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Youngest Toba Tuff deposits in the Gundlakamma River basin, Andhra Pradesh, India and their role in evaluating Late Pleistocene behavioral change in South Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2023

Devara Anil Open the ORCID record for Devara Anil [Opens in a new window] ,
Monika Devi ,
James Blinkhorn ,
Victoria Smith ,
Satish Sanghode ,
Vrushab Mahesh ,
Zakir Khan ,
P. Ajithprasad  and
Naveen Chauhan
Devara Anil*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, India
Monika Devi
Affiliation:
Luminescence Laboratory, AMOPH Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India
James Blinkhorn
Affiliation:
Pan-African Evolution Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany Quaternary Research Centre, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, U.K.
Victoria Smith
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, U.K.
Satish Sanghode
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Savitribhai Phule University, Pune, India
Vrushab Mahesh
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, India
Zakir Khan
Affiliation:
School of Studies in Ancient Indian History, Culture, and Archaeology, Pt. Ravishankar, Shukla University, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India
P. Ajithprasad
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, India
Naveen Chauhan
Affiliation:
Luminescence Laboratory, AMOPH Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
*
Corresponding author: Devara Anil; Email: devara.anilkumar@gmail.com
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Abstract

The eruption of Toba ca. 75 ka was the largest volcanic eruptive event during the Quaternary, and evidence for this eruption is widespread in terrestrial sediment sequences in South Asia as primary and reworked distal ash deposits. Youngest Toba Tuff horizons (YTT) have been widely employed as isochrons to understand and link regional sediment sequences and the evidence for environmental and cultural change in the archaeological records preserved within them. We identify the YTT deposits at Retlapalle, Andhra Pradesh, India, and present the optical ages of the K-feldspar grains recovered from sediments immediately underlying and overlying the tephra horizon. We combine these results with particle size and magnetic susceptibility analyses to establish the depositional conditions of YTT, which indicate that accumulation and reworking ceased by ca. 64 ka. We explore the role of YTT deposits as an isochron for examining the effect of the 75 ka Toba super-eruption, highlighting the need for an independent chronological assessment of YTT before using it as a Late Pleistocene chronological marker in reconstructing South Asian paleo-landscapes and hominin adaptations. Further, our findings support the regional continuity of human occupations within South Asia, spanning the eruption of Toba and the enduring utility of Middle Paleolithic tools.

Keywords

Youngest Toba TuffLate PleistoceneSouth AsiaMiddle PaleolithicLuminescence dating
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 115 , September 2023 , pp. 134 - 145
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Copyright © University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2023

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