Environmental reconstruction - Fundamentals of the Physical Environment - page 567

Years

sophisticated lithic (stone) tools, and debitage (fragments)
shed in their production, throughout the Palaeolithic
or Old Stone Age until the early Holocene. Actions
represented by stone hammers, axes, spear and arrow
heads enabled our ancestors' food strategies as hunter-
fisher-gatherers and fabrication of primitive clothing,
shelters and containers. Rapid technical development
after 35 ka BP led to sophisticated microlith, tool-using
precision capable even of early surgical procedures.
Hearth sites, marked by soot-blackened stones, and
middens or waste heaps of discarded animal bones, shells,
etc., provide further evidence of Palaeolithic culture. The
final stages of predominantly lithic cultures occurred in
quick succession as the last global cold stage ended, after
c. 12.5 ka BP .A brief Mesolithic stage reflected the largely
experimental transition from hunting-fishing-gathering
to sedentary agriculture which particularly marks the
Neolithic . Lithic cultures used materials other than stone.
Bone and ivory were robust but workable enough to be
formed into artefacts such as harpoon points, needles
and combs, with wood and animal sinews providing tool
shafts and bindings. Neolithic use of 'stone' extended to
the manufacture of clay pottery utensils and storage
containers but thereafter prehistoric societies developed
metal-using technologies for the first time, linking them
with contemporary industry. The Bronze Age ushered in
this revolution some 4.0 kyr ago, smelting bronze as
an alloy of copper and tin, followed by the first Iron Age
from c. 1000 BC to AD 800; the Industrial Revolution is
sometimes regarded as the second Iron Age.

BP AD

0 2000

Industrial
Revolution

Modern
Late Medieval

1000 1000

"Dark Ages"

Iron
Age

2000 0

BC

Bronze
Age

3000 1000

4000 2000

5000 3000 Neolithic

6000 4000

7000 5000

Late
Mesolithic

8000 6000

Early
Mesolithic

9000 7000

10,000 8000

Late

11,000 9000

Taphonomy and preservation context

Upper

12,000 10,000

Interpreting geoarchaeological records contends with
problems of provenance, stratigraphic disturbance,
taphonomy and preservation context like counterparts in
bio-lithostratigraphy but with important differences.
In material terms, stone and - to a lesser extent - metal
artefacts are among the most durable; flint was the tool
rock of first choice for its strength and workability into
sharp points. The archaeo-equivalent of index fossils is
provided by distinctive stone tool ( Figure 23.5 ) and
pottery styles and, later, architecture. More recent
'artificial' compounds vary in their biodegradability.
Preservation of human and animal bones and soft tissues
occurring as subfossils, and remains of human prey or
artefacts, vary with the acid-base conditions of the burial
site. Preservation also requires that human materials enter
the active geomorphic and sedimentary environment. For
this reason, Palaeolithic evidence is concentrated in caves,
lakeside, shoreline and floodplain sites not only where

Palaeolithic

13,000 11,000

14,000 12,000

Figure 23.4 Human culture and society in later prehistory
and the historic period in Europe. Boundaries are time-
transgressive, not synchronous.

industry, several industries a culture or civilization , and so
on. Similarly, a set of electrical tools identifies an
electrician by trade, a group of related trades would
identify the automotive industry and multiple industries
define contemporary multinational civilizations.
The oldest indisputable artefacts date from the
early Quaternary, dominated by progressively more