Re: Lokalalei vs Flores (Re: Importance of Flores Overstated?)

From: Lee Olsen (paleocity_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/18/04 

Date: 17 Nov 2004 21:03:34 -0800

Dar_83001@yahoo.com (Daryl Habel) wrote in message news:<d24f0b9f.0411171003.40bad09b@posting.google.com>...
> paleocity@hotmail.com (Lee Olsen) wrote in message news:<40a73547.0411161718.40344316@posting.google.com>...
> > Dar_83001@yahoo.com (Daryl Habel) wrote in message news:<d24f0b9f.0411152322.3ddb6e42@posting.google.com>...
> > > paleocity@hotmail.com (Lee Olsen) wrote in message news:<40a73547.0411151209.528ee2f7@posting.google.com>...
> > > > Dar_83001@yahoo.com (Daryl Habel) wrote in message news:<d24f0b9f.0411140349.6ef14b8f@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > paleocity@hotmail.com (Lee Olsen) wrote in message news:<40a73547.0411131931.74ff117@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > > Dar_83001@yahoo.com (Daryl Habel) wrote in message news:<d24f0b9f.0411121240.4666e94f@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > > > paleocity@hotmail.com (Lee Olsen) wrote in message news:<40a73547.0411112040.5015e48e@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > > > > From: Dar_83001@yahoo.com (Daryl Habel) Newsgroups wrote: Message-ID
> > > > > > > > <d24f0b9f.0411101647.407647c6@posting.google.com>
> {humongous snippage)
<snip>
> {snip)
> Concerning Morwood et al. (2004)
> > > He does call the small blades microblades. Whether microlithic (< 5
> > > cm) blades can properly be termed microblades when the industry itself
> > > is not a formal microblade industry (which, as far as we can tell, Lia
> > > Buang is not), I cannot say.

I would like to add a few more citationtions that will help clarify
just what is shown in fig. 5.

Owen, Linda R.
1988 Blade and Microblade Technology: Selected Assemblages from the
North American Arctic and the Upper Paleolithic of Southwest Germany.
BAR International Series 441. Oxford.

Here is a list of the authors she cites that have actually given a
dimension (maximum width) to micro blades, at the same time making it
clear that not all workers do so.

Page 2
Taylor (1962:425-426) maximum width 11mm for Arnpik, Pre-Dorset.
Bordes and Gaussen (1970:321) width 8mm French Magdalenian.
Tixier (1963:36-39) width 12mm Epi-Paleolithic Magghreb.
Hahn (1977a:44) width 10mm Upper Paleolithic material.

11+8+12+10= 41 divided by 4 =10.25 mm maximum width average in the
opinion of the above workers. By this criteria the two microblades e
and f shown in fig. 5 (Morwood 2004) would not qualify as microblades
as they are 12.5 mm in width.

Sollberger, J. B., and L.W., Patterson
     1976 Prismatic Blade Reproduction. American Antiquity
     Vol. 41, No. 4:517-531
     
"Table 2. Blade Width Summaries.
% Micro
0-11 mm"

Notice these authors set 11 mm as maximum width for microblades, which
is very close to the 4 cited above.

Page 521: "It should be noted that even without striking platform edge
preparation some small facets were formed on the proximal dorsal
surface."

Fig. 5 Morwood again. The small facets shown on b, e, and f could be
from abrader preparation, or they could simply be caused by the force
of the blow. But certainly the edge does not show anywhere near the
amount of battering (abrading) in Owen's description of a blade flake
on page 218.

My last ace:

"Errett Callahan visited Sollberger and proceeded to make a majority
of microblades from a hand-held core of Georgetown flint, using direct
percussion with a limestone hammerstone." The limestone being
critical.

Further on: "A very accurate striking pattern must be maintained, and
this experiment is probably a demonstration of Callahan's ability, as
much as it is use of a specific technique. It is doubted that the
average flintknapper could consistently produce all microblades under
11 mm wide by this method."

I don't see any thing in fig.5 that would lead me to believe there is
anything to insure a "very accurate striking pattern," certainly not
in cores c and g.

At this point, I think Morwood needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat
before he will get a retraction out of me :-)

