Abstract
The Aurignacian (ca. 43–35 ka) of southwestern Germany is well known for yielding some of the oldest artifacts related to symbolic behaviors, including examples of figurative art, musical instruments, and personal ornaments. Another aspect of these behaviors is the presence of numerous pieces of iron oxide (ocher); however, these are comparatively understudied, likely owing to the lack of painted artifacts from this region and time period. Several Aurignacian-aged carved ivory personal ornaments from the sites of Hohle Fels and Vogelherd contain traces of what appear to be red ocher residues. We analyzed these beads using a combination of macroanalytical and microanalytical methods, including scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. We found that the residue is composed of the iron oxide mineral hematite (Fe2O3). Further analyses on associated archaeological sediments by X-ray diffraction revealed the absence of hematite and other iron oxide mineral phases, suggesting that the hematite residues were intentionally applied to the ivory personal ornaments by human agents. These findings have important implications as they represent evidence for the direct application of ocher on portable symbolic objects by early Homo sapiens in Europe. Furthermore, our results reveal shared behavioral practices from two key Aurignacian sites maintained over several millennia and illuminate aspects of pigment use and symbolic practices during a pivotal time in the cultural evolution of humans.
Highlights
While ivory beads from Hohle Fels are unambiguously dated and represent a continuous sequence from the Aurignacian to the Gravettian, the Vogelherd beads came from the recent re-excavations of back-dirt from Gustav Riek's original excavations in the 1930s (Riek, 1934)
It has previously been suggested that their production technique and style is prevalent among Aurignacian beads from the region, suggesting that these artifacts are most likely from this time period, i.e., typologically, they are representative of the Aurignacian cultural complex of the Swabian Jura (Wolf et al, 2013; Wolf, 2015b)
The results presented here offer one additional aspect to the list of ocher behaviors observed throughout the Upper Paleolithic of Europe: the use of hematite-rich materials to polish ivory personal ornaments
Summary
Pigments and ornaments in the Upper Paleolithic. Use of earth pigments is viewed by many archaeologists as an important facet of early hominin behavior, from which a range of other important behaviors can be deduced: the emergence of language (d'Errico and Henshilwood, 2011; d'Errico et al, 2009), the development of complex cognition and abstract thinking (Nowell, 2010; Wadley, 2010), and the use of symbols for cultural mediation (d'Errico and Henshilwood, 2011; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Wadley, 2006). The manipulation of earth pigments has played a key role in identifying and interpreting symbolic expression or the ways and mediums in which humans communicated social ideas, constructs, and conventions nonverbally
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