The second edition of The Biomarker Guide is a fully updated and expanded version of this essential reference. Now in two volumes, it provides a comprehensive account of the role that biomarker technology plays both in petroleum exploration and in understanding Earth history and processes. Biomarkers and Isotopes in the Environment and Human History details the origins of biomarkers and introduces basic chemical principles relevant to their study. It discusses analytical techniques, and applications of biomarkers to environmental and archaeological problems. The Biomarker Guide is an invaluable resource for geologists, petroleum geochemists, biogeochemists, environmental scientists and archaeologists.

The Biomarker Guide

Human biological and cultural evolution are closely linked to technological innovations. Direct evidence for tool manufacture and use is absent before 2.5 million years ago (Ma), so reconstructions of australopithecine technology are based mainly on the behavior and anatomy of chimpanzees. Stone tool technology, robust australopithecines, and the genus Homo appeared almost simultaneously 2.5 Ma. Once this adaptive threshold was crossed, technological evolution was accompanied by increased brain size, population size, and geographical range. Aspects of behavior, economy, mental capacities, neurological functions, the origin of grammatical language, and social and symbolic systems have been inferred from the archaeological record of Paleolithic technology.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/291/5509/1748.full.pdf

Paleolithic Technology and Human Evolution

In recent years, there has been a tendency to correlate the origin of modern culture and language with that of anatomically modern humans. Here we discuss this correlation in the light of results provided by our first hand analysis of ancient and recently discovered relevant archaeological and paleontological material from Africa and Europe. We focus in particular on the evolutionary significance of lithic and bone technology, the emergence of symbolism, Neandertal behavioral patterns, the identification of early mortuary practices, the anatomical evidence for the acquisition of language, the development of conscious symbolic storage, the emergence of musical traditions, and the archaeological evidence for the diversification of languages during the Upper Paleolithic. This critical reappraisal contradicts the hypothesis of a symbolic revolution coinciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago, but also highlights inconsistencies in the anatomically–culturally modern equation and the potential contribution of anatomically “pre-modern” human populations to the emergence of these abilities. No firm evidence of conscious symbolic storage and musical traditions are found before the Upper Paleolithic. However, the oldest known European objects that testify to these practices already show a high degree of complexity and geographic variability suggestive of possible earlier, and still unrecorded, phases of development.

Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language, Symbolism, and Music–An Alternative Multidisciplinary Perspective

Organic residue analysis utilizes analytical organic chemical techniques to identify the nature and origins of organic remains that cannot be characterized using traditional techniques of archaeological investigation (because they are either amorphous or invisible). The field is founded upon the principle that the biomolecular, or biochemical, components of organic materials associated with human activity survive in a wide variety of locations and deposits at archaeological sites. The archaeological information contained in organic residues is represented by the biomolecular components of the natural products that contribute to the formation of a given residue. By applying appropriate separation (chromatographic) and identification (mass spectrometric) techniques, the preserved, and altered, biomolecular components of such residues can be revealed. Once identified, the Archaeological Biomarker Concept can be applied, wherein the structure and even isotopic composition(s) of a given biomolecule or suite of biomolecules (the ‘chemical fingerprint’) can be related to the compositions of organisms exploited by humans in the past. As the organic residue field emerges from its pre-paradigmatic phase, and the organic residue revolution gathers pace, the way is open for challenging many long-held archaeological hypotheses and offering new perspectives on the study of human activity in the past.

Organic residue analysis in archaeology: the archaeological biomarker revolution*

▪ Abstract The transition from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic is considered one of the major revolutions in the prehistory of humankind. Explanations of the observable archaeological phenomena in Eurasia, or the lack of such evidence in other regions, include biological arguments (the role of Cro-Magnons and the demise of the Neanderthals), as well as cultural-technological, and environmental arguments. The paper discusses issues of terminological ambiguities, chronological and geographical aspects of change, the emergence of what is viewed as the arch-types of modern forager societies, and the hotly debated and loaded issue of modern behavior. Finally, the various causes for the Upper Paleolithic revolution are enumerated, from the biological through the technocultural that relies on the analogy with the Neolithic revolution.

The Upper Paleolithic Revolution

A SCRAPER and a Levallois flake, discovered in the Mousterian levels (dated around 40,000 BC) of the Umm el Tlel site in Syria, were submitted to an organic geochemieal study to identify a black substance occurring on their surface. The shape of this black substance suggests that the organic traces are remnants of a hafting material used by Middle Palaeolithic people to glue handles onto their tools. Gas chromatography–mass spectro-metry (GC–MS) analyses of both C15+ alkanes and C15+ aromatics confirm that the black substance is a highly weathered bitumen, the source of which remains unknown. According to some diagnostic molecular information (for example, the occurrence of fluoranthene and pyrene), it seems that the raw bitumen used has been subjected to extreme temperature. The scraper and the Levallois flake described here are, to the best of our knowledge, the first reported examples of Middle Palaeolithic artefacts hutted with bitumen to handles.

Bitumen as a hafting material on Middle Palaeolithic artefacts

The hunting methods of the Neanderthals are rarely evident in detail in the archaeological record. Here, the rare and important discovery of a fragment of broken Levallois point, embedded in the neck-bones of a wild ass, provokes plenty of discussion of the methods of hafting and killing game in the Middle Palaeolithic of Syria.

A Levallois point embedded in the vertebra of a wild ass (Equus africanus): hafting, projectiles and Mousterian hunting weapons

The authors identify natural bitumen on stone implements dating to 70 000 BP. It is proposed that this represents residue from hafting, taking the practice back a further 30 000 years from the date previously noted and published in Nature. The bitumen was tracked to a source 40km away, using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and carbon isotopes.

Middle Palaeolithic bitumen use at Umm el Tlel around 70 000 BP

Neanderthal infant burial

The El Kowm basin in Central Syria is located between the Palmyra basin and the valley of the Euphrates River (Figure 1). It is a depression 25 km wide and 80 km long, dominated to the east by Jabal Bicheri (rising to 850 m above sea level) and to the south by Jabal Minshar (879 m) and Jabal Mqaibara (1110 m). Running down the center of this natural basin is an elongated plateau, the Qdeir plateau, carved out by Quaternary erosion (Figure 2). During surveys in 1978 directed by T. Fujimoto (1979) and J. Cauvin (Cauvin et al. 1979), numerous lithic assemblages were discovered in the backdirt of many ancient wells situated on the periphery of the plateau or on the surface of tells. Since that time, two Middle Paleolithic sites have been excavated. One is the site of Hummal, situated on the plateau 3 km from the tell of El Kowm (Hours 1982; Le Tensorer and Hours 1989); the other is the site of Umm El Tlel, located on the northern slope of the Qdeir plateau (Molist et al. 1988; Boeda and Muhesen 1993). Among the material collected at these two sites, we identified 16 artifacts, 15 flint and one limestone, which showed traces of a black substance on one or more surfaces. On

Sultan Muhesen

Papers

Bitumen as a hafting material on Middle Palaeolithic artefacts

A Levallois point embedded in the vertebra of a wild ass (Equus africanus): hafting, projectiles and Mousterian hunting weapons

Middle Palaeolithic bitumen use at Umm el Tlel around 70 000 BP

Neanderthal infant burial

Bitumen as Hafting Material on Middle Paleolithic Artifacts from the El Kowm Basin, Syria