<snip>

>
> (snip more old references)
> > > > <random snips>
> > > >
> > > > > And you would put the Lokalalei 2C (with the relatively more elaborate
> > > > > knapping scheme) outside the Oldowan?
> > > >
> > > > No, I'm saying Lokalalei 2C (at 2.34 Ma) is enough different than
> > > > Semaw's 2.6 to 2.0 Gona tools (and presumably any where else in this
> > > > time slot, but I admit I haven't seen or read all the cited material)
> > > > to say that Semaw had better be careful lumping what he has with the
> > > > "2.0 -1.5 Ma" Oldowan industry. What he is calling "similar" is not
> > > > similar at all in my mind.
> > >
> > > de la Torre (2004:455): "Now the sample from West Turkana has been
> > > broadened to include Lokalalei 2C (Roche et al. 1999, 2003), IN WHICH
> > > FEATURES VERY SIMILAR TO GONA HAVE BEEN OBSERVED" [my caps of course).
> > > I haven't examined this issue closely enough to have an opinion.
> >
> > I agree with the authors, the basics are there early. The angles,
> > material choices, the multiple hits in succession etc were all in
> > place, if we didn't have those, we wouldn't know knapping was being
> > done at all. So in that sense they are SIMILAR :-). But how much more
> > does one have to have to know to get 50 flakes out of one cobble? A
> > lot more. And similar is not the same as. How can this be tested? By
> > "middle range research" as Lew Binford would say and like Toth would
> > do--- just go out and make one. Then keep track of the time needed to
> > learn what it takes to do what is seen in the record. So, I would
> > suggest de la Torre and Semaw make a few of these 50-flake cores and
> > then see if they still say SIMILAR.
>
> I'll add here that I got the idea that there were no prepared
> platforms in ANY of the Pliocene lithic assemblages from de la Torre
> (p. 454), quoting: "Repeated exploitation of the same knapping
> surfaces (in general unifacial cores WITHOUT PREPARED STRIKING
> PLATFORMS)[my caps, but de la Torre quote] is well documented at ALL
> these sites, as is a lack of any rejuvination or rotation of the
> cores; when the knapping surfaces lose the required convexity, the
> cores are abandoned..."
>
> But I agree with you that it' difficult for me to visualize how 50
> flakes can be extracted from a core without at least some rejuvination
> (which could be termed re-preparation). Obviously, there's more here
> that needs investigation.

 I noticed de la Torre did cite Roche, but gave no special mention to
her in the acknowledgements. Has he even seen the Lokalalei cores? If
those cores were not included in his study, I don't think he is in any
firsthand position to be judging ALL these sites.

<snip>
> (snip)
>
> > > > By the way, do you know what the definition of *prepared* is?
> > >
> > > Of course. I am. I'm an old Boy Scout :-) Perhaps you could be more
> > > specific.
> >
> > http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/Anthro/anth240/chipped_stone.pdf
>
> Thanks, nice paper. I've generally been following clues from Schick &
> Toth "Making Silent Stones Speak", the SARC webpages
> http://www.hf.uio.no/iakk/roger/lithic/sarc.html
> and a small book by Bob Patten "Old Tools-New Eyes: A primal primer of
> flintknapping (1999. Lakewood, Colorado: Stone Dagger Publications).
>
> > Nice brief paper on stone tools. Page 5 and 9 give the definitions and
> > explain the core reduction process. So if the Lokalalei creatures
> > even struck the cobble once, to get it into two pieces before they
> > started a series of flakes, that would be preparation.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > This looks to
> > me what happened in fig. 4 (Roche 1999), but this depends on how the
> > person who does the analyzing decides which order the flakes were
> > removed. Notice the author in the pdf says over 100 flakes from a
> > volume of flint the size of a volleyball for a modern knapper. The
> > Lokalalei creatures were getting 50 from a volume somewhat smaller,
> > not bad.
> >
> > <snip>
<snip>
> (snip)
> > Yep.
> >
> > <snip>
> > > > <snip>
> > [more snip]
>
> > > I can't find a retraction in the 2 I have. Only an apparent omission
> > > of "prepared". All I have is her quote from Roche (2000), published
> > > later,
> >
> > Sometimes the "date received" is published. Could you check to see if
> > we really are dealing with a 2000 paper that is actually newer than
> > the 1999 Nature article (which was first received 21 December 1998)?
>
> There is no submission or acceptance date. Supplement 19 was a
> special issue devoted to a conference held in Beijing that year.
> While googling for information on this I used in the Google search,
> the terms "Acta Anthropologica Sinica Roche) and came up with a
> selection of 8 related items. One of these is a pdf paper entitled
> "Oldowan: Rather more than smashing stones". This is a paper from a
> Barcelona conference held in 2001, and it discusses the vagaries of
> "angular fragments" in lithic classification. I think this bears on
> some of the ambiguities we've been having over whether the Lokalalei
> 2C cores were prepared platform and whether rejuvination took place.
> The original document is now gone from the Google ref, but it still
> can be downloaded from the Google page (they've saved it in a file
> somewhere). The search URL is 5 miles long, so if you're interested,
> use the terms I gave above and you'll easily find it (or I can e-mail
> it if needed).

Thanks, I'll see if I can find it.

> >
> > > which omits "prepared" and reads (requoted from above)"This
> > > knapping scheme implies the selection of cobbles with a specific
> > > morphology - with a triangular or quadrangular section and at least
> > > one flat surface - and a natural, adequate platform." Maybe she's
> > > tricked me.
> >
> > Or me. So I guess the moral of the story is that one should read as
> > many papers as they can.
>
> I agree.
>
> > > (snip).
> (snip)
> > > > > Probably because all they were
> > > > > trying to produce was a sharp edge on a flake.
> > > >
> > > > An orang can do that. What Lokalalei 2C creatures were after was
> > > > getting every last flake they possibly could from a single core, and
> > > > that is pretty human-like thinking, and far more difficult to learn
> > > > than making a small flake from a flores type core.
> > >
> > > I agree. But certainly by making this point, I hope you are not
> > > implying that the Lokalalei 2C hominins lacked equivalent skills.
> >
> > Than who, the orang or F. floresiensis?
>
> Lia Buang (implied "H. floresiensis"). I sent a separate correction
> on this

Got it.

<snip>
> Dar
> >
> > > [snip]
> (more snip)

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