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Futher Reflections on the Isimila Acheulian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

G.H. Cole  and
M.R. Kleindienst
G.H. Cole
Affiliation:
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois 60605 USA
M.R. Kleindienst
Affiliation:
Field Museum of Natural History, 162 Beechwood Avenue, Willowdale, Ontario, Canada M2L 1K1.
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Abstract

Uranium series dates on bone from the Isimila Prehistoric Site, Tanzania, indicate that this East African Acheulian site may be older than originally estimated. They raise the possibility that the Middle Pleistocene sediments containing Acheulian occurrences span a longer range of time than had been supposed. This could add to the plausibility of a contention by Hansen and Keller that differences between artifacts in the uppermost Acheulian horizon and in lower-lying beds are primarily a reflection of change through time rather than a result of different human activities.

A summary of the artifact content and associations of the several archeological stratigraphic units is given, and, although a sort of “developmental sequence” can be seen, the existence of discrepant occurrences suggests that an interpretation of directional change as a “function of time” does not, in fact, well accommodate the evidence.

Quantitative changes in artifact class proportions in aggregates seem just as likely to be related to local exploitation potentials for early man which were produced during the process of basin in-filling, while observed qualitative differences in the lower-lying horizons may be due to samples biased because of limited exposures which are restricted to a single sedimentary environment.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 346 - 355
Copyright
University of Washington

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