Territories and economies of hunter–gatherer groups during the last glacial maximum in Europe

Abstract

At the last glacial maximum, the Gravettian human groups moved to southern European Peninsulas: Iberian, Italian, Balkan and the gulfs: Tyrrhenian, Adriatic, Aegean and around the Black Sea (a lake at this time). There, they differentiated: Solutrean in Western Europe, Epigravettian in Central Europe and in Eastern Europe. Human groups, constrained in their new southern territories, returned to a system of small territories and low mobility, which required them to change the food resource system (gregarious mammal hunting replacing migratory herd hunting), sources of raw material procurement (reuse of quartzite), and, as a result, technology (return to flake knapping, importance of lamellar knapping) and industry. This local opportunistic strategy involved territories of less than 1000 km2 and low mobility. The climate variations of the last glacial maximum reveal two wetter episodes, clearly visible in the sequences of loess of Central and Eastern Europe and in non-anthropogenic records around 20–19 000 BP and 18.5–17 000 BP. During these two episodes, human groups moved northward during the summer, in a seasonal mobility strategy, involving hunting of migratory animals and use of outcrops of good flint. These two systems existed during the last glacial maximum in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, where, despite typological differences in assemblages, common characteristics may be highlighted.