roebroeks & van kolfschoten (1994) - the earliest occupation of europe: a short chronology

8/7/2019 Roebroeks & Van Kolfschoten (1994) - The earliest occupation of Europe: a short chronology

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W IL R O E B R O E K S & THIJS VAN K O L F S C H O T E NO' 10*

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WeichsWian

SaillanHolitMnlinEtoterian

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Bavetian *Bavel Inlerglacial

Menapian

Wuaan

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Praetlgllan

Retiverian

LATE PLEISTOCENE

MIDDLEPLEISTOCENE

EARLYPLEISTOCENE

UTEPLIOCENE

human agencies is sufficient to shift any burden ofproof upon those who maintainthe human originofth e stones; and this must not be do ne by a careful se -lection of picked specimens,but by a survey-of th ewho le group.The artefactual nature of 'primitive' assem-blages has been an omnipresent issue ever

F I G U R E 1. Climatecurve fo r th e Quater-nary in the Nether-lands (after Zagwijn1985),Age in millionyears.Temperature indegrees C, estimatedmean fo r July.* includes severalglacials and inter-glacials.since. In 1958for instance, J. Desmond Clark'sstudy of natural fractures of pebbles showedvery convincingly (in the African context of' K a f u a n ' industries in river valleys) that naturecan make 'pebble tools': they are produced bya sharp 'follow through' blow, very unlikelyunder water, but possibly the result of a rock


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THE EARLIEST OCCUPATION OF EUROPE: A SHORT C H R O N O L O G Yfalling from aboveon to a wedged pebble (Clark1958). These fractures can simulate art ificialf racture to such a r em a rka b l e degree that thesespecimens would not be out of place in any'Pebble Culture' context.His studies once againstressed that one cannot build a strong a rgu-ment fo r early occupationon the basis o f pieceswi t h only a fe w negatives, selected out of river-laid deposits.I n fact, any analysis o f early sitesmust t ake into account th e whole range o f natu-ral conditions at the site that could producear tefact- l ike f o rm s , as well as the geologicalset t ing o f the f ind spot.It is for these reasons that for instanceTuffreau (1987) does not accept the Ferme deGrce (Somme) terrace materialas evidence fo rEarly Pleistocene occupation of northernFrance [contra Bourdier et al. 1974) or thatSantonja & Villa (1990) consider isolated piecescollected from Iberian river terracesas too rareand undiagnostic to prove human settlementin the Early Pleistocene.In section 3 we evaluate some importantearly sites by the issues in the eolith debate. Itis of course necessary to have a good knowl-edge of the assemblages and their context, ei-ther by a detailed site-publication or byf i rs t -hand knowledge. Unfor tuna te ly , only asmall number of 'early' sites have been pub-lished in such a detail that evaluation of inter-pretations concerningthe artefactual charactero f ' p r imi t i ve ' assemblages is possible. We starto ur review, t he re fore , with the evidence f romcentral and northwestern Eu ro pe , where wehave a first-hand knowledge of the relevantassemblages. The findings f rom that area areconf ron ted with those f rom other areas in sec-tion 5.

2.2 Th e chronological frameworkThe classical subdivision of the Pleistocene isby the glacial-interglacial scheme, based on theextensions of glaciers in the Alpine area andnorthern Europe. Four dif ferent extensionswere recorded in the Alpine area (Gnz,Mindel , Riss and W u r m ) and in northern Eu-rope only three (Elster , Saale and Weichsel).Glacigenic deposits were linked with cold in-tervals in which ice-sheets f o rm ed , separatedf rom each other by warm-temperate intervals.Detailed investigations of pollen-bearing de-posits in northwestern Europe yielded a rathercomplete record of the complex history of the

vegetation there. Palaeobotanical data wastransformed into palaeoclimatic information,making a terrestrial chronostratigraphical sub-division of the Pleistocene (cf . Z ag wi j n 1985;see FIGURE 1), a scheme that has been the stand-ard for northwestern Europe. The presence ofwell dated biostratigraphical marker species inthe type area of the standard division offers thepossibility to correlate sites f rom other areasto this subdivision.Preliminary results of recent investigationsin an open lignite mine at Schningen nearHelmstedt (Germany) and in the Don Basin(Russia) indicate, however, that the FIGURE 1subdivision is incomplete. The Pleistocenesediments exposed in the Schouingen quarrydate from the Elsterian to the Holocene and arerich in palaeobotanical, malacological and pal-aeontological information (cf . Urban et al. 1991;Thieme ef al. 1993). Studies of the MiddlePleistocene sequence indicate that insteadof two as in FIGURE 1 there were at least threephases with a distinct, well developed inter-glacial vegetation between the Elsterian and theSaalian till.Long sequences in the Don basin show atleast f ive glacial-interglacial cycles in thetimespan between the Brunhes/Matuyamaboundary and the Oka (=Elsterian) glaciation(Kasansteva 1987). Correlation between theDon Basin and northwestern Europe, mainlyon the base of mammal fauna associations, in-dicates that the northwestern standard subdi-vision is incomplete for the lower part of theMiddle Pleistocene, i.e. in the first half of the'Cromerian Complex'. The incompleteness ofthis continental subdivision is also apparentwhen comparing it with the oxygen isotoperecord, which counts 9 interglacial and 9 gla-cial phases within the Brunhes Epoch.The oxygen isotope record,the most detailedsubdivision of the Quaternary, is regarded asthe timescale one should try to refer to. It is aglobal record, reflecting changes in the totalamount of ice on land the world over, as thereis little variation among cores taken from dif-ferent areas. It is also a rather continuousrecord, providing a complete survey of the en-tire Quaternary. And it is a kind of 'Esperanto'record, easy to 'understand' for workers from

various parts of the world, not bothered by thedetails and intricacies of the various regionalsubdivisions such as the northwestern one


