Late Middle Paleolithic Technological Organization and Behavior at the Open-Air Site of Barozh 12 (Armenia)
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Late Middle Paleolithic Technological Organization and Behavior at the Open-Air Site of Barozh 12 (Armenia) Phil Glauberman 1,2 & Boris Gasparyan 1 & Keith Wilkinson 3 & Ellery Frahm 4 & Samvel Nahapetyan 5 & Dmitri Arakelyan 6 & Yannick Raczynski-Henk 7 & Hayk Haydosyan 1 & Daniel S. Adler 8 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Barozh 12 is a late Middle Paleolithic open-air locality in western Armenia dating from ~ 60,000 to 31,000 years ago. Stratified deposits with high densities of obsidian artifacts permit the analysis of diachronic trends in manufacture, reduction, discard, and toolstone provisioning as related to technological organization in the context of hunter-gatherer mobility and land use. Throughout much of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, the occupants of Barozh 12 employed consistent unidirectional-convergent and unidirectional Levallois and “para-Levallois” core reduction techniques. Site occupation intensity varied over time, with changing emphasis on local core reduction and tool discard. Obsidian artifact sourcing indicates predominantly local toolstone exploitation, while blanks bearing retouch were intermittently transported to Barozh 12 over distances up to ~ 190 linear km. As a repeatedly visited, persistent place in regional settlement systems, this site records a range of mobility strategies and differential use of diverse eco-geographic zones. This study—a detailed analysis of late Middle Paleolithic technological organization at an open-air site in the Armenian highlands—broadens the regional record of Late Pleistocene hominin technological behaviors and settlement dynamics during a crucial period of human evolution. Keywords Middle Paleolithic . Armenia . Technological organization . Land use and
mobility . Obsidian . MIS 3
Introduction Paleogenetic and archeological research in southwest and central Asia over the last decade suggests that Late Pleistocene human population dynamics, dispersals, and
* Phil Glauberman [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology
behavioral adaptations were regionally variable and more complex than previously thought (e.g., Dennell 2008, 2017; Green et al. 2010; Reich et al. 2010; Richter et al. 2012; Kuhn 2013; Fu et al. 2014; Sankararaman et al. 2014; Ackermann et al. 2015; Groucutt et al. 2015; Fu et al. 2015; Pääbo 2015; Breeze et al. 2016; Glantz et al. 2016; Pleurdeau et al. 2016; Bretzke and Conard 2017; Kuhlwilm et al. 2016; Rogers et al. 2017; Villanea and Schraiber 2019). The timeframe of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 (~ 57–29 ka; Lisiecki and Raymo 2005) is especially important as it brackets the presence of Neanderthal and expansions of anatomically modern human populations in southwest Asia. It also includes the Middle (MP) to Upper Paleolithic (UP) “transition” (e.g., Akazawa et al. 1998). However, the timing and mode of Late Pleistocene human population dynamics, as well as their relationship with regional lithic industrial variability, remain
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