Category Archives: Wonderwerk Cave

Chazan’s Amazin’ Tunnel Vision: Truly A Chip Off The Old Block Of Bordes’s Palaeolithic Typology.

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This is the story of the Finished Artifact Fallacy (FAF). It’s incessant mission: to infer strange new lithic technologies and new behavioural inferences: to boldly go where no palaeolithic archaeologist has gone before.

“Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus,” by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. 

From “Butchering with small tools: 
the implications of the Evron Quarry 
assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus,” 
by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013.

Allright. I know. I’m a Star Trek fan. And it’s probably very geeky to make an analogy between the FAF and the starship Enterprise‘s mission. Sometimes I just can’t help myself!

My paean to Star Trek was inspired by the just-published, peer-reviewed, “Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus,” by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. It may bear the Good Housekeeping Seal, but it is, fundamentally, flawed. The author, together with the Antiquity editors and referees ought to be charged with false and misleading advertising!

The intellectual earthquake that this paper represents cannot be underestimated. From it, we learn that “[s]mall tools are emerging as a common element of the Early Stone Age/Lower Palaeolithic toolkit … . On Oldowan sites, including Omo 57, Omo 123, Wonderwerk Cave and Sterkfontein, flakes under 20mm in maximum dimension [averaging between 22.2 mm and 37.9 mm] are a major component of the assemblage and an intentional product of knapping … ” [emphasis added]. Remember that last phrase. It becomes important further down.

Me, trying to wrap my
brain around this argument.

What’s wrong with me? I should be ecstatic that a palaeolithic archaeologist recognizes the central importance of flakes in the Oldowan and later technologies. But alas, my euphoria is still born. The author adheres to the old school of palaeolithic typology when he classifies some of the chipped stone pieces from Evron Quarry “choppers” and “polyhedrons.” And, in a stunning bit of ‘doublespeak‘ the author  proceeds to re-re-reify the notion of the ‘hand-axe.’ According to Chazan, small flakes predominate at Evron Quarry as an “adaptation of local materials that make poor hand axes.” Translation: Homo erectus was predisposed to make ‘hand axes,’ but couldn’t. So they used flakes by themselves as a substitute for ‘hand axes.’ Those flakes, he argues, “reflect a level of conceptual thought [i.e. “an ingenious improvisation on the part of Homo erectus”] that allowed the occupants of Evron Quarry to solve the problem of how to butcher an elephant using only the material at hand.” 

Almost takes your breath away. Don’t it? Wait a sec. Isn’t the material “at hand” always the only material ‘at hand?’ If those H. erecti were so clever, why didn’t they walk a few kliks and find better material? After all, one of the site’s early excavators declared the assemblage to be an artifactual accumulation of many temporally separate events. If that were true, surely during one of the times the H. erecti were elsewhere, they could have picked up some better material to take back to the quarry. [BTdub, that would be the Lower Palaeolithic equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle!] Unless… No. Of course! I’ve got it! εὕρηκα! The explanation: at each of the times those bipedal apes left chipped rock on the ground at Evron Quarry, it was because they had just spotted [or caught a whiff of] the rotting carcass of an elephant. And, logically, fearful that the meat would be thoroughly spoiled if they spent time wandering around the countryside looking for the best raw material to make a ‘hand axe’ with which to butcher said carcass, they instead used whatever was ‘at hand.’ Nah. We should just take Michael Chazan’s word for it. Or not.

Do I really think Chazan is asking us to accept such a monumental shortcoming on the part of H. erectus? Evidently. But I’m not sure the author even realizes how badly this looks for an “ingenious” species like H. erectus. Even if that were its only shortcoming this paper would be an “archaeological howler.” But, buried in the data presentation there’s an even more fundamental error in thinking.

As if the author’s effusive praise for the quick-thinking H. erecti wasn’t comic enough when viewed in terms of my [half] facetious scenario, we learn that indeed there are ‘hand axes’ in the Evron assemblage. But these “are all very thick,” and “[u]nfortunately no complete handaxes were found in the excavation” [emphasis mine, SA]. Hmmm. In a minit I’ll be showing you the ‘hand axes’ from the quarry site. There were apparently quite a few, only no “complete” ones came from the three test pits that Chazan used as his sample, which he refers to as “the excavation.”

