Continuity and change in the lithic industries of the Jurreru Valley, India, before and after the Toba eruption Chris Clarkson a, * , Sacha Jones b , Clair Harris a a School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia b McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2ER, United Kingdom article info Article history: Available online xxx abstract Lithic assemblage variability is synthesized and discussed for seven open sites and one rockshelter from the Jurreru Valley in the Kurnool district of southern India. The sites span the last c.77,000 years and provide an invaluable record of cultural change spanning the Toba Super-eruption, 74 thousand years ago (ka), as well as the transition to the microlithic. Lithic evidence documents long-term continuities before and after the eruption that indicates the Toba eruption had a minimal impact on the underlying system of flake production in the valley. The analysis also indicates that many cores from above and below the Toba ash are technologically extremely similar to those from early modern human sites in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia and Australia, suggesting modern humans may have entered India before the Toba eruption as part of an early eastward dispersal from Africa. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Much recent discussion has focused on the effects of the w74 thousand years ago (ka) Toba volcanic super-eruption on modern human dispersals, bottlenecks and hominin replacements as well as global climate (e.g., Rampino and Self 1992, 1993a, 1993b; Ambrose 1998; Rampino and Ambrose 2000; Oppenheimer, 2002; Petraglia et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2009). Thick deposits of the w74 ka Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT) occur in India in association with lithic assemblages (Acharyya and Basu 1993; Jones, 2007a, b; Oppenheimer, 2009, in this issue), forming a key piece in the puzzle concerning Toba and long-term biological and cultural records. Unfortunately, human fossil remains are virtually absent in India and the story of cultural and biological change in India therefore largely hinges on the record of changing lithic technology. While lithics can provide much information about local culture-histories, regional variation, landuse, tool function, and responses to risk and changing mobility, they are perhaps less well-suited to detecting and differentiating ancient hominin groups due to the competing influences of cultural transmission and adaptation. Attempts to understand and account for technological changes observed from the Middle to Late Paleolithic phases in India must therefore take account of broad paleoenvironmental as well as human economic and demographic factors, including the timing of potential hominin dispersals as inferred from fossil and genetic records. A recent intensive program of excavations conducted in the Jurreru River Valley of southern India and in the Middle Son River valley of northern India (Petraglia et al., in this issue; Haslam et al., in this issue[a]) has formed part of a multi-pronged investigation into long-term cultural, environmental and biological change in India from the Late Acheulian through to the Microlithic. A key focus of this international multidisciplinary project is to develop a better understanding of the possible effects of the Toba super-eruption on local environments, cultural change, hominin replacements and the spread of modern humans out of Africa. Almost a decade of research has already greatly improved understanding of lithic technology, faunal replacements, paleoenvironments and site chronology for the last c.77,000 years, and has also yielded the first firm stratigraphic and chronological associations between YTT and stone artifact assemblages at a number of sites. These new findings allow the lithic sequence to be described in detail and provide a foundation for integrating this evidence into the sequence of broader paleoenvironmental changes and possible hominin replacements thought to take place in India during this time. While several papers have documented the excavations, chro- nology and lithic assemblages from several localities in the Jurreru (Petraglia et al., 2007, 2009a, 2009b; Clarkson et al., 2009; Haslam et al., 2010a, 2010b, in this issue[b]), no comprehensive overview of lithic technology exploring continuity and change in these valley systems has yet been presented. This paper synthesizes assemblage variability at seven sites from the Jurreru Valley in the Kurnool district of southern India spanning the last c.77 ka. These sites * Corresponding author. E-mail address: c.clarkson@uq.edu.au (C. Clarkson). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.11.007 Quaternary International xxx (2011) 1e15 Please cite this article in press as: Clarkson, C., et al., Continuity and change in the lithic industries of the Jurreru Valley, India, before and after the Toba eruption, Quaternary International (2011), doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.11.007