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Fluvial deposits as an archive of early human activity: progress during the 20 years of the Fluvial Archives Group

Chauhan, P.R.; Bridgland, D.R.; Moncel, M.-H.; Antoine, P.; Bahain, J.-J.; Briant, R.; Cunha, P.; Despriée, J.; Limondin-Lozouet, N.; Locht, J.-L.; Martins, A.; Schreve, D.C.; Shaw, A.D.; Voinchet, P.; Westaway, R.; White, M.J.; White, T.S.

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Authors

P.R. Chauhan

M.-H. Moncel

P. Antoine

J.-J. Bahain

R. Briant

P. Cunha

J. Despriée

N. Limondin-Lozouet

J.-L. Locht

A. Martins

D.C. Schreve

A.D. Shaw

P. Voinchet

R. Westaway



Abstract

Fluvial sedimentary archives are important repositories for Lower and Middle Palaeolithic artefacts throughout the ‘Old World’, especially in Europe, where the beginning of their study coincided with the realisation that early humans were of great antiquity. Now that many river terrace sequences can be reliably dated and correlated with the globally valid marine isotope record, potentially useful patterns can be recognized in the distribution of the find-spots of the artefacts that constitute the large collections that were assembled during the years of manual gravel extraction. This paper reviews the advances during the past two decades in knowledge of hominin occupation based on artefact occurrences in fluvial contexts, in Europe, Asia and Africa. As such it is an update of a comparable review in 2007, at the end of IGCP Project no. 449, which had instigated the compilation of fluvial records from around the world during 2000–2004, under the auspices of the Fluvial Archives Group. An overarching finding is the confirmation of the well-established view that in Europe there is a demarcation between handaxe making in the west and flake–core industries in the east, although on a wider scale that pattern is undermined by the increased numbers of Lower Palaeolithic bifaces now recognized in East Asia. It is also apparent that, although it seems to have appeared at different places and at different times in the later Lower Palaeolithic, the arrival of Levallois technology as a global phenomenon was similarly timed across the area occupied by Middle Pleistocene hominins, at around 0.3 Ma.

Citation

Chauhan, P., Bridgland, D., Moncel, M., Antoine, P., Bahain, J., Briant, R., …White, T. (2017). Fluvial deposits as an archive of early human activity: progress during the 20 years of the Fluvial Archives Group. Quaternary Science Reviews, 166, 114-149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.03.016

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 17, 2017
Online Publication Date Apr 27, 2017
Publication Date Jun 15, 2017
Deposit Date Mar 22, 2017
Publicly Available Date Apr 27, 2018
Journal Quaternary Science Reviews
Print ISSN 0277-3791
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 166
Pages 114-149
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.03.016

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