INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

Where are some important Lower Paleolithic sites? Your book focuses upon classic sites, such as
the Trinil site in Java where the first Homo erectus bones were found and named in the 19th
century. It is a romantic story, about the Dutch army surgeon Eugene Dubois and his obsession
with the bones. But there were no tools, and still-controversial dates in more recent years.
What is important at the site of Zhoukoudian? Another classic site with a romantic story, these
caves near Beijing also produced many Homo erectus skeletons early in the 20th century. The
bones are now lost, though we have casts, but also there was some good archaeology. Animal
remains and fires suggest hunting and cooking of some 96 mammal species, including extinct
deer, elephant, and bear, though Lewis Binford and others are now questioning the site formation
processes and asking if these can also be the remains of scavenging killed meat. The stone tools
here include types of choppers, scrapers, and even small points, but no handaxes.
What happened at the Terra Amata site, and where is it? On the French Riviera, it another classic
site, saved from being destroyed by construction of apartments. (Is there is a stronger sense of
stewardship of the past going on in Europe because they are saving the remains of their own
ancestors, unlike in the U.S., where people are not often descendants of the native inhabitants?)
It is famous for producing remains of both terrestrial animals and coastal species, both fish and
shellfish. Original interpretations of features indicating structures, huts on the beach, are now
under question with new reanalyses. You can see the excellent picture (p. 86) of the lithic
refitting analysis, putting the flakes back together to see the original piece and how it was
chipped. There was a hearth with a pattern of rocks on one side of it suggesting a windscreen.
Why do we have less evidence of Paleolithic coastal dwellers in general? Because rising sea
levels after the Pleistocene, from the melting of the glaciers, have drowned most of the original
shoreline and any sites that may have been on it.
What was found at the East African sites of Kalambo Falls and Olorgesailie? The former
produced Lower Paleolithic plant remains, such as nuts and seeds, and the latter had preserved
bones of baboons presumably hunted by Homo erectus. Both had handaxes.
What important points should we remember about the Lower Paleolithic? First, there are many
debates about which hominid species are present or which species names should be used. Some
sites have bones and no archaeological remains; some have tools and animal bone but no
hominid remains. It would be nice to classify everything neatly, but that is not possible. The map
in the book on p. 64 shows other Lower Paleolithic sites not even discussed in the text which are
yielding more fascinating evidence lately and probably will be described in greater length in the
next edition of the book. One of these is Longgupo in south China, where the finds were a few
teeth and some pebble or Oldowan-like tools, dating to just under 2 million years ago.
What about social organization during the Lower Paleolithic? Your book is clear in its opinion
that there was a sexual division of labor, that men hunted because they were faster and larger and
women gathered and did child care (p. 95). They are less certain about family structure, and say
that monogamy or polygamy were both possible. What is the evidence for such statements? Are
they testable hypotheses? There is no evidence, and we have not yet figured how to test them. By
analogy, we can say there does not have to be a division of labor based on sex as much as on age,