Skip Content
You are currently on the new version of our website. Access the old version .

Quaternary, Volume 7, Issue 4

2024 December - 19 articles

Cover Story: Paleolithic people intentionally collected and recycled old, patinated flint tools made by their predecessors—a practice found across the Old World, including the Early Paleolithic Levant. These recycled tools have distinct life cycles: initial use, discard, patination, collection after an unknown period, and recycling that revealed fresh flint surfaces. This act of collecting and recycling was not driven by scarcity, as fresh flint was available. Instead, it appears to be a deliberate choice, likely for functional and perceptual reasons. One prominent recycling method prioritized preserving the tool's original form, aged surfaces, and old scars while minimizing reshaping to create a new working edge. These findings raise questions about memory preservation in the deep past alongside functionality. View this paper
  • Issues are regarded as officially published after their release is announced to the table of contents alert mailing list .
  • You may sign up for email alerts to receive table of contents of newly released issues.
  • PDF is the official format for papers published in both, html and pdf forms. To view the papers in pdf format, click on the "PDF Full-text" link, and use the free Adobe Reader to open them.

Articles (19)

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,520 Views
27 Pages

16 December 2024

This study examines the prevalent practice of recycling patinated flint tools (“double patina”) of 18 lithic assemblages from three Late Lower Paleolithic sites in Israel. Determined as recycled from ‘old’ patinated items usin...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,394 Views
21 Pages

The Early Pleistocene Carnivoran of Coste San Giacomo (Anagni, Central Italy): Biochronological Implications

  • Luca Bellucci,
  • Fabio Bona,
  • Jacopo Conti,
  • Beniamino Mecozzi,
  • Flavia Strani and
  • Raffaele Sardella

12 December 2024

Coste San Giacomo (CSG) represents a significant paleontological site to investigate the faunal and environmental changes that occurred in Mediterranean Europe during the Early Pleistocene. In this work, we described for the first time the Carnivoran...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
3,227 Views
26 Pages

11 December 2024

The fortified hilltop settlement of Monkodonja, located near Rovinj on the west coast of Istria, Croatia, provides insight into Bronze Age occupation and conflict in the Adriatic region. Established around 2000 BC, as evidenced by a series of C14 dat...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2,209 Views
18 Pages

Aeolian Sands of the Temperate Boreal Zone (Northern Asia)

  • Nikolay Akulov,
  • Maria Rubtsova,
  • Varvara Akulova,
  • Yurii Ryzhov and
  • Maksim Smirnov

5 December 2024

This article is devoted to the study of the Quaternary aeolian sands of the boreal zone of north Asia. Using the example of the study reference sections of the Selenga Dauria (Western Transbaikalia), it was established that the activation of aeolian...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
4,031 Views
47 Pages

The Lost MIS 11c Mammalian Fauna from Via dell’Impero (Rome, Italy)

  • Maria Rita Palombo,
  • Biagio Giaccio,
  • Lorenzo Monaco,
  • Roberta Martino,
  • Marina Amanatidou and
  • Luca Pandolfi

4 December 2024

This research presents an in-depth analysis of large mammal remains first discovered in 1932 in the archaeological area of ancient Rome, central Italy, during the work for the opening of Via dell’Impero (VFI). This work describes the faunal ass...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
2,751 Views
24 Pages

3 December 2024

A detailed high-resolution study of climate and vegetation changes in two sedimentary profiles from the Godavari delta in India was conducted to understand extreme climate variability over the last 3000 years. These historical climate records are vit...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,058 Views
25 Pages

Hydroclimatic Changes Revealed by Multiple Proxies Since the Last Glacial Maximum from the Core Monsoon Zone of India

  • Mohammad Firoze Quamar,
  • Jyotsna Dubey,
  • Pooja Tiwari,
  • Prasanta Kumar Das,
  • Biswajeet Thakur,
  • Mohammad Javed,
  • Nagendra Prasad,
  • M. E. T. Maneesha and
  • Satish J. Sangode

21 November 2024

We present multiproxy records from a 2.25-m-long lake sediment profile from central India, which suggested that between ~22,200 and 18,658 cal yr BP, the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) was weak, supporting open vegetation in a cool and dry climate, whic...

