Abstract
Thomas Quarry I (ThI; 33.568° N, 7.696° W) is a paleoanthropological site located on the western outskirts of Casablanca, Morocco’s economic capital. The quarry was named after its tenant operator, André Thomas. The site has produced archaeological and faunal remains that shed important light on hominin settlement history and behavioral innovations in the northwest African Mediterranean littoral during the Early and early Middle Pleistocene span. The ThI deposits host two different sites in robust stratigraphic context, namely the Acheulean in OH1-Bed 2 units L1-L5, and the hominin-bearing OH4 in GH-CCC, separated by a substantial time lapse of approximately 0.6 million years. The lowermost stratigraphic unit (OH1-Bed 2) has yielded the heretofore oldest Acheulean in northern Africa unambiguously dated to c. 1.3 Ma, identified as the First Regional Acheulean. This early Acheulean is typo-technologically distinct from the preceding Oldowan occurrences in Algeria and from the early Acheulean of eastern Africa. In addition to the production of a variety of LCTs, the FRA is typified by the production of bladelet-like, small-to medium-sized flakes on flint raw material. The production of bladelet-like flakes is a novelty never identified in the Ancient Acheulean technocomplex before. ThI-GH units 3, 4, and 5 produced what is identified as a Second Regional Acheulean, a Middle Pleistocene-age lithic assemblage characterized by symmetrical handaxes of different sizes, cleavers, cobble-tools, and abundant flakes. In Hominid Cave, hominin fossils discovered from 1969 to 2009 are clearly close to the ancestral lineage of Homo sapiens.
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Acknowledgments
The study of Thomas Quarry I is part of the Franco-Moroccan Casablanca Research program, and is supported by the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine (INSAP) of the Ministère de la Jeunesse, de la Culture et de la Communication//Département de la Culture of the Kingdom of Morocco, the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères of France and the Laboratoire d’Excellence Archimede - Programme Investissements d’Avenir ANR-11-LABX-0032-01 – within the framework of the Origines project. It is also financially supported by the Department of Human Evolution of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) and the Région Aquitaine through the Origines projects. Magnetostratigraphic analyses are supported by the Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca of Italy, through the project ‘Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2018–2022’ awarded to the Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra “A. Desio” of the Università di Milano. Research permit n°01/2020-2021 on December 22nd 2020 by INSAP letter 458.
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Raynal, JP. et al. (2023). Thomas Quarry I, Morocco. In: Beyin, A., Wright, D.K., Wilkins, J., Olszewski, D.I. (eds) Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20290-2_54
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