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CHAPTER TWO. The Pre-Neolithic Material
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The pre-Neolthc materal 13 CHAPTeR TWO The Pre-Neolthc Materal inTRODuCTiOn This is the first publication of a Pre-Neolithic ground stone tool assemblage from a Greek site and my hope is that its detailed nature will provoke an interest in this kind of material. The Franchthi sample consists of 26 specimens from the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. None of them was excavated on Paralia. All come from stratified deposits inside the cave (trenches FAN, FAS, H1A, H1B, H2A, and G1). Nine additional specimens are presented at the end of this chapter as ‘possible pre-Neolithic specimens.’ I follow here the phasing scheme designed for thePre-NeolithiclithicsbyPerlès.Shedefined10lithic phases named 0 through IX (Perlès 1987, 1990). THe PAlAeOliTHiC PeRiOD Radiocarbon dates relevant to the Palaeolithic period, or lithic phases 0–VI, are listed in Table 2.1. Summarized information on all Palaeolithic specimens is listed in Table 2.2. The drawing of one specimen appears in Figure 3. Photographs of a few specimens are found in Plates 1–4 on the CD, folder: Pre-Neolithic/Palaeolithic. The bedrock floor was never reached by the excavations inside the cave, but the lowest excavated deposits (in FAS and HIB) are dated before 33,000–40,000 Cal. B.P.—the date of a layer of tephra overlying them (Farrand 2000:37–38, 73–74, 86–88). These deposits are assigned to lithic phase 0 and belong roughly to the limit between the Middle and the Upper Palaeolithic period. A Middle Palaeolithic occupation at the site is indeed suggested by a handful of Mousterian points and lithics with Levallois preparation excavated at the bottom of FAS or found in surface or disturbed deposits of the cave; a few examples of fauna of Middle Palaeolithic affinity excavated at the bottom of FAS; and the substantial thickness of the unexcavated archaeological deposit that an electric resistivity survey showed to lie over the bedrock floor (Farrand 2000:37–38; Perlès 1987:18, 49–51, 85–88). Above the layer of tephra are deposits assigned to lithic phases I–VI spanning the Upper/ Final Palaeolithic. Perlès distinguished two broad periods in this long timespan. They are separated by a hiatus of several millennia and seem roughly to correspond to different functions and modalities of use of the site. The first period dates to ca. 30,000– 17,000 Uncal. B.P., the second to ca. 12,700–10,150 Uncal. B.P. (Perlès 1987, 1999; see also Farrand 2000:Table 6.1). During the first Palaeolithic period, the environment was cold, dry, and steppic and the shore about 5–6 km from the cave (Hansen 1991:105; Perlès 1999:312). The faunal, botanical, and lithic evidence suggests that ‘The occupation of the site…must have been very limited, both in scope and intensity. The cave seems to have been used only briefly and sporadically as a hunting camp, and subsistence activities were restricted to small-scale big game hunting’ (Perlès 1999:312). Apparently, the people who used the cave in this period also made a few ornaments, an activity that may not be incompatible with a hunting halt (Perlès, personal communication 2/2007). The first Palaeolithic period comprises lithic phases I–III (Perlès 1987, 1999). The general impression of a very limited occupation of the cave 1 Chapter Two during this period is reinforced by the fact that only two ground stone tools could be assigned to it (Table 2.2). No specimen derives from a deposit attributed to lithic phase I. The earliest specimen, FS 454 (Pl. 1), derives from H1A:215 attributed to lithic phase II. Two dates are available for this phase ranging from ca. 23,600 to 21,050 Uncal. B.P. (24,900–23,850 Cal. B.C.)(Table2.1).FS454isbrokenbothlongitudinally and transversally and in its current state measures 11.0×6.1×3.2 cm. It is probably an a posteror tool and its raw material is fine-grained sandstone. The preservedsurface(showninillustration)mayrepresent part of the side of the original tool. It is convex and has at the center a small area with percussion marks, probably the result of brief use in a passive or active percussive mode. This use could have taken place before or after the breakage of the tool.A zone along one of the two long broken edges is smoothed from an abrasive use that was probably active. This...