Early stone tools in Pakistan

Dr Linda Hurcombe and Professor Robin Dennell

Since 1987 Dr Linda Hurcombe has worked on a field project in Pakistan in conjunction with Prof Robin Dennell and with the invaluable help of Pakistani colleagues. The project has found fossils and stone tools in two separate areas of Pakistan. At Riwat, there is a conglomerate in which incontrovertible stone tools have been found. The conglomerate is dated to more than 2 Million years of age. The Pabbi Hills is a fast eroding anticline with soft fluvial sediments lain down from c.1 to more than 2 million years ago. There are sedimentary strata rich in fossils. On the same eroding surface simple stone tools are sparsely distributed.

Dennell, R. and Hurcombe, L. 1989 ‘The lithic material from the Riwat lower conglomerate survey’ in H. Rendell and R. Dennell (eds). Pleistocene and Palaeolithic Investigations in the Soan Valley, Pakistan. British Archaeological Reports International Series: Oxford. S 544:105-120.

Dennell, R and Hurcombe, L. 1992 ‘Paterson the British Clactonian, and the Soan Flake Industry' in C. Jarrige (ed.) South Asian Archaeology 1989: Papers from the 10th International Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe. Prehistory Press: Wisconsin. p69-71

Hurcombe, L. and R.Dennell 1992 `A pre-acheulean in the Pabbi Hills: towards a re-definition of the early Palaeolithic in Pakistan' in C. Jarrige (ed.) South Asian Archaeology 1989: Papers from the 10th International Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe. Prehistory Press: Wisconsin. p.133-136

Dennell, R., L.Hurcombe, R. Coard, M. Beech, M. Anwar and S. Ul-Haq) 1993 'The 1990 Field season of the British Mission to Pakistan in the Baroth area of the Pabbi Hills, Northern Pakistan. A 1.2 million-year-old landscape in the Baroth area of the Pabbi Hills'. In A. J. Gail and G.J.R. Mevissen (eds) South Asian Archaeology, Conference in Berlin, July 1991. Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart. p.49-64.

Hurcombe, L. 1994 (with R. Dennell, H. Rendell and E. Hailwood) 'Archaeological evidence for hominids in Northern Pakistan before one million years ago' in J.L. Franzen (ed.) 100 Years of Pithecanthropus, the Homo erectus problem. Courier Forschungs-Institut Senckenberg 171: Frankfurt.p.151-155.

Hurcombe, L. 2004 ‘The lithic evidence from the Pabbi Hills’ in R.Dennell (ed) <i>Early Hominin Landscapes in Northern Pakistan; Investigations in the Pabbi Hills</i>. Oxford: BAR S1265, pp 222-291.