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W IL R O E B R O E K S & THIJS V A N KOLFS CHOTEN

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Monte PegliaLa Vallonet, Karlich A.Unurmasslek)

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mentioned above. This 'user-friendliness' iscertainly a very important factor in the in-creased usage of the deep-sea record fo r corre-lation-purposes. W e must , how ever, no t forgetthat correlation to the isotope stages is oftenmainly based onvery simple 'counting' proce-dures, on the results o f 'absolute' dating m eth-ods and on (often implicit) assumptions, fo rexample that the maximum inland-ice exten-sion corresponds to the highest O18 values.Unfortunately, terrestrial sections are domi-nated by gaps. Absolute dates, in many casescontradictory and inaccurate, should not be theonly basis for a chronological correlation. US-

F I G U R E 2. Tentativecorrelation of smallmammal biozonationsand faunal assem-blages to the northwestEuropean subdivisonof th e Quaternary an dto various oxygenisotope stages.ing the maximum ic e extension fo r landseacorrelations poses problems as soon as oneexchanges th e narrow 'national' perspective fo ra broader 'European' one: the southernmostextension in Great Britain was the Angl ian (=Elsterian), in th e Netherlands it was the Saal i anice-cap and in the Don Basin i t was the Donglaciation! These problems can lead to differ-ent correlations betw een th e continental sub-division and the oxygen isotope record (see thetw o options presented in F I G U R E 2).

Althoug h not denying the enormous advan-tages of the deep-sea reco rd over th e continen-tal divisions, we pre fe r the continental


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THE EARLIEST OCCUPATION OF EUROPE: A SHORT CHRONOLOGY

F I G U R E 3. M ap o f sites m entioned in the text.12345678910111213141516

AtapuercaBerounBetfiaBiache-Saint-VaastBilzingslebenBoxgroveBrnoCaste! di GuidoChilhacCullar de BazaCava PompiDeutsch-AltenburgDmanisiEhringsdorfFerine de GrceFonana Ranuccio

171819202122232425262728293031

FontchevadeGrotte du PrinceIlynkaIserniaIvanKrlichLa ChaiseLazaretMaastricht-BelvdreMauerMiesenheimMIadecMonte PegliaMonte PoggioloMontmaurin

32333435363738394041424344454647

MosbachMusovOrgnacPetralonaPontnewyddPrezleticeSandaljaSchoningenSedlesoviceSnzeSoleilhacSprimontSteinheimStrnsk SkalaSssenbornSwanscombe

484950515253545556575859606162

TarkTautavelTegelenTrzebnicaUntermassfeldVal d'ArnoVallonet, LeVenosa LoretoVenta MicenaVergranneVrtesszllsVisoglianoVoigtstedtWestbury-sub-MendipWest Runton

subdivis ion of the Quaternary ( F I G U R E 1) as thbasic framework for terrestrial correlation overth e oxygen iso to pe record , as long as there areno re l i ab le co r re la t ion me thods ( in o the rwords: as long as the absolute dating m ethodsare contradictory and inaccurate). Uncriticaluse of the deep sea stages creates a pseudo-certainty that hides the basic stratigraphicalproblems inherent in all kinds of terrestrial cor-relations.3 The chronology of Quaternary mammalianfossil assemblagesThe use of palaeobotanical evidence fo r long-dis-tance correlation to the terrestrial subdivisionsis hampered by the absence of evolutionary

trends in plants and by the inter-regional va ria-tions in charactersof vegetation. Mam malian f o s -sils are alternative important biostratigraphicindicators. Their use in dating and correlatingdeposits is based on the fact that most of themammals have an extensive distribution area andthat a number show a rapid evolution and/or mi-gratory shifts within th e Quaternary (c/. Laster1992). Th e compos i t i on of the m a m m a l i a nfauna h as cha nged re la t ive ly fast dur ing th eQua te rna ry due to processes o f evolu t ion ,extinction and migration of species; a numberof mammal b iozona t ions has been e s tab -lished by different authors. Some o f these arebased on the smal le r mammal fauna, otherson the larger or on both.


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WIL ROEBROEKS &TH1JS VAN KOLFSCHOTENMany palaeontologists work with the gen-erally accepted biostratigraphical subdivisionof the Quaternary based on the Arvicolidaesuccession, as proposed by Fejfar & Heinrich(1981, in fact a modification of the Hungarian

