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river valley near Saint Acheul in northern France where the French customs officer
and amateur archaeologist Jacques Boucher de Perthes first excavated them in the
early nineteenth century. The Oldowan and Acheulian traditions together make up
the Lower Palaeolithic or Early Stone Age (ESA). For simplicity, the terms Lower
Palaeolithic and Early Stone Age are used synonymously, although the former applies
strictly to Eurasia and Africa north of the Sahara and the latter only to Africa south of
the Sahara, because this desert was earlier thought to be an effective barrier to human
movement, which was certainly not the case during the wet phases of around 120-110
and 50-45 ka (Osborne et al., 2008 ; Castaneda et al., 2009 ).
The transition fromEarly to Middle Stone Age (MSA) is as yet poorly dated andmay
have taken many thousands of years. Previous best estimates placed the ESA/MSA
transition in Africa at around 300 ka (Ambrose, 2001 ), although as noted earlier in
this section, an age of around 500 ka now seems possible (Wilkins et al., 2012 ).
In Asia and Europe, the transition from Lower to Middle Palaeolithic is probably of
similar antiquity ( Figure 17.3 ). In QesemCave in Israel, uranium-series ages suggest a
long transition between the Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian and the Middle Palaeolithic
Mousterian , starting before 382 ka and ending around 200 ka ago (Barkai et al., 2003 ).
A hallmark of the MSA is what is termed the Levallois technique, which involved
fashioning a stone core by striking off flakes parallel to the long axis of the core
(Ambrose, 2001 , fig. 3). (A core is what remains of the parent stone once it has been
flaked). The resulting relatively thin flakes were then reworked to form blades, some of
which were pointed and attached to wooden shafts to form spears ( Figure 17.3 ). These
Mousterian points are diagnostic of a hunting tradition. Hafting and core preparation
were two technological innovations of the Middle Palaeolithic/MSA. Hafting and the
use of spears with sharp stone points allowed for more efficient forms of hunting,
while initial core preparation enabled production of a greater number of blades with
cutting edges per unit volume of stone. There is evidence of regional specialisation
during the MSA and of a more diverse array of stone tools, which allowed for more
effective use of a greater variety of natural resources (Clark, 1980 ; Clark, 1982 ; Klein,
1989 ; Van Peer, 1998 ). It was during the late Acheulian and the MSA that habitats that
had been previously avoided began to be occupied, at least intermittently, including
tropical deserts and rainforests.
Around 50-40 ka, we see another major cultural change associated with the use
of a greater range of tool-making materials, such as bone, antler, shell and ivory. The
advent of the Upper Palaeolithic ,or Later Stone Age heralds the proliferation in certain
regions of rock art (paintings, as well as engravings), sculpture and the fashioning of
stone artefacts of great beauty for aesthetic purposes rather than for purely utilitarian
daily use ( Figure 17.3 ). In the drier parts of Africa, perforated ostrich eggshell beads
become common. High quality sources of stone (such as certain types of obsidian
in the Kenya Rift Valley) were sought from much further away than they had been
previously. In India, Africa and Australia, certain types of siliceous rock were heated
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