I’m reading between the lines, here. I’m guessing that Chazan refers to the Evron Quarry ‘hand-axes’ (those shown below) as “thick,” to imply that they haven’t been ‘thinned’ enough. They haven’t been thinned enough, says he, because the local raw material was shite. He’s willing to admit that they’re ‘hand axes,’ all right. But they’re crappy ones. So, if the Evron Quarry ‘hand axes,’ ‘choppers’ and the ‘polyhedrons’ were desired end products, where did all the flakes come from? Surely not from the 1.7% (15/845) of the assemblage that he calls ‘cores!’

It’s like this. Were he to entertain the notion that the ‘choppers,’ ‘polyhedrons’ and ‘hand axes’ were among the ‘cores’ that gave birth to the abundant small flakes, he would also have to consider the possibility that all the other ‘hand axes’ in all the sites, in all the world, are, after all, just cores. And that would naturally lead to the realization—the reality that dare not speak its name—might well be just a fantasy that exists only in the mind of [admittedly a great many] archaeologists. A reified category. In plain English, the ‘hand axe’—the ‘mental template’ supposedly in the mind of its maker, the ‘desired’ end product, the ‘finished’ artifact—is fallacious! Shiver my timbers!

The FAF would be nothing to worry about, were it not that, where the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic are concerned, its perpetuation is a pernicious and persistent obstacle to a better understanding of our origins. [IMHO, of course.] Now, let’s take a closer look at Michael Chazan’s argument. First, though, let’s look at the Evron Quarry ‘hand axes’ that didn’t appear in the author’s “excavation.”

“Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus,” by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. 
When is a ‘hand axe’ not a ‘hand axe?’ When it’s a core, of *cough* course! Remember that I can only imagine the following scenario if you first accept the author’s assertion that these ‘hand axes’ are ugly. So, on we go. If you peruse the above montage, you’ll notice that many of the flake scars on the ‘hand axes’ are on the order of 20 to 30 mm. That, coincidentally, was the range of sizes for site’s entire modified flake assemblage—the assemblage in which things called cores are thin on the ground, to say the least. Now, if one were to use Occam’s Razor, rather than Bordes’s typology, the logical explanation for the origin of said flakes is, most likely, those very ‘hand axes,’ the ‘choppers,’ and the ‘polyhedrons.’ [There is the possibility to apply a bit of hypothesis testing of the empirical kind with respect to my scenario… With only a few hundred pieces of rock, an enterprising archaeologist might try seeing if any of the useful small flakes could be refitted to the block of rock whence it came.]   
Check out the image below. The author calls these “pieces [of rock] … [bits that are] associated with handaxe manufacture” [emphasis added]. Isn’t it odd that, instead of calling them something like ‘hand axe fragments”he chooses to call them [things] “associated with handaxe manufacture?” Why can’t he just call a spade a spade? Why can’t he see that these, too, are cores, not quasi ‘hand axes’ bits? He has told us that the numerous flakes themselves were ” … an intentional product of knapping … .” Where does that leave the ‘hand axes?’ The author’s answer is that they simply weren’t there in the numbers that should be expected in a Lower Palaeolithic elephant butchering theatre. So, now, on the one hand we have the ‘hand axes,’ which are the desired end product of the H. erectus brain, and on the other hand we have the small, useful flakes. Here’s where it gets really tricky, philosophically speaking. Are the flakes really debitage? Or are the ‘hand axes,’ ‘choppers,’ and ‘polyhedrons’ just cores? 
“Butchering with small tools: the implications of the Evron Quarry assemblage for the behaviour of Homo erectus,” by Michael Chazan. Antiquity 87:350–367,  2013. 
I’m not singling Michael Chazan out for punishment. He’s not alone in trying to ascertain how many bipedal apes can dance on the distal extremity of a ‘hand axe.’ Inevitably, by cleaving to the FAF, they’ll buy themselves “a ticket to obscurity” [excerpted from Famous Last Words of the Subversive Archaeologist, Vanity Press International, 2013]. I have to ask, “Has every archaeologist on the planet drunk the Bordesian typological Kool-Aid?” 
Source: Comme on dit en France, “Divine.”