smaller mammal zonation established byKre tzo i (see e.g. Kre tzo i 1965; Kretzo i & Pcsi1979; Van der Meulen 1973)). Fejfar & Heinrich(1981) established three well defined biozones(stages in their terminology) fo r the Pleistocene:Villnyian, Biharian and Toringian (see FIGURE2). A biozonation on the basis of changes inthe larger mammal fauna was constructed byItalian palaeontologists (Azzaroli et al. 1988).Their subdivision of Villafranchian andGalerian faunas is used in large parts of Eu-rope and Asia despite the fact that the bound-ary between both biozones is poorly defined(below, page 496).3.1 The smaller mammals: Biharian-ToringianBiharian faunas differ f rom the proceedingVillnyian ones by the occurrence of Microtus.The Villnyian faunas are recognized by thedominance of Mimomys, the Biharian faunasby the co-occurrence o f Microtus and Mimomysand the Toringian 'Stage'by Arvicola-Microtusassemblages. The Biharian Stage is divided intotwo substages: the Early Biharian with Microtus(Allophaiomysj and the Late Biharian withMicrotus (Microtus).The transition from the Villnyian to theBiharian in the Early Pleistocene correspondsmore or less with the Tiglian/Eburonian tran-sition. Faunas such as Tegelen (the Nether-lands) belong t o t he Villnyian (FIGURE 2),while the Early Biharian comprises faunas suchas Le Vallonet (France), Monte Peglia (Italy) andBetf ia 2 (Romania).

The transition of Microtus (Allophaiomys)to Microtus (Microtus), marking the transitionf rom the Early to the Late Biharian, dates tothe early part of the Bavelian complex, roughlycorrelated to the Jaramillo.Faunas such as West Runton, Strnsk Skala,Prezletice (Czechia), Tarko (Layer 16) (Hun-gary), Ilynka I-II and Ilynka IV [Russia) belongto the Late Biharian. The genus Mimomys isrepresented by only one species, the largeMimomys savini, in most of the late Biharianfaunas . A second Mimomys, a smaller formoften referred to Mimomys [Cseria] pusillus,occurs in some faunas. The Late Biharian cov-

ers the later part of the Bavelian complex andmost of the Cromerian complex, a time-spanwith a t least five glacial/interglacial cycles aswe know from the Don Basin sequence( K a s a n t s e v a 1987). The f a u n a s with twoMimomys species date f rom the earlier part ofthat time-span, the faunas with only Mimomyssavini from the later part.A very important stratigraphical marker isthe transition of Mimomys savini to Arvicolaterrestris, which corresponds to the BiharianToringian boundary, in the second half of theC r o m e r i a n complex (van K o l f s c h o t e n 1990;Von Koenigswald & van Kolfschoten in press).Since the most primitive representative of thegenus Arvicola, Arvicola terrestris cantiana( o f t e n cited as e.g. Arvicola cantiana orArvicola mosbachensis), is known in north-western Europe from Cromerian Interglacial IVdeposits (van Kolfschoten 1990), th e transitiontook place before Interglacial I V o f t h eCromerian Complex. Arvicola appears for thef i rs t time in the Krl ich section in the faunaf rom Krl ich G. The heavy-mineral associationof th e Krlich G deposits and the mammalf au na indicate a Cromerian Interglacial I I I o ra (beginning of) Interglacial IV age (vanKolfscho ten & Turner in press; Von Koenigswald

& van Kolfschoten in press). Th e MimomysArvicola transition has been documented inwestern (Chaline 1986), central (Fe j f a r &Heinrich 1981) and eastern Europe (Terzea inpress). In northwestern Europe the transitiontook place in the second half of the CromerianComplex. This seems to have been the case inother areas too, as for instance shown by theoccurrence of Arvicola terrestris before theElsterian in Central Europe (Terzea in press)and the occurrence ofvery advanced Mimomyssavini in faunas f rom the Don Basin, dated tothe second interglacial before the Oka-Elsterianglaciation (Kasansteva 1987; van Kolfschotenin prep.). It is to be expected that there was anasynchronicity within the regional transitionfrom Mimomys to Arvicola, but such transgres-sions fall outside th e chronological resolutionofour present dating methods for this time-range.A problem in this respect is the age of theArvicola fauna from Isernia (Italy), supposedto be late Early Pleistocene on the basis of ra-diometric dates for crystals f rom the site ma-trix and some palaeomagnetic data (Cohort!etal. 1982; McPherron & Schmidt 1983). Isernia


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THE EARLIEST OCCUPATION OF EUROPE: A SHORT CHRONOLOGYh as yielded fossil remains of Arvicola terrestriscantiana (assigned to the junior synonymArvicola mosbachensis by Sala 1983; Coltortie t al. 1982). A study of the material, includingthat sampled in the period after 1982, allowedth e second author to characterize th e finds o fI sernia as a primitive population of the genusArvicola. Only 80% of the molars (only a fewof them are juveni le ) are rootless, whereas 20%show indications forroot formation but are stillroo t less . T h e fauna with Arvicola, Elephas (P.)antiquus, Stephanorhinus hundsheimensisand without Mimomys savini, Mimomyspusillus and Microtus (Allophaiomys) sp. sug-gests a Middle Pleistocene age, as it is compa-rable to central European faunas as Mosbachand Mauer ( c f . Sala & Fortelius 1993). Onecould accept a late Early Pleistocene age forIsernia only by suggesting an earlier occurrenceof Arvicola in I taly, in a more or less isolatedarea o f Europe. This is not a plausible argu-ment, however, as there are no indications of abarrier isolating the mammalian faunas in Italyfrom those o f central and western Europe dur-ing the Pleistocene. On the cont r a ry , the abun-dant similarities in Early, Middle and LatePleistocene faunas o f Italy and eastern, centraland western Europe show a general and almost

