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60-576: During the early to middle Jōmon period (approximately 4000 to 2500 BC), sea levels were five to six meters higher than at present, and the ambient temperature was also 2 deg C higher. During this period, the Kantō region was inhabited by the Jōmon people , many of whom lived in coastal settlements. The middens associated with such settlements contain bone , botanical material, mollusc shells , sherds , lithics , and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with

120-503: A "Developed Oldowan" Period in which they believed they saw evidence of an overlap in Oldowan and Acheulean. In their species-specific view of the two industries, Oldowan equated to H. habilis and Acheulean to H. erectus . Developed Oldowan was assigned to habilis and Acheulean to erectus . Subsequent dates on H. erectus pushed the fossils back to well before Acheulean tools; that is, H. erectus must have initially used Mode 1. There

180-471: A clear central area. Many are known from Japan and the southeastern United States, and at least one from South America. The word is of Scandinavian via Middle English derivation (from early Scandinavian; Danish: mødding , Swedish regional: mödding ). The word "midden" is still in everyday use in Scotland and has come by extension to refer to anything that is a mess, a muddle, or chaos. The word

240-520: A few. In Britain , there were numerous small quarries in downland areas where flint was removed for local use, for example. Many other rocks were used to make axes from stones, including the Langdale axe industry as well as numerous other sites such as Penmaenmawr and Tievebulliagh in Co Antrim, Ulster . In Langdale, there many outcrops of the greenstone were exploited, and knapped where

300-453: A house in the village. Each household would dump its garbage directly outside the house. In all cases, shell middens are extremely complex and very difficult to excavate fully and exactly. The fact that they contain a detailed record of what food was eaten or processed and many fragments of stone tools and household goods makes them invaluable objects of archaeological study. Shells have a high calcium carbonate content, which tends to make

360-670: A long period between the 6th millennium BCE and the beginning of European colonisation. European shell middens are primarily found along the Atlantic seaboard and in Denmark and primarily date to the 5th millennium BCE ( Ertebølle and Early Funnel Beaker cultures), containing the remains of the earliest Neolithisation process (pottery, cereals and domestic animals). Younger shell middens are found in Latvia (associated with Comb Ware ceramics), Sweden (associated with Pitted Ware ceramics),

420-458: A process called reduction to sharpen or resharpen the flake. Across northern Australia, especially in Arnhem Land , the "Leilira blade", a rectangular stone flake shaped by striking quartzite or silcrete stone, was used as a spear tip and also as a knife, sometimes 30 cm (12 in) long. Tasmania did not have spears or stone axes, but the peoples there used tools which were adapted to

480-626: A regularly used animal toilet area or dunghill , created by many mammals, such as the hyrax , and also serving as a territorial marker. Octopus middens are piles of debris that the octopus piles up to conceal the entrance of its den. Octopus middens are commonly made of rocks, shells, and the bones of prey, although they may contain anything the octopus finds that it can move. Stone tools Paleolithic Epipalaeolithic Mesolithic Neolithic Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of

540-524: A sharp edge. Such a tool is used for slicing; concussion would destroy the edge and cut the hand. Some Mode 2 tools are disk-shaped, others ovoid, others leaf-shaped and pointed, and others elongated and pointed at the distal end, with a blunt surface at the proximal end, obviously used for drilling. Mode 2 tools are used for butchering; not being composite (having no haft) they are not very effective killing instruments. The killing must have been done some other way. Mode 2 tools are larger than Oldowan. The blank

600-585: A similar advantage over Acheulean technology which was worked from cores. As humans spread to the Americas in the Late Pleistocene, Paleo-Indians brought with them related stone tools, which evolved separately from Old World technologies. The Clovis point is the most widespread example of Late Pleistocene points in the Americas, dating to about 13,000 years ago. Mode 5 stone tools involve

660-432: A slab knocked off a larger rock. From this blank he or she removes large flakes, to be used as cores. Standing a core on edge on an anvil stone, he or she hits the exposed edge with centripetal blows of a hard hammer to roughly shape the implement. Then the piece must be worked over again, or retouched, with a soft hammer of wood or bone to produce a tool finely knapped all over consisting of two convex surfaces intersecting in

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720-516: A spherical hammerstone to cause conchoidal fractures removing flakes from one surface, creating an edge and often a sharp tip. The blunt end is the proximal surface; the sharp, the distal. Oldowan is a percussion technology. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the distal surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter, such as a bone or tuber. Experiments with modern humans found that all four Oldowan knapping techniques can be invented by knapping-naive participants, and that

