Thomas Quarry I, Morocco
Résumé
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.