c o n t i nu o u s fauna l exchange between these ar-eas during th e Quaternary (Von Koenigswa ld& van Kolfschoten in press). Therefore we seri-ously question the palaeomagnetic and radiomet-ri c dates for the Isernia site, and do not believethat Isernia is as old as 700,000 years BP.Toringian faunas can be divided into twog r ou p s : an older one with Arvicola terrestriscantiana co-occurs with so-called relict spe-cies (such as Talpa minor, Trogontheriumcuvieri) and a younger group with Arvicolaterrestris ssp. A and B, co-occurs with a mod-ern smaller mammal f a u n a (see van Kol f -schoten 1990). The first group comprisesfaunas such as Miesenheim I , Krlich G,Mauer(Germany) , Boxgrove, Westbury-sub-Mendip(Great Br i ta in) , Sprimont (Belle Roche) (Bel-gium), Tarko (Hungary) with Arvicola terrestriscantiana together with Sorex (Drepanosorex) sp.and Pliomys episcopalis and a number of faunase.g. Swanscombe (Great Britain), Bilzingsleben(Germany) younger in age and without Sorex(Drepanosorex) and Pliomys episcopalis.Since the early Saalian, thinning of the con-vex sides of the dentine triangles has resulted

in changes in the relative thickness of theenamel band of the Arvicola molars. This de-velopment can be used for stratigraphical cor-relations of younger, i.e. post-'Holsteinian'faunas , such as those from Caune de l'AragoatTautavel (Desclaux 1992a; 1992b), Maastricht-Belvdre and Weimar-Ehringsdorf (cf. vanKol f scho ten 1990).3.1 The larger mammals: Villafranchian-GaltrianThe widely used Italian b i oc h r on o l ogy , with asubdivision in Villafranchian and Galerian fau-nas, is mainly based on changes in the largermammal fauna. The Villafranchian, startingabout 3 million years ago, covers part of thePliocene and the Early Pleistocene. It has beensub-divided into an early, a middle and a latephase, a subdivison refined byAzzaroli (1977),who divided the Villafranchian faunas into sixmore or less well-defined faunal units. Thebeginning of the Villafranchian i tself , of someof its units and its end are characterized bypronounced dispersal events (Azzaroli et al.1988; Sala et al. 1992). Azzaroli et al. (1988)state that the Villafranchian-Galerian transition(the end-Villafranchian event, 1-0-0-9 millionyears ago) saw a complete faunal turnover, withmassive extinctions and new, previously un-known adaptations. Late Villafranchian taxasuch as Eucladoceros, Dama nestii, Leptobosetruscus. Sus strozzii and Archidiskodonmeridionalis became extinct, whereas manytaxa (Megaceros, Soergelia sp., Praeovibospriscus. Bison schoetensacki, Equus sssen-bornensis, Ursus deningeri) appear during theEarly Galerian.The transition of the late Villafranchian tothe Galerian did not take place at once; accord-ing to Azzaroli et al. (1988), the transitionalphase was of (geologically) short duration be-cause only a few sites have 'naturally mixed'assemblages an assumption partially basedon the inferred Early Pleistocene age of Isernia.They assign a late Matuyama age to the Iserniafauna , and hence infer that faunas from nor-mally magnetized deposits (such as the faunasfrom West Runton and Voigtstedt) have to becorrelated with the Jaramillo event. In such ascenario the Villafranchian/Galerian faunalshi f t indeed seems both very pronounced andrelatively abrupt. In our opinion the faunasfrom Isernia, West Runton and Voigtstedt areof Middle Pleistocene age, which means that


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W I L ROEBROEKS & THIJS VA N KOLFSCHOTENthe faunal turn-over could have taken placemore gradually. For us the 'faunal watershed' issimply the result of a giant temporal collapse,caused by an accumulation ofcorrelation errors.This interpretation is confirmed by the faunaf rom Venta Micena, dated at around 1-2 mil-lion years ago yet already containing severalGalerian immigrants (Megaloceros , Praeovibos.Soergelia and Bison) (Agusti et al. 1987). Theend-Villafranchian 'event' in the sense of e.g.Azzaroli et al. (1988) therefore probably has along stratigraphical range, which necessitatesa re-definition of the late Villafranchian-Galerian boundary. At the current state ofknowledge the terms late Villafranchian orGalerian are of little biostratigraphical value.4 The earliest occupation of central andnorthwestern Europe4.1 The Early PleistoceneThe pseudo-artefact problem is especially ap-parent in central European sites where (ama-teur) archaeologists sampled huge amounts ofgravels and came up with primitive looking'choppers' and 'chopping-tools'. A good exam-ple is the Beroun site, near Prague (Fridrich1991), where about 80 artefacts were collectedf rom the top of Early Pleistocene river gravels,exposed over an area of about 2000 sq. m. Twooverlying levels yielded 10 more 'items of in-dustry'. The 80 rolled 'artefacts', mostly 'side-choppers' with only a few negatives, werecollected from the gravel surface 'after rain'. Ac-cording to Fridrich (1991: 111), the assemblage'includes choppers, bifaces. proto-bifaces,picks, cleavers, polyhedrons, subspheroids,representing Acheulean s.I., comparable to theAfrican finds'. The finds, both those publishedand those displayed in the Prague NationalMuseum, are clearly in the range of what canbe collected from natural gravel deposits; theyare not acceptable evidence of Early Pleis-tocene occupation (see Kozlowski 1991 for acomparable interpretation).The same applies to the Musov and Ivanassemblages, described by Valoch (1991). Bothsites, approximately 40 km south of Brno, werevisited by an amateur archaeologist, who col-lected hundreds of 'choppers' and 'chopping-tools' f r o m re-worked Miocene deposits,present on top of Early or early Middle Pleis-tocene deposits. As in Beroun, we are dealing

