This project explores the data derived from the analysis of Victoria West stone cores. These stone cores were excavated from the Canteen Kopje archaeological site and are dated back to approximately one million years ago (Li et al. 2017). These cores represent an example of Acheulean technology. However, their technological markers for manufacturing process share some similarities with the Levallois core preparations techniques. These usually include the removal of preferential flakes after core preparation (Li et al.2017).Because the West Core technology still represents the volumetric concept usually used in the analysis of Acheulean tools, I will be representing the same concept in this project. I am mainly addressing the relationship between size core size and amount of flake removal.

library(plotly)
library(ggplot2)
library(igraph)
core<- read.csv("C:/Users/olmec/Desktop/191 FINAL/Core(1).csv", header=TRUE)

Map of South Africa displaying the approximate location of the Canteen Kopje archaeological site.

South Africa

South Africa

The bar plot below displays the weight for each of the cores and the number of upper face scares. One could observe that in some circumstance the number or scars correlate with the weight or size of the core. However, one could also observe that for the most part, the relationship is the opposite. This suggest that technologically, the removal of continuous preferential flakes is not influence by core size. Large Preferential flakes are removed from the upper part of the core, while those removed from the lower surface represent those flakes removed from core preparation. The box plot below shows this relationship.

barplot(height=matrix(core$weight),beside=TRUE,names.arg = core$number,col="orange",axes=TRUE,axis.lty = 1,cex.axis=.6,cex.name=.6,las=2,ylab = "Weight (g)",xlab="Core ID",main="Victoria West Cores Relationship Between Weight and Number of Flake Scars",cex.main=.9,cex.lab=.8)
par(new=T)
plot(core$snous,axes=F,col="red",lwd=1,type="o",ylab="",xlab="")
axis(side=4)
mtext(side=4,line=-1,"Number of Upper Surface Flake Scars",cex=.8)
legend("topleft",legend=c("Number of Upper Surface Flake Scars"),lty=1,col="red",bty="n",cex=.6)

The boxplot below illustrates the relationship between the number of removed flakes from the upper and lower surfaces. One could observed the differences between numbers in the upper and lower surfaces. Considering the previous bar plot, this suggest that the main goal of the knappers was to removed enough flakes from the lower surface in order to remove the preferential flake from the upper surface regardless of core size or raw material site. The scatter plot below shows the distribution of core size by length and width. The scatter plot illustrates that lenght and width of the core occur within a wide spectrum of sizes. This might just reflect the availability of raw material,which occurred in close proximity to the site (Li et al. 2017).The material mainly represent large andesite boulders (Li et al. 2017)

boxplot(core$snous,core$snols,col=c("orange","springgreen4"),notch=TRUE,ylab="Number of Flake Scars",names=c("Upper Surface","Lower Surface"),main="Boxplot of Victoria West Core Flake Scars by Surface",xlab="Core Surfaces")

plot(core$width,core$length,xlab="Core Width(g)",ylab="Core Lenth (mm)",col="red",main="Victoria West Cores Length vs. Weight",pch=23,bg="red")

The interactive scatter plot below explores the number of upper surface scars on a core (X-axis) and the weight of the core in grams (y-axis). Here one could observed much clearer the relationship previously presented in the bar plot between the upper surface scare number and weight of the cores in grams. We could observe that while there is variation between the number of upper surface scares, this number stay within range of 3 to 15 flakes, while the weight range mainly remains below 3000 grams. Over all, the production of Victoria West cores seems to represent a technology focused on producing similarly morphological prepare cores for the removal of upper surface flakes. As Li et al. (2017) comment, the preferential flake removed from the upper surface seems to remove more than half of the upper core surface. As observed from the previous plots, this seems to be the pattern regardless of raw material volume. Based on this, just as Li et al. (2017) concluded, the Victoria West cores represent an organized type of core production.

trace=plot_ly(x=core$snous, y=core$weight,mode="markers") 
trace

References:

Li,Hao, Kathleen Kuman, Matt G. Lotter, Geroge M. Leader, and Ryan J. Gibbon. 2017 The Victoria West: Earliest Prepare Core Technology in the Auchelian at Canteen Kopje and Implications for the Cognitive Evolution of Early HOminids.

Article: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/6/170288

Data: https://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.3353b