Hunting and Hunting Weapons of the Lower and Middle Paleolithic of Europe

Abstract

This paper is a review of the state of our knowledge and ignorance on Early, Middle, and Late Pleistocene subsistence behavior in Western Europe. There are undoubtedly differences in subsistence behavior between early hominids and Upper Paleolithic humans in Europe. Yet recent research has shown that some of the most extreme statements about passive scavenging practiced on a regular basis at some Middle and Late Pleistocene sites are not supported by the evidence and must be rejected. We provide an overview of the hunting versus scavenging debate in African and European archaeology. We discuss the following issues: (1) evidence for hunting from the earliest sites in Europe, prior to 400–300,000 years ago; (2) evidence for hunting large mammals (elephants, rhinoceroses, large-size bovids) and for hunting/gathering very small vertebrates and invertebrates (leporids, birds, fish, shellfish) before the Upper Paleolithic; (3) evidence for the use of stone-tipped spears by Neanderthals in Western Europe. Our analysis shows: (a) that for the period prior to OIS 12 (i.e. about 400 ka) very few generalizations can be made about the subsistence behavior of early humans in Europe because the informative sites are few and far between. Nevertheless, a good case can be made for hunting from two of the earliest sites in Europe, Gran Dolina TD 6 and Boxgrove; (b) even stronger evidence of hunting comes from sites such as Schöningen and later Middle Paleolithic sites where the topographic setting and the faunal accumulations indicate repeated episodes of hunting the same species of large-size mammals; (c) that Mousterian points were used to tip thrusting or throwing spears already by OIS 6 (i.e. between 186 and 127 ka), before the end of the Middle Pleistocene. Implications for a correlation between hunting weapons and Middle Paleolithic faunal remains are discussed.