780-438: A splitting process known as lithic reduction . One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus (core) of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator. If the goal is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once too little remains. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper makes a tool from the core by reducing it to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform , which

840-488: A style of pottery described as "cord-marked", translated as " Jōmon ", which came to be used to refer to the early period of Japanese history when this style of pottery was produced. Shell middens were studied in Denmark in the latter half of the 19th century. The Danish word køkkenmødding (kitchen mound) is now used internationally. The English word "midden" (waste mound) derives from the same Old Norse word that produced

900-568: A technique known as microtomy . Freshly cut blades are always used since the sharpness of the edge is very great. These knives are made from high-quality manufactured glass, however, not from natural raw materials such as chert or obsidian . Surgical knives made from obsidian are still used in some delicate surgeries, as they cause less damage to tissues than surgical knives and the resulting wounds heal more quickly. In 1975, American archaeologist Don Crabtree manufactured obsidian scalpels which were used for surgery on his own body. In archaeology,

960-420: A trait of Jōmon culture which has been known from other sites. The Yoshigo Shell Midden was excavated from 1922 to 1923 and contributed greatly to knowledge of Jōmon anthropology. In addition, the traces of several pit dwellings were also found in the vicinity, and artifacts such as Jōmon pottery , stone tools and other items have been discovered. The site is now preserved as an archaeological park with

1020-425: A useful resource for archaeologists who wish to study the diets and habits of past societies. Middens with damp, anaerobic conditions can even preserve organic remains in deposits as the debris of daily life are tossed on the pile. Each individual toss will contribute a different mix of materials depending upon the activity associated with that particular toss. During the course of deposition sedimentary material

1080-443: Is about 2.4–2.3 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools. The stone tools may have been made by Australopithecus afarensis , the species whose best fossil example is Lucy , which inhabited East Africa at the same time as the date of the oldest stone tools, a yet unidentified species, or by Kenyanthropus platyops (a 3.2 to 3.5-million-year-old Pliocene hominin fossil discovered in 1999). Dating of

1140-448: Is considered large for the region. It was found to contain a variety of shells, fish and animal bones and broken bone tools, and pottery shards. Of note was discovery of a large Jōmon period necropolis containing the intact remains of 341 individuals. Of these burials, 163 were in which the arms of the deceased were bent, 16 had the arms extended, and 42 were in clay jars. Many of the skulls showed that front teeth had been removed, confirming

1200-537: Is deposited as well. Different mechanisms, from wind and water to animal digs, create a matrix which can also be analysed to provide seasonal and climatic information. In some middens individual dumps of material can be discerned and analysed. A shell midden or shell mound is an archaeological feature consisting mainly of mollusc shells. The Danish term køkkenmøddinger (plural) was first used by Japetus Steenstrup to describe shell heaps and continues to be used by some researchers. A midden, by definition, contains

1260-455: Is further reduced by using soft hammer flaking or by pressure flaking the edges. More complex forms of reduction may produce highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers , knives , sickles , and microliths . Archaeologists classify stone tools into industries (also known as complexes or technocomplexes ) that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics. In 1969 in

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1320-482: Is over 9 metres (30 ft) deep and spans over 10,000 years of continuous occupation. Shell middens created in coastal regions of Australia by Indigenous Australians exist in Australia today. Middens provide evidence of prior occupation and are generally protected from mining and other developments. One must exercise caution in deciding whether one is examining a midden or a beach mound. There are good examples on

1380-650: Is used by farmers in Britain to describe the place where farm yard manure from cows or other animals is collected. Grants are sometimes available to protect these from rain to avoid runoff and pollution . In the animal kingdom, some species establish ground burrows , also known as middens, that are used mostly for food storage. For example, the North American red squirrel ( Tamiasciurus hudsonicus ) usually has one large active midden in each territory with perhaps an inactive or auxiliary midden. A midden may be

1440-535: Is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen. The study of stone tools is a cornerstone of prehistoric archaeology because they are essentially indestructible and therefore a ubiquitous component of the archaeological record . Ethnoarchaeology is used to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture. Knapped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as chert , flint , radiolarite , chalcedony , obsidian , basalt , and quartzite via

