[Paper spotlight] New review by FCS affiliate Annemieke Milks on the use of wooden spears

FCS affiliate Annemieke Milks has a terrific new ethnographic review out, titled "A Review of Ethnographic Use of Wooden Spears and Implications for Pleistocene Hominin Hunting".

Abstract

Wooden spears are amongst the earliest weapons known from the archaeological record, with broken and complete examples known from Middle and Late Pleistocene Eurasian, Australian and South American sites. They were manufactured and used by multiple species of Homo, including H. sapiens. This paper comprises the first systematic review of ethnographic data on the recent use of wooden spears for hunting and human violence. It confronts the historical racism underpinning the abuse of ethnographic data on wooden spears, including associations between the technology and the development of cognitive abilities in human evolution. The review demonstrates that wooden spears were used as thrusting and throwing weapons by recent societies in North America, South America, Africa, and Oceania, and continue to be used today by children as training tools in hunter-gatherer societies. Their use is recorded in a wide range of climates and environments, using a variety of different hunting strategies to target terrestrial and aquatic prey. Whilst acknowledging limitations of ethnographic datasets, Middle and early Late Pleistocene hominin hunting is reconsidered, briefly overviewing wooden spears in relation to the variety of climate and ecological settings in which Pleistocene hominins hunted, targeted prey, and the potential for delivery methods and hunting strategies. The results underscore the importance of systematic reviews when utilising ethnography in interpreting archaeological evidence: selective references in relation to the use of wooden spears have overlooked additional examples that point to a richness and variability of technology and behaviour that is invisible in the Pleistocene archaeological record.

Click here to access the paper, out now in Open Quaternary.

[Paper spotlight] Adolescence and Innovation in the European Upper Palaeolithic

Check out this fascinating new paper by April Nowell & Jennifer C. French in Evolutionary Human Sciences.

Abstract: Childhood and adolescence are two stages of development that are unique to the human life course. While childhood in the Pleistocene has received considerable attention in recent years, adolescence during the same period remains an understudied area of research. Yet it is during adolescence that key social, physical and cognitive milestones are reached. Thus, through studying adolescents, there is enormous potential for improving our understanding of Upper Palaeolithic lifeways more broadly. The reason for the dearth of these types of studies may be the perceived methodological difficulty of identifying adolescents in the archaeological record. In many ways, it is easier to distinguish children (sensu lato) from adults based on size, developmental age and associated artefacts. Adolescents, however, are often seen as more ambiguous, more liminal. Working within an evolutionary framework and using a definition of adolescence rooted in biology, we draw on psychology, ethnography and palaeodemography to develop a model of what it might have meant to be a ‘teenager’ in the European Upper Palaeolithic. Citing the biological, social and cognitive changes that occur during this life stage, we propose an important role of teenagers in the origins and spread of new ideas and innovations throughout the Late Pleistocene.

[Paper spotlight] Identifying children's sites in the Pleistocene archaeological record

Space to play: identifying children's sites in the Pleistocene archaeological record

by Michelle C. Langley, Evolutionary Human Sciences

Abstract:

Identifying the residues of children's activities in deep time contexts is essential if we are to build a comprehensive understanding of human cognitive and cultural development. Despite the importance of such data to human evolution studies, however, archaeologists have only recently begun to look for prehistoric children's material culture, and the identification of children's spaces is completely absent for deep time contexts. This paper draws together sociological and historical data regarding the universal need of Homo sapiens children for ‘secret’ places – places away from parental control. These spaces are important for the behavioural development of children and are universal in modern contexts. This paper demonstrates that these features can be identified in prehistoric archaeological records – and as such – researchers will have new datasets with which to interrogate the role of children in the development of their respective societies.