with a selection f rom thousands and thousandso f non-modified pebbles. The 'artefacts' havein general only a few irregular negatives, andalmost all 'chopping-tools' display completelyblunted 'working edges'.Comparable arguments apply to other EarlyPleistocene sites in Moravia (Brno-Cernovice.with one good f lake though, not recovered insitu,and Brno-Cernovice Kopec).A polyhedronf rom Mladec cave, f o un d in a calcite layer cov-ering the Early Pleistocene sediments there, hasno chronological context.Early Pleistocene ar tefac ts f r om the riverdeposits exposed in the Karlich section(Karlich A) were f o u n d and published byWrges (1986). Three 'pebble tools' were flakedon one surface only. The 'best' piece is a peb-ble, broken along a quartz vein, with two nega-tives. The pieces fall in the range ofnaturallyproduced 'artefacts' (cf. Clark 1958) and theywere not recovered in a controlled situation;at best they are to be treated as typicalincertofacts, a category of pieces of which theartificial character can neither be establishedwith certainty nor excluded. The same ap-plies to the trachytic tu f f core f r om KarlichB a, recovered outside stratigraphical context(Vollbrecht 1992).4.2 The Middle PleistoceneMost archaeology textbooks mention the Czechsite of Prezletice as one of the earliest sites inEurope. Palaeomagnetic and faunal studies (afauna with Mimomys) have placed it in thebeginning of the Middle Pleistocene. The f indo f what was once thought to be a human molar(now an Ursus sp. molar, see Fridrich 1989:29) initiated archaeological excavations (1969-1985) that focussed on sediments depositednear an ancient lake at the foo t of a lydite mas-sif. It yielded 4 horizons bearing 'artefacts' pro-duced out of locally occurring lydite debris.Fridrich (1989: passim) himself stressed that itwas very difficult to differentiate between ' f lak-ingand natural fracturing ofraw material in lyditedbris.... There is complete lack of flakes or, onth e contrary, of primitive cores . . . treatment ofrawmaterial, manufacturing of half-products andtheir waste fracturing occurred along hiddencleavages in raw material. There are not typicaltraces after working, namely bulbs, therefore thepossibility to recognize and differentiate betweenartificial working and natural fracturing is ex-


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T HE EARLIEST OCCUPATION OF EUROPE: A SHORT CHRONOLOGYtremelylow' (emphasis added). Nevertheless, thedrawings in Fridrich (1989) display many nega-tives of flaking and retouchon the 'proto-bifaces','picks' and other artefacts recognized among thelydite debris, but there is a big discrepancy be-tween th e drawings and the photos of the ob-jects. Likewise, the pieces on display in thePrague National Museum in our opinion do notshow any convincing traces of human interfer-ence.The site of Stransk skla. near Brno, yieldeda Late Biharian fauna comparable to Prezletice.I n 1968 Va l o c h described some 'flakes o fhornstone suggestive ofhuman workmanship'recovered from early Middle Pleistocene scree-deposits in the 1910-1945 excavations. Het h o u g h t the site was problematic because'Weathe red nodules, often naturally crackedand broken, occur in the debris in consider-able quantity, making it difficult to identifythose chips that could have been flaked andut i l ized by man' (Musil & Valoch 1968: 538;also Valoch 1972). Since then new palaeonto-logical f i e l d w o r k h a s yielded more f inds ,which led Valoch to give up his doubts aboutth e ar t i f ic ia l character of the stone assemblageselected f r om th e slope deposits a nd f romwithin two small caves in the Strnsk sklaexposure (Valoch 1987). Three dozen artefactshave been identified by him. These hornstonef r agments display no clear traces o f humanworkmanship: there are virtually no bulbs(only three observed), no clear negatives or rip-ples. While visiting the site with Dr Valoch thefirst author could pick up hornstone f ragmentsf r o m t h e scree-section, which i s fu l l o fhornstone debris; one wonders what the ratiobetween 'discarded' and 'accepted' pieceswithin this deposit actually was.

On these g r o u n d s , arguments concerningcontext and attributes of the finds, the site can-no t be considered as proof for an early MiddlePleistocene occupation of Moravia. W e supportValoch's earlier doubts concerning the arte-factual character of the assemblage.T h e first good evidence f rom this part o fcentral Europe comes from Sedlesovice nearZ no jm o , where a quartz artefact was discov-ered in a loess profile, in the fossil soil PK VI('Holstein'; see Valoch 1984). The first findsfrom Poland (Trzebnica) are from around thistime horizon too (Burdukiewicz & Winnicki1988; 1989; also Kozlowsk i 1992).