1500-600: The Acheulean Industry , named after the site of Saint-Acheul in France. The Acheulean was characterised not by the core, but by the biface , the most notable form of which was the hand axe . The Acheulean first appears in the archaeological record as early as 1.7 million years ago in the West Turkana area of Kenya and contemporaneously in southern Africa. The Leakeys, excavators at Olduvai, defined

1560-788: The Dreamtime , such as those of the Anbarra group of the Burarra people of Arnhem Land . The Ohlone and Coast Miwok peoples built over 425 shell mounds in the San Francisco Bay Area. These mounds were used as: The mounds were constructed over thousands of years. They were often discovered by accident during construction, mining, or farming. Some of the largest mounds in the Bay Area include: Emeryville Shellmound Located between Oakland and Berkeley, this mound

1620-674: The Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania where wave action currently is combining charcoal from forest fire debris with a mix of shells into masses that storms deposit above high-water mark. Shell mounds near Weipa in far north Queensland that are mostly less than 2 metres (6.6 ft) high (although ranging up to 10 metres (33 ft) high) and a few tens of metres long are claimed to be middens, but are in fact shell cheniers (beach ridges) re-worked by nest mound-building birds. Some shell middens are regarded as sacred sites, linked to

1680-654: The Levallois technique to produce smaller and sharper knife-like tools as well as scrapers. Also known as the "prepared core technique", flakes are struck from worked cores and then subsequently retouched. The Mousterian Industry was developed and used primarily by the Neanderthals , a native European and Middle Eastern hominin species, but a broadly similar industry is contemporaneously widespread in Africa. The widespread use of long blades (rather than flakes) of

1740-686: The Neolithic period, large axes were made from flint nodules by knapping a rough shape, a so-called "rough-out". Such products were traded across a wide area. The rough-outs were then polished to give the surface a fine finish to create the axe head. Polishing increased the strength and durability of the product. There were many sources of supply, including Grimes Graves in Suffolk, Cissbury in Sussex and Spiennes near Mons in Belgium to mention but

1800-472: The Stone Age . Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone , the latter fashioned by a craftsman called a flintknapper . Stone has been used to make a wide variety of tools throughout history, including arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, and querns . Knapped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in pre-metal-using societies because they are easily manufactured, the tool stone raw material

1860-608: The Upper Palaeolithic Mode 4 industries appeared during the Upper Palaeolithic between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, although blades were produced in small quantities much earlier by Neanderthals. The Aurignacian culture seems to have been the first to rely largely on blades. The use of blades exponentially increases the efficiency of core usage compared to the Levallois flake technique, which had

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1920-747: The 2nd edition of World Prehistory , Grahame Clark proposed an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping in which the "dominant lithic technologies" occurred in a fixed sequence from Mode 1 through Mode 5. He assigned to them relative dates: Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic , 3 to the Middle Palaeolithic , 4 to the Upper Paleolithic , and 5 to the Mesolithic , though there were other lithic technologies outside these Modes. Each region had its own timeline for

1980-510: The Netherlands (associated with Corded Ware ceramics) and Schleswig-Holstein ( Late Neolithic and Iron Age ). All these are examples where communities practised a mixed farming and hunting/gathering economy. On Canada 's west coast, there are shell middens that run for more than 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) along the coast and are several meters deep. The midden in Namu, British Columbia

2040-670: The associated Yoshigo Shell Midden Museum ( 吉胡貝塚資料館 , Yoshigo Kaizuka shiryōkan ) . It is located 20 minutes on foot from the Toyohashi Railway Mikawa Tahara Station . [REDACTED] Media related to Yoshigo Shell Mound at Wikimedia Commons Midden A midden is an old dump for domestic waste . It may consist of animal bones , human excrement , botanical material, mollusc shells , potsherds , lithics (especially debitage ), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation. These features provide

2100-463: The climate and environment, such as the use of spongolite . In north-western Australia, "Kimberley point", a small triangular stone point, was created using kangaroo bone which had been shaped with stone into an awl, to make small serrations in the blade. Apart from being used as weapons and for cutting, grinding ( grindstones ), piercing and pounding, some stones, notably ochres , were used as pigment for painting. Stone tools are still one of

2160-620: The creation of tropical hardwood hammocks , one example being the Otter Mound Preserve in Florida , where shell deposits from Calusa natives provided flood free high areas in otherwise large watered areas. There are instances in which shell middens may have doubled as areas of ceremonial construction or ritual significance. The Woodland period Crystal River site provides an example of this phenomenon. Some shell mounds, known as shell rings , are circular or open arcs with

