Acheulean: Seven African Acheulean Sites

In archdata: Example Datasets from Archaeological Research

Description

Stone tool assemblage data from a paper by Lewis Binford (1972). The sites include Olorgesailie, Isimila, Kalambo Falls, Lochard, Kariandusi, Broken Hill, and Nsongezi. Data include approximate latitude and longitude for each site as well as the frequency for each of 12 stone tool types.

Usage

data(Acheulean)

Format

A data frame with 7 observations showing the site location and the number of specimens for each of 12 stone artifact types. The localities are identified by rownames.

Lat

Latitude (approximate)

Long

Longitude (approximate)

HA

Number of handaxes

CL

Number of cleavers

KN

Number of knives

FS

Number of flake scrapers

D

Number of discoids

CS

Number of core scrapers

P

Number of picks

CH

Number of choppers

SP

Number of spheroids

OLT

Number of other large tools

SS

Number of small scrapers

OST

Number of other small tools

Details

Binford (1972) presents the percentages for 12 tool types at 32 assemblages from 7 sites (including Olorgesailie) which was based on Maxine Kleindienst's analysis of Lower Paleolithic Acheulean sites in Africa (1961 and 1962). The data were also analyzed by Glynn Isaac (1977). To create the Acheulean data set, the percentages in the original publication have been converted back to counts by dividing by 100 and multiplying by the number of tools. The assemblages from each site are summed. The largest assemblage is Kalambo Falls with 1349 artifacts and the smallest is Broken Hill (Kabwe) with 94. The rownames identify each site and an attribute named Variables provides variable labels for each column.

Source

Binford, L. R. 1972. Contemporary Model Building: Paradigms and the Current State of Paleolithic Research. In Models in Archaeology, edited by D. L. Clarke, pp 109–166. Methuen.

References

Carlson, David L. 2017. Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Using R. Cambridge University Press, pp 304-314.

Isaac, Glynn Ll. 1977. Olorgesailie: Archeological Studies of a Middle Pleistocene Lake Basin in Kenya. University of Chicago.

Kleindienst, Maxine R. 1961. Variability within the Late Acheulian assemblage in East Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 16: 35–52.

Kleindienst, Maxine R. 1962. Components of the East African Acheulian assemblage: an analytic approach. In Actes du IVe Congrès Panafricain de Préhistoire et de l’Étude du Quaternaire, ed. C. Mortelmans and J. Nenquin, pp 81-105.

Examples

data(Acheulean)
# Compute percentages for each assemblage
Acheulean.pct <- prop.table(as.matrix(Acheulean[,3:14]), 1)*100
round(Acheulean.pct, 2)
plot(OST~HA, Acheulean.pct)
boxplot(Acheulean.pct)

Example output

                 HA    CL    KN   FS    D    CS    P    CH    SP  OLT    SS
Olorgesailie  21.70 10.57  6.39 1.87 0.55  1.21 0.33  3.52  5.73 0.66 23.46
Isimila       30.00 25.37  3.66 3.41 0.73  3.66 1.95  7.56  2.07 1.83 11.95
Kalambo Falls 24.98 19.57  4.37 7.12 0.59  9.19 1.33  5.11  0.44 1.26 22.46
Lochard       24.06  6.95  1.60 1.07 6.42  0.53 0.00 17.11  1.60 4.28 24.60
Kariandusi    39.52 16.77 14.07 6.89 0.90  1.50 2.10  1.80  1.50 2.40  5.09
Broken Hill    1.06  8.51  1.06 1.06 0.00  1.06 0.00  4.26 26.60 0.00 37.23
Nsongezi       7.85  9.95  1.05 4.71 0.52 14.66 0.52  9.95  0.00 5.24  8.90
                OST
Olorgesailie  24.01
Isimila        7.80
Kalambo Falls  3.56
Lochard       11.76
Kariandusi     7.49
Broken Hill   19.15
Nsongezi      36.65

archdata documentation built on Jan. 16, 2021, 5:35 p.m.