And speaking of drinking. When I started to write this blurt it was last Friday afternoon. I took a moment to plug a very decent $5 sparkling wine that Trader Joe’s carries, and which I was, at the time, drinking. It’s officially called Trader Joe’s Blanc de Blancs Brut, and it’s very colourful on the tongue. It’s imported from France [so it must be good], and this grassy, pale beauty is every bit the peer of Freixenet, which at one time you could buy for $5, but which has suffered the fate of popularity, and had the price elevated due the disparity between supply and demand. [You know? I’ve always mistrusted the notion of supply and demand as the being the natural force determining value. It’s too easy, don’t you think, to consciously reduce output so as to encourage higher prices. The oil companies do it by limiting the number of refineries. OPEC does it by turning the well spigot a quarter turn to the right. Is it too far-fetched to think that wineries might do the same, even in the absence of demand in excess of production?

On the other hand, maybe drinking too much can engender conspiracy theories.

I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks for visiting!

 AND REMEMBER, ANY TIME IS A GOOD TIME TO GET GOOD STUFF AT THE SUBVERSIVE ARCHAEOLOGIST’S OWN, EXCLUSIVE “A DRINK IS LIKE A HUG” ONLINE BOUTIQUE!

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Prometheus Unfounded: Contradictions and Conundrums at Wonderwerk Cave

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Wonderwerk Cave profile (Photo by M. Chazan)

I’ve previously opined on aspects of the claim for very early fire use at Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa here, here, here, and here. In brief, it’s Swiss cheese. Today I’m beginning to look at Peter Beaumont’s 2011 synthesis of the ‘evidence’ for hearths in the cave, published in Current Anthropology. Forgive me if this comes across as unusually pedantic–I find the author’s descriptions to be less-than rigorously scientific, and thus less-than helpful if one’s hoping to cast a critical eye on what amounts to his life’s work. I’ve found it all very difficult to wrap my brain around. See what you think.   
     Beaumont begins his discussion of what he calls ‘hearths’ by mentioning that in places he observed ‘poorly defined ash lenses’ and in other places ‘ash-rich’ deposits, which he thought had been ‘single hearths … largely destroyed (perhaps by trampling).’ It’s unfortunate that there could be so much ambiguity entailed in such a short paragraph.
     First of all, what really is the difference between a ‘poorly defined lens’ and an ‘ash-rich deposit’? Aren’t they both ‘ash rich’ if you can recognize the ash in profile? And what about the other sequelae of burning, charcoal and the reddened substrate. I would have expected any fire that could turn plant fuel to ash would have been sufficiently hot and of such a duration that it would also have reddened the sediments beneath the fire. Moreover, in many cases where reddened sediments and ash are visible in a stratigraphic sequence there is a higher than average chance that there will be a layer of charcoal-enriched or blackened sediment between the reddened substrate and the ash. Trampled or not, Beaumont’s inference that these ash lenses were hearths is hardly to be believed on the face of it.
     Presumably Beaumont wants us to believe that, in the case of the ‘ash-rich’ places, any vertical distinction that at one time would have been evident between the ash and the reddened sediments had been obliterated by treadage. Yet, if that were the case, how is it that he’s able to discern anything that might be called discrete (albeit poorly defined) ash lenses? For Beaumont to be able to observe ‘lenses’ comprising ash, those lenses must have escaped, in large part, the destructive results of trampling. And surely, if the ash ‘lenses’ had escaped the ravages of time and trampling such that they were visible in profile, the underlying reddened sediments would also have retained enough integrity to be visible, too! Yet, the author mentions nothing about the substrate, reddened or otherwise. Odd. On the other hand, one has to agree that in all likelihood it was trampling that transformed what had once been intact ash deposits elsewhere in the cave into something the author calls (merely) ‘ash-rich.’

[My recognizing problems with Beaumont’s after-the-fact verbal descriptions doesn’t ensure that the his inferences are incorrect. However, one does have to wonder. Doesn’t one? One would have thought that a perspicacious referee or editor would have noticed these vague and incongruous descriptions. Wouldn’t one?] 

