Fig 1.
A) Location map of early Acheulian sites in Africa. Inset shows eastern African sites mentioned in the text. Relief map from Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ B) Relief map showing the terrain around the Melka Wakena site-complex (referred to as MW in the map). The boundaries of the Main Ethiopian Rift are marked by white dotted lines. MK = Melka Kunture site-complex. DEM from USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/. The map was created by authors in QGIS.
Fig 2.
A) Terrain map showing the general view of the Gadeb Plain B) Location of some of the archaeological localities along the meandering course of the upper reaches of Wabe River. Terrain map from USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/.
Fig 3.
A) The stratigraphic sequence of MW2, showing the archaeological layers in relation to dated tephra. The photograph on the right shows the cliff face composed of the bottom part of the sequence (geological units I-VI) in which the archaeological layers are embedded. Note that the excavated area itself is not shown in this view. B) a partial view of the southern profile of the excavation (along squares G10 and H10), showing higher resolution details of the sedimentary make-up of geological units II and III and the stratigrpahic positions of MW2-L3 and MW2-L4 in relation to the sedimentary changes. C) Stratigraphic and lateral distributions of piece-plotted artifacts and bones in MW2-L3 and MW2-L4, projected onto a 2D-view.
Fig 4.
A) MW2-L3 during excavation in 2016 (view to the south). Georeferenced distribution map of MW2-L3 (B) and MW2-L4 (C) lithic and fauna elements.
Table 1.
Composition of the lithic assemblages of MW2 occupation layers.
Table 2.
Absolute and relative frequencies of debitage breakdown (per raw materials) of MW2 assemblages.
Table 3.
Absolute and relative frequencies (in parentheses) of core blank typologies (per raw materials) exploited by occupants of MW2.
Table 4.
Descriptive statistics (means in bold) of dimensions of cores and natural items (per raw materials) in MW2 assemblages.
Table 5.
Absolute and relative frequencies (in parentheses) of core reduction strategies (per raw materials) employed by occupants of MW2.
Fig 5.
Box plot (with standard error) showing the average scar counts on the surface of cores and flakes (as per raw materials represented) from A) MW2-L3 and B) MW2-L1&L2.
Fig 6.
Cores from the small to medium-sized flaking system from MW2-L4 (A), MW2-L3 (B–G), and MW2-L1&L2 (H); (A), (B), and (C) are Multifacial cores; (D) Bifacial abrupt partial (BAP) exploited core; (E) Core on flake; (F) Bifacial hierarchical centripetal (BHC) exploited core; (G) and (H) are Discoids. (A), (B), (E), (G), and (H) are made on glassy ignimbrite, (C) and (F) are made on ignimbrite, and (D) is made on basalt. The arrows indicate direction of flaking.
Table 6.
Breakdown of numbers of small to medium-sized flakes in MW2 assemblages broken down to raw material categories.
Table 7.
Absolute and relative frequencies (in parentheses) of the technological features of flake categories in the MW2 assemblages.
Fig 7.
Large cores (A–D) and small debitage (E) cores from MW2-L3: A) Multifacial core (8 kg); B) Multifacial core (5.2 kg); C) Multifacial core (6 kg); D) Multifacial core (2.4 kg); E) Unifacial Centripetal (UC) exploited core. (A) and (C) are made on ignimbrite, (B) and (D) are made on glassy ignimbrite, and (E) is made on pumiceous ignimbrite. The arrows indicate direction of flaking.
Table 8.
Physical and technological attributes of LCTs in the MW2 assemblages.
Fig 8.
Crude LCTs (A–C), Pick (D), and Large scrapers/knives (E and F) from MW2-L3. (A) is made on special side-struck flake, (B), (C), (E) and (F) are on side-struck flake, and the blank of the pick (D) is indeterminate. All of the tools are made on glassy ignimbrite. Orange arrows indicate the direction of flaking of the blanks, while yellow arrows indicate the direction of removals during shaping phases.
Fig 9.
Trihedral picks (A and B), Cleaver (C), and Handaxes (D–F) from MW2-L1&L2. The picks and a cleaver are made on flakes (the arrows indicate the direction of flaking of flake blanks), whereas the blanks of the handaxes are indeterminate. All tools are made on glassy ignimbrite. Orange arrows indicate the direction of flaking of the blanks, while yellow arrows indicate the direction of removals during shaping phases.
Fig 10.
Handaxes from MW2-L1&L2. (A), (B), and (C) are made on side-struck flake blanks (see the direction of the arrows), while the blanks of (D), (E), and (F) are indeterminate. All tools are made on glassy ignimbrite. Orange arrows indicate the direction of flaking of the blanks, while yellow arrows indicate the direction of removals during shaping phases.
Table 9.
Descriptive statistics of dimensions of LCTs in MW2 assemblages.
Table 10.
Descriptive statistics of the relative thickness, elongation, and total scar frequency of picks and handaxes from MW2 assemblages.
Fig 11.
Hammerstones from MW2-L3 (all except H) and MW2-L1&L2 (H): (A), (B), (C), (D), and (F) are ‘classic’ hammerstones from MW2-L3; (E), (G), and (H) are hammerstones with fractured angles. All except (C) are made on basalt. (C) is made on glassy ignimbrite.