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Fig. 1 Location of the Paleolithic site of Attirampakkam (ATM), Tamil Nadu, India. (A) Regional topographic setting, showing the extent of the Kortallaiyar river catchment and major cities. The Allikulli (A) and Satyavedu (S) Hills consist of massive deposits of quartzite cobble beds (i.e., source materials of crucial importance to hominins). Relief in the Precambrian Nagari Hills is formed by resistant quartzite ridges, which themselves supplied the Allikulli and Satyavedu conglomerate beds during the Cretaceous. Map projection: Transverse Mercator. (B) View of the west wall of trench T8 (sampled for paleomagnetic measurements) showing numbered layers 5 to 8, as mentioned in the text. (C) View of step trench GT-01 and trench T8 in the process of excavation. (D) Close-up view of layer 7 in trench T8, showing an in situ biface (bar scale gradations in units of 1 cm). The arrow indicates the magnetic north.
Fig. 2 Acheulian artifacts in trench T8. Close-ups of artifacts in layer 6 (A) and in layer 7 (B). Artifacts include cleavers (C and D), large flake tool with a cleaverlike working edge (E), handaxes (F and G), trihedral (H), large flake (I), and Kombewa flake (J). Bar scale gradations as in Fig. 1.
Fig. 3 Age constraints on artifact burial stratigraphy at Attirampakkam. Samples are from three separate trenches (T3, T8, and T7A) with a common reference datum representing the top of the sedimentary sequence, which is preserved near the site but was partly eroded at the site because of land-use practices and other factors (Fig. 1; see SOM). Error bars are ±2 SD; that is, there is only a 5% chance that the true age falls outside that range. Note that the Cobb Mt. subchron would have been undetectable at the sampling resolution applied.