2220-413: The debris of human activity, and should not be confused with wind- or tide-created beach mounds. Some shell middens are processing remains: areas where aquatic resources were processed directly after harvest and prior to use or storage in a distant location. Some shell middens are directly associated with villages, as a designated village dump site. In other middens, the material is directly associated with

2280-550: The era of genus Homo are Mode 1 tools, and come from what has been termed the Oldowan Industry , named after the type of site (many sites, actually) found in Olduvai Gorge , Tanzania , where they were discovered in large quantities. Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction, predominantly using core forms. These cores were river pebbles, or rocks similar to them, that had been struck by

2340-550: The flakes and the hammerstones could be used as tools. The best types of stone for these tools are hard, brittle stones, rich in silica , such as quartzite , chert , flint, silcrete and quartz (the latter particularly in the Kimberleys of Western Australia ). These were quarried from bedrock or collected as pebbles from watercourses and beaches, and often carried for long distances. The flake could be used immediately for cutting or scraping, but were sometimes modified in

2400-638: The handle gives the user protection against the flint and also improves leverage of the device. In prehistoric Japan, ground stone tools appear during the Japanese Paleolithic period, that lasted from around 40,000 BC to 14,000 BC. Elsewhere, ground stone tools became important during the Neolithic period beginning about 10,000 BC. These ground or polished implements are manufactured from larger-grained materials such as basalt , jade and jadeite , greenstone and some forms of rhyolite which are not suitable for flaking. The greenstone industry

2460-532: The intrinsic mechanical strength of the axe. Polished stone axes were important for the widespread clearance of woods and forest during the Neolithic period, when crop and livestock farming developed on a large scale. They are distributed very widely and were traded over great distances since the best rock types were often very local. They also became venerated objects, and were frequently buried in long barrows or round barrows with their former owners. During

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2520-520: The middens alkaline . This slows the normal rate of decay caused by soil acidity, leaving a relatively high proportion of organic material (food remnants, organic tools, clothing, human remains) available for archaeologists to find. Edward Sylvester Morse conducted one of the first archaeological excavations of the Omori Shell Mounds in Tokyo, Japan in 1877, which led to the discovery of

2580-461: The millennia to adapt to changing environments. Oral traditions carried the skills down through the ages. Complex stone tools were used by the Gunditjmara of western Victoria until relatively recently. Many examples are now held in museums. Flaked stone tools were made by extracting a sharp fragment of stone from a larger piece, called a core, by hitting it with a "hammerstone". Both

2640-472: The modern Danish one. Shell middens are found in coastal or lakeshore zones all over the world. Consisting mostly of mollusc shells, they are interpreted as being the waste products of meals eaten by nomadic groups or hunting parties. Some are small examples relating to meals had by a handful of individuals, others are many metres in length and width and represent centuries of shell deposition. In Brazil , they are known as sambaquis , having been created over

2700-474: The most successful technologies used by humans. The invention of the flintlock gun mechanism in the sixteenth century produced a demand for specially shaped gunflints . The gunflint industry survived until the middle of the twentieth century in some places, including in the English town of Brandon . Threshing boards with lithic flakes are used in agriculture from Neolithic, and are still used today in

2760-502: The now-vanished inhabitants, and these features , provide a useful source into the diets and habits of Jōmon society. Most of these middens are found along the Pacific coast of Japan. The Yoshigo Shell Midden dates from the late to final Jōmon period, in an alluvial area with an elevation of six meters above the current sea level, on a gentle slope facing Atsumi Bay. The midden is not very large, with an area of 4100 square meters, but

2820-410: The only hominin to leave Africa; European fossils are sometimes associated with Homo ergaster , a contemporary of H. erectus in Africa. In contrast to an Oldowan tool, which is the result of a fortuitous and probably unplanned operation to obtain one sharp edge on a stone, an Acheulean tool is a planned result of a manufacturing process. The manufacturer begins with a blank, either a larger stone or

2880-580: The period of the Palaeolithic are divided into four "modes", each of which designates a different form of complexity, and which in most cases followed a rough chronological order. Stone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at the Lomekwi archeology site near Lake Turkana in Kenya, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, and predate the genus Homo by about one million years. The oldest known Homo fossil

