NDLI: Additional evidence on the use of personal ornaments in the Middle Paleolithic of North Africa

Content Provider	PubMed Central
Author	D'errico, Francesco Marian, Vanhaeren Barton, Nick Bouzouggar, Abdeljalil Henk, Mienis Richter, Daniel Hublin, Jean-jacques Mcpherron, Shannon P. Pierre, Lozouet
Abstract	Recent investigations into the origins of symbolism indicate that personal ornaments in the form of perforated marine shell beads were used in the Near East, North Africa, and SubSaharan Africa at least 35 ka earlier than any personal ornaments in Europe. Together with instances of pigment use, engravings, and formal bone tools, personal ornaments are used to support an early emergence of behavioral modernity in Africa, associated with the origin of our species and significantly predating the timing for its dispersal out of Africa. Criticisms have been leveled at the low numbers of recovered shells, the lack of secure dating evidence, and the fact that documented examples were not deliberately shaped. In this paper, we report on 25 additional shell beads from four Moroccan Middle Paleolithic sites. We review their stratigraphic and chronological contexts and address the issue of these shells having been deliberately modified and used. We detail the results of comparative analyses of modern, fossil, and archaeological assemblages and microscopic examinations of the Moroccan material. We conclude that Nassarius shells were consistently used for personal ornamentation in this region at the end of the last interglacial. Absence of ornaments at Middle Paleolithic sites postdating Marine Isotope Stage 5 raises the question of the possible role of climatic changes in the disappearance of this hallmark of symbolic behavior before its reinvention 40 ka ago. Our results suggest that further inquiry is necessary into the mechanisms of cultural transmission within early Homo sapiens populations.
Related Links	http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903532106
Ending Page	16056
Page Count	6
Starting Page	16051
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00278424
e-ISSN	10916490
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Issue Number	38
Volume Number	106
Language	English
Publisher	National Academy of Sciences
Publisher Date	2009-09-22
Access Restriction	Open
Rights Holder	National Academy of Sciences
Subject Keyword	General Research in Higher Education
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Multidisciplinary

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