The Origins of the Bohunician Behavioural Packages

[Siren]

I am considering a project looking at the origins of the Bohunician Behavioural Package (oldest site is Boker Tachtit circa 45kya BP). Originally I was going to enter into the auto vs allochthonous debate but this will just be shifting the Chatelperronian debate further east and undoubtedly find so solution because there as yet still isn't sufficient data available.

The Boker Tachtit industry related to the Bohunician is supposed to have no antecedant however there is a unterrupted Levallois progression in the area. I have only just started to read about it because previously I specialised in the MP proper in western europe and not knowing anything about these regions presents more of a challenge for me. I was touching over the Amudian as well but I never seen them linked before. I thought it might be interesting to open a debate here about this, because it is intersting and also because it might help me get my facts in order!

PS: Dar this is Siog:)

[Daryl Habel]

I am considering a project looking at the origins of the Bohunician Behavioural Package (oldest site is Boker Tachtit circa 45kya BP). Originally I was going to enter into the auto vs allochthonous debate but this will just be shifting the Chatelperronian debate further east and undoubtedly find so solution because there as yet still isn't sufficient data available.

The Boker Tachtit industry related to the Bohunician is supposed to have no antecedant however there is a unterrupted Levallois progression in the area. I have only just started to read about it because previously I specialised in the MP proper in western europe and not knowing anything about these regions presents more of a challenge for me. I was touching over the Amudian as well but I never seen them linked before. I thought it might be interesting to open a debate here about this, because it is intersting and also because it might help me get my facts in order!

PS: Dar this is Siog:)

Welcome Siog, to our forum.  I had recognized that it was you when you signed up this week.  The question of Bohunician origins is a good one that I also find of interest.  Unfortunately, I've had to start from scratch without any academic schooling or practical experience in lithic technology, so all I know is from the literature I've dug out and read.  Perhaps someone here with greater experience with this issue will come forward with better comment, and perhaps I might also be able to contribute after I make a review of my files (since some time has passed from when I looked at the Bohunician and related assemblages).  In the meantime, I suggest to you that you enter the word "Bohunician" in the Palanth search engine (the icon is near  the top of the page). Or CLICK HERE to search.

You will find that there has been some limited discussion here, but probably the most useful reference is:

Škrdla, P. 2003: Comparison of Boker Tachtit and Stránská skála MP/UP Transitional Industries. Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society 33, 33-69. PDF version.  This can be acquired free by following the instructions at CLICK HERE .  This is very technical, but an excellent  comparative study  of the two assemblages.  If you haven't come across this yet, it will help.  

From the little I do know, it seems Jiri Svoboda does not see a localized European antecedent and considers the Bohunician intrusive in Moravia.  Gilbert Tostevin has done considerable work on the spread of the Bohunician "package" and associates its origin with Boker Tachtit.  Insofar as an "uninterrupted Levallois progression in the area", this is beyond my knowledge, but here I'm assuming you are writing of the Amudian.  Occasionally, a possible link between Amud (and IIRC,maybe Kebara) and Boker Tachtit  has been mentioned in some papers I've read (I'll have to review this), but  these do not elaborate in enough detail to confirm or deny  any link.  For now, I've been stumped on this question of the origins of the Boker Tachtit-type assemblages, and I don't know whether a firm link to the Amudian (or any earlier) assemblages can be assumed.  Since these 'Bohunician-like' epi-Levallois assemblages are found spread all the way from Siberia through the Near East to Eastern and Central Europe, and have origins sometime between 50-40 ka, they have a certain relevance to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, but exactly how and why their distribution is such remains an unanswered question as far as I'm concerned.

Dar

[Siren]

Yes I've read that article, it is very interesting! If you haven't seen it already have a look at Gil Tostevin's 'A Quest for Antecedants: A comparison of the terminal Middle Palaeolithic and Early Upper Palaeolithic of the Levant'  http://anthropology.umn.edu/people/tostevinPub.php

Learning how to knap very much helps to picture the processes (at least in my head - I'm a visual learner). it is slow going to learn though, I still have the knapping abilities of a retarded homo habilis on a bad day!

