Early Sri Lankan coastal site tracks technological change and estuarine resource exploitation over the last ca. 25,000 years
Noel Amano, Patrick Faulkner, Oshan Wedage, Chris Clarkson, Dambara Amila, Miren del Val, Dovydas Jurkenas, Alexander Kapukotuwa, Gloria I. López, Josep Pares, M. M. Pathmalal, Tam Smith, Martin Wright, Patrick Roberts, Michael Petraglia, Nicole Boivin · 2024
Read Early Sri Lankan coastal site tracks technological change and estuarine resource exploitation over the last ca. 25,000 years by Noel Amano, Patrick Faulkner, Oshan Wedage, Chris Clarkson, Dambara Amila, Miren del Val, Dovydas Jurkenas, Alexander Kapukotuwa, Gloria I. López, Josep Pares, M. M. Pathmalal, Tam Smith, Martin Wright, Patrick Roberts, Michael Petraglia, Nicole Boivin (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-11535000.txt.
Description
Noel Amano and co-authors report the oldest well-dated open-air coastal site in Sri Lanka. The island's early record long came from inland caves, reaching back 48,000 years, while open sites seemed much younger. Their 2024 paper presents Pathirajawela, a coastal site with human occupation stretching back about 25,000 years, across the last ice age and into the warmer age that followed.
The team shows that people at the site kept adjusting as seas rose and the coast changed shape. Shell middens from about 4,800 years ago focus almost wholly on one shellfish kind, a sign of stepped-up harvesting of estuary foods. The long record lets the authors trace how tools and food strategies shifted together over some 25,000 years. It fills a coastal gap in the story of how people settled tropical South Asia.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Noel Amano, Patrick Faulkner, Oshan Wedage, Chris Clarkson, Dambara Amila, Miren del Val, Dovydas Jurkenas, Alexander Kapukotuwa, Gloria I. López, Josep Pares, M. M. Pathmalal, Tam Smith, Martin Wright, Patrick Roberts, Michael Petraglia, Nicole Boivin |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 60 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |