Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from the Indian Subcontinent Before and After the Toba Super-Eruption

doi:10.1126/science.1141564

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Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from the Indian Subcontinent Before and After the Toba Super-Eruption

Michael Petraglia¹^,2^*, Ravi Korisettar³, Nicole Boivin¹, Christopher Clarkson⁴, Peter Ditchfield⁵, Sacha Jones¹, Jinu Koshy³, Marta Mirazón Lahr¹, Clive Oppenheimer⁶, David Pyle⁷, Richard Roberts⁸, Jean-Luc Schwenninger⁵, Lee Arnold⁸ and Kevin White⁹

¹ Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QH, UK.
² Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
³ Department of History and Archaeology, Karnatak University, Dharwad 580 003, India.
⁴ School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
⁵ Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK.
⁶ Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK.
⁷ Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PR, UK.
⁸ GeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia.
⁹ Department of Geography, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AB, UK.

Fig. 1. Location of Jwalapuram, archaeological sites, and tephra deposits. (A) Location of the Jwalapuram study area. (B) Key archaeological localities in the Kurnool District include the Upper Paleolithic caves of Billasurgum (1) (17) and Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi (2) (16). Jwalapuram localities include 17 (3, Middle Paleolithic), 9 (4, Microlithic), 3 (5, Middle Paleolithic), 20 (6, Middle Paleolithic), 21 (7, Middle Paleolithic), and Tank (8, Acheulean). [View Larger Version of this Image (21K GIF file)]

Fig. 2. Selected Jwalapuram artifacts that pre-date (locality 3) and post-date (localities 3, 17, and 21) the YTT. Above the ash: 1, bladelet core with faceted platform; 2 and 3, flake cores with faceted platforms; 4, side scraper; 5, utilized flake; 6, atypical end scraper on blade; 7, side and end scraper; 8, utilized flake; 9, broken blade; 10, broken blade. Below the ash: 11, notch and burin; 12, ventrally retouched side scraper; 13, side scraper on broken blade; 14, side scraper on ridge straightening flake; 15, ventrally retouched side and end scraper; 16, ventrally retouched scraper; 17, notch; 18, ground ochre. Scale bar, 1 cm. [View Larger Version of this Image (58K GIF file)]

Fig. 3. Discriminant analysis of 670 cores from Middle Stone Age (MSA), Middle Paleolithic (MP), and early Upper Paleolithic (UP) contexts in Africa, the Levant, and India. Functions 1 and 2 account for 70.1% of the variation. Functions 1 to 3 are all significant at the P = < 0.0005 level. JWP, Jwalapuram; KRM, Klasies River Mouth. [View Larger Version of this Image (30K GIF file)]