2940-458: The production of microliths , which were used in composite tools, mainly fastened to a shaft. Examples include the Magdalenian culture. Such a technology makes much more efficient use of available materials like flint, although required greater skill in manufacturing the small flakes. Mounting sharp flint edges in a wood or bone handle is the key innovation in microliths, essentially because

3000-518: The regions where agriculture has not been mechanized and industrialized. Glassy stones (flint, quartz, jasper , agate ) were used with a variety of iron pyrite or marcasite stones as percussion fire starter tools . That was the most common method of producing fire in pre-industrial societies. Stones were later superseded by use of steel, ferrocerium and matches. For specialist purposes glass knives are still made and used today, particularly for cutting thin sections for electron microscopy in

3060-667: The resulting Oldowan tools were used by the experiment participants to access a money-baited box. The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. After this date, the Oldowan Industry subsequently spread throughout much of Africa, although archaeologists are currently unsure which Hominan species first developed them, with some speculating that it

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3120-594: The stone was extracted. The sites exhibit piles of waste flakes, as well as rejected rough-outs. Polishing improved the mechanical strength of the tools, so increasing their life and effectiveness. Many other tools were developed using the same techniques. Such products were traded across the country and abroad. Stone axes from 35,000 years ago are the earliest known use of a stone tool in Australia. Other stone tools varied in type and use among various Aboriginal Australian peoples, dependent on geographical regions and

3180-567: The succession of the Modes: for example, Mode 1 was in use in Europe long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in Africa. Clark's scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community. One of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology; for example, the Mode 1 / Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest. Consequently, in the literature the stone tools used in

3240-522: The tools was done by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found and dating the magnetic signature (pointing north or south due to reversal of the magnetic poles) of the rock at the site. Grooved, cut and fractured animal bone fossils, made by using stone tools, were found in Dikika , Ethiopia near (200 yards) the remains of Selam , a young Australopithecus afarensis girl who lived about 3.3 million years ago. The earliest stone tools in

3300-473: The type and structure of the tools varied among the different cultural and linguistic groups. The locations of the various artefacts, as well as whole geologic features, demarcated territorial and cultural boundaries of various linguistic and cultural groups' lands. They developed trade networks, and showed sophistication in working many different types of stone for many different uses, including as tools, food utensils and weapons, and modified their stone tools over

3360-624: Was Australopithecus garhi , and others believing that it was in fact Homo habilis . Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, but at about 1.9-1.8 million years ago Homo erectus inherited them. The Industry flourished in southern and eastern Africa between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago, but was also spread out of Africa and into Eurasia by travelling bands of H. erectus , who took it as far east as Java by 1.8 million years ago and Northern China by 1.6 million years ago. Eventually, more complex Mode 2 tools began to be developed through

3420-514: Was estimated to be 60 feet high and 350 feet in diameter. It was demolished in 1924. Huichuin Located in Berkeley, this mound was 20 feet high and was the site of the first human settlement on the shores of San Francisco Bay. West Berkeley and Ellis Landing These mounds measured almost 200 meters in diameter and rose 9 meters above the shoreline. Shell mounds are also credited with

3480-647: Was important in the English Lake District , and is known as the Langdale axe industry . Ground stone implements included adzes , celts , and axes , which were manufactured using a labour-intensive, time-consuming method of repeated grinding against an abrasive stone, often using water as a lubricant. Because of their coarse surfaces, some ground stone tools were used for grinding plant foods and were polished not just by intentional shaping, but also by use. Manos are hand stones used in conjunction with metates for grinding corn or grain. Polishing increased

3540-492: Was no reason to think, therefore, that Developed Oldowan had to be habilis ; it could have been erectus . Opponents of the view divide Developed Oldowan between Oldowan and Acheulean. There is no question, however, that habilis and erectus coexisted, as habilis fossils are found as late as 1.4 million years ago. Meanwhile, African H. erectus developed Mode 2. In any case a wave of Mode 2 then spread across Eurasia, resulting in use of both there. H. erectus may not have been

3600-544: Was ported to serve as an ongoing source of flakes until it was finally retouched as a finished tool itself. Edges were often sharpened by further retouching. Eventually, the Acheulean in Europe was replaced by a lithic technology known as the Mousterian Industry , which was named after the site of Le Moustier in France, where examples were first uncovered in the 1860s. Evolving from the Acheulean, it adopted

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