     Alas, the abovementioned ‘hearths’ aren’t the only curiosities to be found in Beaumont’s treatment of putative fire use at 1+ Ma. In another example he describes stratum MU2, in excavation 5, where as much as 45 cm (!) of the stratigraphic column ‘is very largely composed of white ash with many burned bones and fire-damaged Middle Stone Age artifacts.’ This ash apparently ‘accumulated slowly’ and continuously between about 1,155,000 and about 70,000 years ago. [Get out your calculators!] 
     Depending on what Beaumont means by ‘very largely composed of’ [and it’s not at all clear], it sounds as if he’s suggesting that for 1,085,000 years a very wide area of the cave received little other sedimentary input than that of completely combusted plant material. That’s a prodigiously long time for a single depositional process to have endured, and a phenomenally long time for a large surface comprising a substance as mobile as ash to have survived without either blowing away or being adulterated by larger [especially inorganic], autochthonous clastic input. 
     Even more mysterious: Beaumont claims that the ash was the result of thousands of fires fueled by above 15 tons of fuel. It’s really hard for me to imagine that such a focus of hominid activity could have escaped the inevitable, and destructive, treadage that would have accompanied that use of that part of the cave for what amounts to a single activity–that of making and keeping fire–over such a vast expanse of time. I suppose it’s not impossible. But, probable? I really don’t think so. Plausible? Barely.
     Beaumont’s description of MU 2 in excavation 5 just makes no sense. If his account of its clastic composition is accurate, nothing but a long-lived colony of fire-loving faeries could have produced it! There must be alternative explanations. And, indeed there are, provided by an unlikely source–the latter-day excavators of Wonderwerk Cave, the very ones who have recently reprised Beaumont’s long-standing claim of fire use by Acheulean hominids.
     Here’s what Matmon, Chazan, Porat and Horwitz conclude in ‘Reconstructing the history of sediment deposition in caves: A case study from Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa‘ published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin (First published online October 14, 2011, doi: 10.1130/​B30410.1).

The cave sediments comprise a sequence of fine sands and silts that were transported naturally by wind to the environs of the cave and later into the cave by water. Transport within the cave occurred by low-energy water sheetflow, which distributed and deposited the sediment in its final location. Field observations and grain-size distribution analysis of the sediments inside and outside of the cave imply the following sediment transport scenario: eolian transport of Kalahari sand to the Kuruman Hills, slope wash of the eolian sediment into the intermontane valleys, fluvial transport of the sediment from the intermontane valleys to the entrance of the cave, and final deposition of the sediment inside the cave by low-energy water action.

 These are the verbatim conclusions. Unfortunately for the authors, this sequence of transport processes leading to the input of allochthonous sands and silts at Wonderwerk Cave can equally explain the presence of anything that would be as easily transported as sands and silts. Indeed, anything lighter than fine sand–if it shows up at the doorstep–would have been subsequently transported into the cave by sheetwash. Sheesh! They’ve done my work for me! 
     Their conclusions also solve a riddle that I found while wandering through the images from Wonderwerk. This one shows non-conformable and curiously wavy strata. I’ve drawn yellow rectangles where I see evidence of what appear to be erosional events overlain by non-conformable strata. These observations support the conclusions of Matmon et al. It appears that there have been numerous erosional episodes during the build-up of sediments in Wonderwerk Cave. The wavy contacts suggest an agent even more energetic than sheetwash. If these observations are borne out it’s clear that at times the input of material and liquid from outside the cave was considerable.     

After Berna et al. 2011

Make of it what you will. 
     Beaumont describes ‘grass mats’ in various stages of combustion that occur here and there in the cave. Regardless of how they arrived at the cave’s doorstep, in they went–wind-whipped dry grass, partly combusted grass, grass ash [try saying that five times really fast without saying something unfit for polite company], small bits of burned bone made as light as fine sand by partial combustion. You name it! Matmon et al.’s conclusion opens the door to serious questioning of Wonderwerk’s depositional history. How can they claim, unequivocally, that any wind-transportable allochthonous sediments came to rest in the cave by the hands of hominids?
     Seriously! They are way past the bounds of logical inference when they claim that any of the tiny particles that Berna et al. describe in exquisite micromorphological detail were left there as a result of hominid behaviour. Somebody’s gotta tell them. I’m trying me best. But they appear not to be listening.
     So, get out there to the meetings and to your classrooms and call out the litany of overwrought inferences of hominid behaviour that keep emanating from Wonderwerk Cave!     

     
One thing’s for sure: the excavations at Wonderwerk Cave are looking more and more like job security for this Subversive Archaeologist.


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