  • Comment
  • Open Access
5 Citations
2,218 Views
8 Pages

21 November 2024

On 2015, after the direct study of the most important Late Villafranchian fossil collections of Europe and Western Asia, including Orce (Spain), Pirro Nord and Upper Valdarno (Italy), Appollonia (Greece), Dmanisi (Georgia) and ‘Ubeidiya (Israel...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
3,074 Views
22 Pages

18 November 2024

In the Afrotropic biogeographic realm, with its diverse and high-density mammal population, early humans may have been hunting with stone-tipped weapons since ~500,000 years ago. Being able to hunt effectively from a distance has several important ad...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
16,660 Views
19 Pages

Were Neanderthals the First Collectors? First Evidence Recovered in Level 4 of the Prado Vargas Cave, Cornejo, Burgos and Spain

  • Marta Navazo Ruiz,
  • Alfonso Benito-Calvo,
  • María Carmen Lozano-Francisco,
  • Rodrigo Alonso Alcalde,
  • Pedro Alonso García,
  • Héctor de la Fuente Juez,
  • Marta Santamaría Diez and
  • Paula Cristóbal Cubillo

12 November 2024

Collecting is a form of leisure, and even a passion, consisting of collecting, preserving and displaying objects. When we look for its origin in the literature, we are taken back to “the appearance of writing and the fixing of knowledge”,...

  • Review
  • Open Access
2 Citations
4,875 Views
23 Pages

Old and New Approaches in Rock Art: Using Animal Motifs to Identify Palaeohabitats

  • Mirte Korpershoek,
  • Sally C. Reynolds,
  • Marcin Budka and
  • Philip Riris

7 November 2024

Humans are well known to have made paintings and engravings on rock surfaces, both geometric motifs with an unclear representation, and representative motifs that refer to their activities and aspects of their environment. This kind of art is widespr...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
3,207 Views
32 Pages

28 October 2024

A 7.4 m long sediment core has been retrieved from the central part of Lake Vrana on the island of Cres to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental conditions. Lake Vrana is the deepest freshwater lake in Croatia, located in the karst region of the eastern...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,318 Views
19 Pages

22 October 2024

Quaternary stream sediments and beach black sand in north-western Saudi Arabia (namely Wadi Thalbah, Wadi Haramil and Wadi Al Miyah) are characterized by the enrichment of heavy minerals. Concentrates of the heavy minerals in two size fractions (63&n...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2,662 Views
17 Pages

17 October 2024

Two zoogenic deposits from the central part of the Negev Desert (Israel) were investigated by stable isotopes (carbon 13C/12C and nitrogen 15N/14N) and pollen analyses. The merger of these data and results of radiocarbon dating of Atzmaut and Ramon I...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,611 Views
21 Pages

14 October 2024

We present the reconstruction of palaeoenvironmental conditions in the Gdansk, Bornholm, and Arkona Basins of the Baltic Sea over the last millennium. A multiproxy study (including geochemical, XRF, grain size, AMS, and micropalaeontological analyses...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
3,110 Views
22 Pages

11 October 2024

The Villafranchian stage in the mammal fauna evolution in Eurasia (ca. 3.6/3.4 Ma—ca. 1.2 Ma) is associated with the beginning of the formation of the modern appearance of the mammal megafauna of today’s Palaearctic. The cooling and the a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
1,850 Views
11 Pages

Plio-Pleistocene Small Mammal-Based Biochronology of Eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasus

  • Alexey S. Tesakov,
  • Pavel Frolov,
  • Alexandra Simakova,
  • Albina Yakimova,
  • Vadim Titov,
  • Pranav Ranjan,
  • Hasan Çelik and
  • Vladimir Trifonov

29 September 2024

The known Plio-Pleistocene mammalian record, mainly represented by small mammals, and its biotic and geological context in the vast region of Eastern Turkey and Transcaucasus provides a sound base for regional biochronology. Recently obtained faunal...

  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
5,312 Views
33 Pages

The Late Early–Middle Pleistocene Mammal Fauna from the Megalopolis Basin (Peloponnese, Greece) and Its Importance for Biostratigraphy and Paleoenvironment

  • George E. Konidaris,
  • Athanassios Athanassiou,
  • Vangelis Tourloukis,
  • Krystalia Chitoglou,
  • Thijs van Kolfschoten,
  • Domenico Giusti,
  • Nicholas Thompson,
  • Georgia Tsartsidou,
  • Effrosyni Roditi and
  • Katerina Harvati
  • + 2 authors

24 September 2024

Recent investigations in the upper Lower–Middle Pleistocene deposits of the Megalopolis Basin (Greece) led to the discovery of several sites/findspots with abundant faunal material. Here, we provide an updated overview including new results on...

Get Alerted

Add your email address to receive forthcoming issues of this journal.

XFacebookLinkedIn
Quaternary - ISSN 2571-550X