For the western part of central Europe,Wurges (1986) claims earlier finds from the topof the Krlich Mosel gravels (Krlich Bb). Overa n a r e a o f 4 0 x 4 0 m Wurges collected a set o f 8quartzite pieces, some from the top of the graveldeposits, some from the base of the gravels,having slid downslope. Some of the pieces areheavily rounded, others less so . I t took Wurgesmore than one year to assemble this set, veryclearly a selection of pieces, whose number isinfinitesimally small compared to the whole.The 'primitive' morphology of the pieces andtheir context lead us to doubt the artefactualcharacter of these, and to interpret them in thesame way as Tuffreau (1987) did with Fermede Grce material.In our opinion western central Europe hasits earliest solid evidence fo r human occupa-tion around the Cromer IV interglacial (Oxy-gen Isotope Stage 11 to 13? (respectively362.000-423,000 and 478,000-524,000 yearsBP)), in the form of the finds from Krlich G,the primary-context Miesenheim I site and theMauer mandible, all associated with Arvicolaterrestris cantiana faunas. From that time-pe-riod onwards there are more primary contextsites in central Europe, both from temperateand from colder, dryer settings (Roebroeks etal. 1992; Gamble 1993).In the northwest region, the earliest solidtraces of occupation are more or less contem-poraneous with the Miesenheim I site, for ex-a m p l e the well-preserved find scatters atBoxgrove in southern England (Roberts 1986;1990) and the earliest sites in the Somme val-ley of northern France (Tuffreau 1987). Th eBoxgrove site is tentatively correlated to Oxy-gen Isotope Stage 13.Independent of their correlations to thedeep-sea record, the earliest sites from bothcentral and northwest Europe fall in theArvicola terrestris cantiana range. From thatperiod onwards, there is a large number of well-documented primary context sites in the north-west-central region, with conjoining knappingdebris preserved in fine-grained fluvial andaeolian deposits ( c f . Roebroeks et al. 1992).5 Other regions, comparable results?Like those in the northern regions, Iberian riverterraces have yielded isolated pieces, whosehuman manufacture or precise age have beendoubted by various researchers (Raposo 1985;


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W I L R O E B R O E K S & THIJS VA N K O L F S C H O T E NSantonja & Villa 1990), who place th e oldestsites from Iberia at the beginning of the Mid-dle Pleistocene, though such traces are veryrare. Some of the best sites are in the Guadix-Baza depression (Granada), famous for its richEarly Pleistocene mammalian faunas. Th e old-es t site, Cullar de Baza, h as yielded only a fewpieces (six flakes and two choppers ) , in asso-ciation with a Middle Pleistocene fauna. Th efaunal list varies from au tho r to a u t h o r ( c f .San t on ja 1992 : 57) ; on b ios t r a t i g raph i ca lgro unds the s i te is very probably contemp ora-neous with the earliest sites from t he nor th-w e s t c e n t r a l r e g i o n . I f t h e f ive a r t e f a c t srecently repo rted from Atapuerca TD4 (Carbo-nell & Rodriguez 1994) indeed are man-madeobjects, they w ou ld be older than the oth er ar-chaeological sites reviewed so far, as they areassociated with a Mimomys fauna (Gil & Sese1991). The handaxes reported from AtapuercaTD6 are f rom a la ter period, when Pliomysepiscopalis disappears (Aguirre 1991), possi-bly Stage 13, according to the excavators(Carbonell & Ro drig uez 1994).Italy's settlement history ( c f . Mussi 1992)shows nounambiguous indicationsfor an EarlyPleistocene occupation. A number of the 'old'I tal ian sites are surface sites, where a 'primi-

tive' morphology of artefacts has led some ar-chaeologists to infer a high age. In view of thosec o r r e l a t i o n p r o b l e m s , th e s i te o f M o n t ePoggiolo does not provide very firm evidencefo r Early Pleistocene occupat ion , t h o u g h th epreliminary results of the palaeomagnetic stud-ies indicate that it deserves our attention as apossible candidate (Gagnepain et al. 1992). Allunquestionable archaeolog ical sites with soliddating evidence date from well into the Mid-dle Pleis tocene, a nd t h o s e w i t h a b u n d a n tfaunal remains are more or less com parable inag e to the Boxgrove and Miesenheim I sites inth e north: Fontana Ranuccio (with hominidremains), Visogliano (human fossils too] andprobably also Venosa-Loreto. As already ex -plained, in our opinion, Isernia falls into thistime range too (pages 494-5, above).In Croatia, the bone breccia of the SandaljaI cave yielded an incisor, once considered tobe a homin id fossil (Malez 1976 vs. Cook et al.1982) and one small and primitive 'chopper',a single find too undiagnostic to provide a firmg round fo r Early Pleis tocene occupat ion o fformer Yugoslavia .

