The earliest securely-dated hominin artefact in Anatolia?

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

卷:109

Article

Maddy, D.¹  Schreve, D.²  Demir, T.³  Veldkamp, A.⁴  Wijbrans, J. R.⁵  van Gorp, W.⁶  van Hinsbergen, D. J. J.⁷  Dekkers, M. J.⁷  Scaife, R.⁸  Schoorl, J. M.⁶  Stemerdink, C.¹  van der Schriek, T.¹ 

[1] Newcastle Univ, Sch GPS, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RU, Tyne & Wear, England

[2] Royal Holloway Univ London, Dept Geog, Egham TW20 0EX, Surrey, England

[3] Harran Univ, Dept Geog, TR-63300 Sanliurfa, Turkey

[4] Univ Twente, Fac GeoInformat Sci & Earth Observat ITC, NL-7500 AE Enschede, Netherlands

[5] Vrije Univ Amsterdam, Dept Earth Sci, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands

[6] Wageningen Univ, Soil Geog & Landscape Grp, NL-6700 AA Wageningen, Netherlands

[7] Univ Utrecht, Dept Earth Sci, NL-3584 CD Utrecht, Netherlands

[8] Univ Southampton, Sch Geog, Southampton SO17 1BJ, Hants, England

关键词: Quaternary;    Turkey;    River terraces;    Hominin occupation;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.11.021

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Anatolia lies at the gateway from Asia into Europe and has frequently been favoured as a route for Early Pleistocene hominin dispersal. Although early hominins are known to have occupied Turkey, with numerous finds of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts documented, the chronology of their dispersal has little reliable stratigraphical or geochronological constraint, sites are rare, and the region's hominin history remains poorly understood as a result. Here, we present a Palaeolithic artefact, a hard-hammer flake, from fluvial sediments associated with the Early Pleistocene Gediz River of Western Turkey. This previously documented buried river terrace sequence provides a clear stratigraphical context for the find and affords opportunities for independent age estimation using the numerous basaltic lava flows that emanated from nearby volcanic necks and aperiodically encroached onto the contemporary valley floors. New 40Ar/39Ar age estimates from these flows are reported here which, together with palaeomagnetic measurements, allow a tightly-constrained chronology for the artefact-bearing sediments to be established. These results suggest that hominin occupation of the valley occurred within a time period spanning similar to 1.24 Ma to similar to 1.17 Ma, making this the earliest, securely-dated, record of hominin occupation in Anatolia. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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