary past, it is crucially
important to characterize the way we originally were. If monogamy or inactive women are part
of the natural human condition, then they must be the right thing to do! Since the biases of the
researchers and lack of any (let alone good) evidence are so obviously a part of the
reconstruction, we must be cautious in accepting these speculations about early human-like
lifeways.
What is the Paleolithic time period? We have already commented on the artificial division of
time into classifications for making it easier to understand. We can see the obvious bias in
naming time periods “Paleolithic,” “Mesolithic,” “Neolithic,” or Old Stone Age, Middle, and
New! We further continue the division into the sacred Western number three as we classify
cultural remains from the Upper, Middle, and Lower Paleolithic, or Early, Middle, and Late!
Since those classifications have been used for so long, however, they are convenient.
What is the Pleistocene period? A geological term, this is the time of the Ice Age, during which
most human evolution took place and most of the archaeological record was formed, beginning
around 2 million years ago (see chart p. 67 of the book; it shows the “sudden” cooling of the
earth). The Lower Paleolithic is the cultural name for what is happening during the geological
time of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene. During this Ice Age large glaciers, ice sheets, covered
northern latitudes (pictured on map, p. 76 of text), and world regional climates were much
different, as we will explore.
What hominids and archaeological remains characterize the Lower Paleolithic? Some time
around or shortly after 2 million years ago, hominids spread out of Africa into Europe and Asia.
The most frequently described species is Homo erectus, but others have lately been suggested.
For archaeology class we will not discuss the finer points of biological evolution and skeletal
characteristics. Suffice it to say that the Lower Paleolithic hominids were in the genus Homo, so
closer to physically modern humans. What concerns us here is their culture. It is generally
assumed that during the Lower Paleolithic the stone tools get more sophisticated and the use of
fire becomes known (though some are suggesting that fire may have been known to earlier
australopithecines in East Africa, but the evidence is hard to tell from the remains of natural
fires).
Why was the use of fire a good idea for moving into these new regions? Because spreading from
equatorial African regions into colder areas may have required it for survival. Fire is equally
useful in warm areas for cooking, protection from predators, chasing game, and other uses,
however.
What are diagnostic Lower Paleolithic stone tools? Bifacially chipped “handaxes” (pictured on
pp. 68, 92-4 of the book) are pear-shaped tools made on the stone core by chipping off the flakes
on both sides. These are especially common at sites in Europe.