So whi le th e reg ions discussed as yet haveno t yielded solid proof o f human occupa t i onprior to the M iddle Pleistocene, there are som esites in south ern France t ha t seem to be older:a g r o u p o f sites in the Massif Central, and thefamous cave-site of Le Vallonet.The Massif Central has a large number ofsites w ith rich Early Pleistocene faunas, recov-ered in a g o o d s t r a t i g r aph ica l context . T h estone assemblages collected from some of thesesites ( c f . Bonifay 1991) consist in genera l ofsmall series, selected out of natural pieces oc-curring in often coarse-grained deposits. Th eshort communicat ions on these assemblages dono t deal with th e problems o f differentiat ingbetween natura l and humanly modified pieces.In many ways an exception is the Chilhac IIIsite, excavated by Chavail lon (1991; also Guth& Chavaillon 1985) in order to test Guth's ear-lier assessments of the s i te . Among th e splitpebbles and rocks in the Chi lhac I I I depos i t s .Chavaillon could identify 46 indisputable ar-tefacts. The age of these artefacts is uncertainfo r th e t ime being, for reasons elaborated byChavai l lon (1991). In his words 'Tout est pos-sible pour Chilhac I I T (1991: 87).Another well-know n Massif Central site isSoleilhac. Unfortunately its l i thic assemblagehas not been published in detail. According toBonifay. we are dealing with a sm all assem-blage of pr im i t ive technology . The quartz peb-bles have been more 'shattered' ('briss") thanflaked, whereas th e major i ty of the 'objets degrande taille en basalte' have been m ade outof natural fragments (Bonifay 1987: 13). Fromthe description, i t is clear th at the excavatorsselected basalt objects (with 'rostrocarinate'forms) out of other non-modified basalt frag-ments . More important is that the Solei lhacfauna (wi th Arvicola. Elephas (P .) antiquusand Hippopotamus: Bo nifa y 1991) could fi tvery wel l i n t o t he l a t e Cromer i an f a u n a sm entione d above. A wait ing th e results o f fur-ther study of the chronology of the site anddetai led publicat ion of the s tone f inds, wesee no good reason to th ink Sole i lhac pro-vides an Early o r aarly Middle Pleistocenehominid occupa t ion .Le Vallonet h as been well published, in away that allows a detailed evaluation of theartefacts . Th e cave h as yielded a r ich fauna(with Microtus [Allophaiomys] pliocaenicus]and a small l i thic assemblage, recovered from


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THE EARLIEST OCCUPATION OF E U RO PE : A SHORT CHRONOLOGYbefore 500,000 years ago after 500,000 years agosmall series of isolated pieces selected large collect ions from excavated knapping f loors withfrom a natural pebble background conjoinable materialdisturbed context (coarse ma tr ix)contested 'p r im it iv e ' assemblagesno human remains at all

p r i ma r y context sites (finegrained matrix)uncon tes ted Acheulean and non-Acheulean industriesh u m a n remains c o m m o n

TABLE 1. Schematic differences within the European Palaeolithic record between the period beforeand after about 500,000 years ago.sediments of ' Jaramil lo ' ag e (age assessmentsby means of biostratigraphy. absolute dating(ESR) and pala eom ag netic studies (see variouscontributions in L'Anthropologie 92 (1988); bu talso Bonifay 1991: 74-5). The lith ic assemblagecomes from stratigraphie Unit I I I ( layers B l,B2, C), loamy sands with m any angular rocksand pebbles. These sediments are to a largeextent re-worked from th e Ro quebrune Mio-cene conglomerate deposits present above thecave. Th e sand and rock/pebble fraction flowedinto the Vallonet cave through chimneys andf i s s u r e s . A f t e r U n i t I I I w a s f o r m e d , t h esediments were subjected to intensive geo-chemical weathering, leading to all kinds o f'dformation' of the rocks and pebbles in thematrix: 'Les c ailloux et les galets de ces niveauxsont souvent craquels avec dplacements defragments' (De Lumley 1988:416).Excavationsin the stony deposits yielded in total 70piecesfrom a 'fairly underdevelo ped stone too l indus-try'. Fifty-nine of these are interpreted as in-ten t ional ly modi f ied . Vi r tual ly a ll artefactswere made from limestone pebbles from th eRo quebrune Miocene conglomerate. T he arte-facts consist primarily of flaked pebbles, amo ngwhich 'percussion tools ' , 'pebbles with a sin-g le convex chip' are the mo st comm on (13 ex-amples). Well represented are pebbles 'with as ingle concave chip ' (pr imary choppers , 8 ex-amples), but these are badly fragmented. Peb-b le t o o l s ( c h o p p e r s , c h o p p i n g - t o o l s a n datypical cho pping-tools) are present (10 exam-ples), t hough not standardized and mostly ofmediocre quality. The dorsal surface of half ofthe 26 flakes consists of 100% cortex, only 5flakes have no cortex at all. The majority ofthe flakes have no butt or a 'reduced' one.The Le Vallonet limestone pieces, partiallydecarbonated, are occ asionally extremely frag-

ile. Some of the rocks and pebbles were frac-tured, 'craquels' by chemical weathering. Th enon-modified as well as the flaked pebbles androcks in the Uni t I I I matr ix display severalkinds of surface mo difications, with ridges andpro t rud ing parts smoothed, or displaying aglossy surface polish. This applies to about60% of the natural stones in the matrix. Com-parable ph enom ena are present on the ' f laked 'pieces: 'Les pices de l'industrie lithiquedco uvertes dans le rem plissage du Pleistoc eneinfrieur de l'ensemble [II n'chappent pas cette rgle gnrale: un important moussadoucit parfois le s artes et oblitre le modeldes enlvements. L a surface de ces picesprsente souvent un lustrage caractristique'(De Lumley et al. 1988: 505).It is clear that the lithic assemblage from LeVallonet is a selection of 'primitive' piecespicked out from a matrix rich in rocks and peb-bles derived from Miocene deposits (see thephotos of the Unit I I I sediments in De Lumleyet al. 1988: f igures 1-7). Their characteristicssuggest that we are dealing with an assemblaget h a t was not modified by human agents, andinstead displays all the characteristics of a se-lection out of a natural deposit.6 ImplicationsBy our reading of the evidence, there is a dif-ference between th e European 'archaeological 'r e co rd f rom be fo re t he Arvicola terrestriscantiana t ime-range (for convenience ' sakehere: from about 500,000 years ago) and thelater one ( c f . T A B L E 1; also Dennell 1983 for acomparable interpretat ion). Before 500,000,virtually all finds come from a disturbed, coarsematr ix, afterwards w e have primary contextsites in fine-grained deposits. The assemblagesdating from before 500,000 are virtually all the