[Daryl Habel]

Yes I've read that article, it is very interesting! If you haven't seen it already have a look at Gil Tostevin's 'A Quest for Antecedants: A comparison of the terminal Middle Palaeolithic and Early Upper Palaeolithic of the Levant'  http://anthropology.umn.edu/people/tostevinPub.php

Thanks.  I had not seen Tostevin's article 'A Quest for Antecedants', nor was I aware of some other Tostevin articles which are available from his University of Minnestota URL you provided.  These will be of help to me because I had not fully understood the attribute analysis used in the one Tostevin article I had read previously a couple years ago:

G. Tostevin, 2000a “The Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition from the Levant to Central Europe: in situ development or diffusion?”
In, Gerd-Christian Weniger & Jorg Orschiedt (eds.), Neanderthals and modern humans: discussing the transition. Central & Eastern Europe from 50,000 – 30,000 BP, pp. 90-109. Düsseldorf, Germany: Neanderthal Museum

This attribute analysis seems to be explained more fully in one of the other papers available from Tostevin's UMinn webpage:

G. Tostevin, 2003b “Attribute Analysis of the Lithic Technologies of Stránská skála II-III in their Regional and Inter-regional Context.”
Chapter 8 of Jiri Svoboda & Ofer Bar-Yosef (eds.), Stránská skála: Origins of the Upper Paleolithic in the Brno Basin. Peabody Museum Bulletin, pp. 77-118. Cambridge: Peabody Museum Publication, Harvard University

I'll have to read through all these a few times before I know what all I can make of this, but there are a few things already apparent.  The first being Tostevin's choices of sample assemblages for the Levantine MP/UP 'transition' in "A Quest for Antecedants", specifically the Kebara Unit VI (AMS dated >48 ka and TL dated 48.3+/-3.5 ka) and Boker Tachtit Level 1 (dated c. 47-45 ka by several estimates).  I note he mentions (p.60-61)  Amud B1/6 (ESR dated 43+/-5 ka EU and 48+/-6 LU) as a likely candidate which "warrants further study".  

Using his method of attribute analysis, Tostevin arrives at a "Total Measure of Difference Weighted by Behavioral Domains" between Kebara VI and Boker Tachtit 1 of 4.33 (with 0.0 being identical and 5.0 being the maximum difference possible in this system).   This is a very great difference and suggests a great behavioral diffence in the creation of  lithic technology in the two assemblages.

Quoting Tostevin ('A Quest for Antecedants', p. 64):

"Despite the arguments for an in situ technological transition between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic at Boker Tachtit, the basal assemblage already differs as much as possible from its immediate temporal predecessor on the Levantine landscape, Kebara VI.  This indicates that any 'transition' was already underway at the time of the Boker Tachtit level 1.  While Marks (1990, 1992) has argued that the early Middle Palaeolithic Negev site of Rosh Ein Mor is the progenitor of a Tabun D-type lineage culminating in the Boker Tachtit level 1 assemblage, there is currently no chrono-stratigraphic evidence for such continuity. (Bar-Yosef 1998b).  Demidenko and Usik (1993a) suggested that the 'blady' Levalloisian industries dated to 70,000 bp at Tor Faraj and Tor Sabiha in Jordan (Henry 1992, 1995a) may provide this continuity."

It's obvious that for the 'transition' and any possible antecedants to be recognized, there's a lot more samples needed from the time-frame Tostevin considers appropriate.  This he acknowledges in the continuation of the above quote:

"Yet more fieldwork needs to be conducted in both Israel and Jordan to find a later (i.e. 50-47,000 bp) example of similar industries before one can replace Kebara VI  as the immediate predecessor to Boker Tachtit level 1 in a comparison such as this."

You seem as up to date on this problem as me, so I don't think I can help much with ' the origins of the Bohunician package', but it would be a challenging project and if you choose to pursue this, good luck!!!

Learning how to knap very much helps to picture the processes (at least in my head - I'm a visual learner). it is slow going to learn though, I still have the knapping abilities of a retarded homo habilis on a bad day!

Yes, I think you are correct to recognize the processes of lithic reduction as very important.  My knapping abilities are worse than a retarded habilis.   One of these days I've got to go to a knapping convention and get some hints.  But I try to visualize the processes as much as possible.  I think  there is some validity shown by Tostevin's quantitative 'difference'  results in the 'domains' of the reduction sequences he has chosen, but the samples I've read of so far are very limited and obviously chosen for "immediate" temporal succession.  I've come to the conclusion that something like the Tabun D-type assemblages is the predecessor for the epi-Levallois Boker Tachtit, Bohunician-like assemblages (hinted above in Tostevin's quote) but, as he points out, there is work to do finding additional assemblages that date to 50-47,000 bp.

Dar