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W I L R O E B R O E K S & THIJS VA N K O L FSCHO TENresult of selection of isolated pieces from natu-ral deposits, younger ones are often excavatedfrom knapping floors.There are two basic ways to interpret thesedifferences. The pre-500.000 finds could reflectthe sparse traces of intermittent occupation ofEurop e, substantial colonization of Europ e tak-ing place from about 500.000 onwards [ c f .Turner 1992). Nevertheless, the differences ingeological context and recovery proceduresbetween pre- and post-500.000 sites are prob-lems to be explained by those adhering to t h i slong chronology.In view of the attributes o f the 'artefacts' andcontexts of the pre-500,000 sites, we insteadinterpret these differences as no [indisputableproof for human occupation o f Europe prior to

about 500,000 years ago . Th e first primary con-text sites with good archaeological evidencedate f rom a later period within th e MiddlePleistocene, possibly from about Stage 13 on-wards.Our scenario h as several advantages. A firstone is that it is very easy to falsify. The find ofonly o ne Early Pleistocene si te of prim ary con-text in Europe would d i sprove i t . and onewould have to conclude tha t before about500,000 occupation existed (but was largelyinterm ittent). N ew studies of som e of the sitesmentioned in our short survey could lead tosuch a result.A further advantage is that our short chro-nology is supported by a body of data inde-pendent o f arguments concerning stone tools:th e chronological dis t r ibut ion o f human re-mains. T h e discrepancy between th e inferredhigh age of the earliest European artefacts andth e relatively recent date for the earliest Euro-pean hominid fossils, th e Mauer lower jaw andth e human remains from Fo ntana Ranuccio and(possibly) Visog liano has been a conspiciousproblem in the search for the earliest Europe-ans. From th e 'Mauer' t ime period o nwards w ehave Middle Pleistocene human remains allover Europe: Arago, Atapuerca, Biache-Saint-Vaast, Bilzingsleben, Cava Pompi . Gastel diG u i d o , L a C h a i s e , E h r i n g s d o r f , F o n t a n aRanuccio, Fontchevade, Grot te du Prince,Lazaret , Mauer, Montmaurin, Ofgnac I I I ,Pe t ra lona , Pontnewydd, Ste inhe im. Swans-combe, Venose, Vergranne, Vrtesszlls andVisog liano, to mention them in alphabetical or-der ( c f . Cook et al. 1982). The recently discov-

ered tibia from Boxgrove, a si te with one o f theearliest Arvicola terrestris cantiana faunas, ofc o u r s e f i t s ve ry well i n ou r s c e n a r i o to o(Roberts et al. 1994; see also Gamble 1994).From th e long period before th e Arvicolaterrestris cantiana range we do not have a sin-g l e (uncon t e s t ed ! ) t oo t h ye t , de s p i t e hugeamounts of other mammalian fossils. Absenceof evidence is of course no evidence of absence,and negative evidence h as rarely pro ved dura-ble in archaeology. But absence of exposuresof older deposits is not a good counter-argu-ment here . A t a large num ber o f palaeontologi-ca l sites, early Middle and/o r Ea rly Pleistocenefaunas are recovered from fine-gra ined depos-i ts . Some of these have been under observa-t i on fo r many decades o r even cen t ur i e s ,yielding huge amounts of faunal remains: fo rinstance the Tegelen pits in the Netherlands.Untermassfeld. Voigtstedt and Sussenborn inGermany , W e s t R u n t o n ( Eng l a nd) , Snze(France), Deutsch A ltenburg in Austria and theVal d'Arno exposures in Italy. Europe is withoutany doubt the most heavily researched part ofthe Old W orld, with a high-quali ty record towhich many hundreds of workers have contrib-uted over a period of one-and-a-half c enturies.In our scenario Europe is extremely 'mar-gina l ' , late in t ime as compared to for instanceth e Asian evidence as that stands now. Th ehuman spread out of Africa went eastwardsfirst, via Ubeidiya (Israel) and Dmanisi (Geor-gia; see Dzaparidze et al. 1989), and hominidswe re present in the eastern parts o f Asia at theend o f t he E a r l y P l e i s t o c e n e , a t a r o u n d1,000,000 to 800.000 (Schick & Z huan 1993;even earlier, if one accepts th e Swisher et al.(1994) dates). Eu ro pe was occ upied later. Soonafter we see the first undisputable traces, hu-mans are vi r t ua l l y ' eve rywhe re ' in E u r o p e(with as notable and interesting exceptions th eRussian plains and Scandinavia).At issue is not only whether th e First Euro-peans a rrived m uch earlier than 500,000. W ha t ,if any, ecological, climatical or social factorsw e r e t r i g g e r i n g t h e o c c u p a t i o n a t a b o u t500,000. or, formulated in another way, whatkept hominids out of Europe before 500,000?Some avenues worth exploring may be devel-opments in the social domain, such as theemergence of dispersed ma ting networks , neu-ral developm ents associated with brain expan-sion and differences in the character of the


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roebroeks & van kolfschoten (1994) - the earliest occupation of europe: a short chronology

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