European Palaeolithic Research Articles

Dental Morphological Affinities Among Late-Pleistocene and Recent Humans

The study uses analyses of Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD) to assess the affinities of ten populations representing early anatomically modern humans, Upper Paleolithic Europeans, recent modern humans, and Neandertals. The 18-triat MMD analysis demonstrates that, dentally, Neandertals are quite divergent from all modern humans. The results of cluster analyses based on MMD values suggest two major clusters: Neandertals and modern humans. The data also suggest two sub-clusters within the modern human cluster. One links Upper Paleolithic Europeans with recent North Africans and Europeans. The other links early anatomically modern humans with Late Pleistocene Africans and recent Sub-Saharan Africans. These results do not support a close relationship between Neandertals and any modern human groups samples. They also tentatively suggest that, if the two populations were interbreeding, it is not reflected in their dental morphology. The results showing a close affinity between early anatomically modern humans and Sub-Saharan Africans are consist with the Recent African Origin model for modern human origins.

A North American perspective on the Volgu Biface Cache from Upper Paleolithic France and its relationship to the “Solutrean Hypothesis” for Clovis origins

The “Solutrean hypothesis” for the origins of the North American Clovis Culture posits that early North American colonizers were direct descendants of European populations that migrated across the North Atlantic during the European Upper Paleolithic. The evidential basis for this model rests largely on proposed technological and behavioral similarities shared by the North American Clovis archaeological culture and the French and Iberian Solutrean archaeological culture. The caching of stone tools by both cultures is one of the specific behavioral correlates put forth by proponents in support of the hypothesis. While more than two dozen Clovis caches have been identified, Volgu is the only Solutrean cache identified at this time. Volgu consists of at least 15 exquisitely manufactured bifacial stone tools interpreted as an artifact cache or ritual deposit, and the artifacts themselves have long been considered exemplary of the most refined Solutrean bifacial technology. This paper reports the results of applying methods developed for the comparative analysis of the relatively more abundant caches of Clovis materials in North America to this apparently singular Solutrean cache. In addition to providing a window into Solutrean technology and perhaps into Upper Paleolithic ritual behavior, this comparison of Clovis and Solutrean assemblages serves to test one of the tangible archaeological implications of the “Solutrean hypothesis” by evaluating the technological and behavioral equivalence of Solutrean and Clovis artifact caching. The hypothesized historical connection is evaluated based on the attributes of the caches themselves, the evidence for geographic and temporal continuity in caching between the two cultures, and the proposed uniqueness of this behavior to Solutrean and Clovis. Results from the comparison of Volgu to Clovis caches indicate that they are divergent with regard to a number of important attributes and appear to represent neither equivalent behaviors nor a historical connection.

Woodworking sites from the Late Paleolithic of South Arabia: Functional and technological analysis of burins from Dhofar, Oman

Burins are a geographic and time-transgressive tool type, found in lithic industries throughout the world. The defining feature of a burin is the administration of a precisely placed blow (i.e., burin blow) on a natural or prepared striking platform at the edge of a blank. Burins were used for various activities, such as fashioning hunting equipment, figurines, musical instruments, or other decorative objects manufactured from wood, antler, or bone. In other settings, researchers have observed burins that were also used as cores, demonstrating the flexibility and utility of this tool type. Here we present the results of technological, typological and functional analyses of three burin assemblages from the Late Paleolithic of Dhofar, southern Arabia. Technological analysis indicates a significant degree of standardized production. Functional analysis suggests that these tools have been used in woodworking activities. Traceological studies suggest that the function of the burin blow was not the creation of an active working face, as often seen in the Southwest Asian and European Upper Paleolithic; rather, the burin blow functioned to stabilize the truncation and working edge of the tool. Traces of use have been identified mainly on the wide truncations, indicating that the artifacts were likely used to plane broad wooden surfaces. From these observations, we infer that woodworking was a significant component of Late Paleolithic human activity in Dhofar.

A Middle Palaeolithic wooden digging stick from Aranbaltza III, Spain.

Aranbaltza is an archaeological complex formed by at least three open-air sites. Between 2014 and 2015 a test excavation carried out in Aranbaltza III revealed the presence of a sand and clay sedimentary sequence formed in floodplain environments, within which six sedimentary units have been identified. This sequence was formed between 137–50 ka, and includes several archaeological horizons, attesting to the long-term presence of Neanderthal communities in this area. One of these horizons, corresponding with Unit 4, yielded two wooden tools. One of these tools is a beveled pointed tool that was shaped through a complex operational sequence involving branch shaping, bark peeling, twig removal, shaping, polishing, thermal exposition and chopping. A use-wear analysis of the tool shows it to have traces related with digging soil so it has been interpreted as representing a digging stick. This is the first time such a tool has been identified in a European Late Middle Palaeolithic context; it also represents one of the first well-preserved Middle Palaeolithic wooden tool found in southern Europe. This artefact represents one of the few examples available of wooden tool preservation for the European Palaeolithic, allowing us to further explore the role wooden technologies played in Neanderthal communities.

A Sense of Different Eras Reflected in World Art

The archaeological record on the emergence of visual art, despite its status as one of humanity's defining characteristics, is few. Art is created by the use of color, pattern, and resemblance of design. Insofar as human intelligence, symbolizing activity, or anatomy were concerned, the Upper Palaeolithic Europe artworks created at least 30,000 years before are logically analogous to those formed in recent millennia. Africa was the cradle of humanity's artistic endeavors. The first reported "artistic activity" is likely a pragmatic one: humans painting their bodies with ochre and beads. The first non-biological patterns discovered include zigzag and crisscross tendencies, nested curves, or parallel lines. Their similarity to entopic events (the involuntary output of the visual system) suggests they have a physiological basis. The suggestive qualities of an irregular surface have served as inspiration for certain works of 2D art, while the identification of human likeness in natural objects and their subsequent modification to emphasize that similarity may have been the genesis of 3D art. Tools for hunting would have profited greatly from an evolutionary shift in brain design that allowed for the production of images in one's imagination, or "the mind's eye." It is possible that early sculpture used the idea that three-dimensional objects (such as sculptures and reliefs) might be mentally broken down into their component surfaces. Africa is a logical starting point for the development of the mind's ability to produce art independently of the body, but the ability may have arisen independently of time and place in genetically and culturally different communities within Africa and during global dispersal, explaining the regional variation seen in both ancient and modern works of art. Rare and great individuals would have been the driving force for stylistic shifts all through the history of art.

An approach to Palaeolithic networks: The question of symbolic territories and their interpretation through Magdalenian art

The Magdalenian (20,500–13,000 cal. BP) is an important period for the cultural evolution of societies in the European Upper Palaeolithic. It is characterized by a great increase in settlements and products, probably reflecting demographic growth. Along with other material evidence, symbolic products (art and ornaments) clearly expand. In association with the multiplication of representations, some of them become highly normalized (included geometric signs) whereas others develop a great diversity of forms (such as human depictions).The density of sites and more-or-less normalized products make possible an original spatial interpretation, that is probably unprecedented for Palaeolithic societies. Beyond highlighting the diffusion of some concepts over long distances, these rich data allow a deeper analysis of exchange, influence, and non-influence connections. Consequently, the question arises of the identification of what can be called “territories” (spaces built and delimited by human occupations) or “symbolic territories”. We define “symbolic territories” as spaces without visible material frontiers, symbolic through the weight of the ideas, the shared social norms and the installation of concepts by the societies in their close environment.We propose to examine this question through the prism of symbolic productions: body ornaments, portable art, rock art. Thousands of pieces of symbolic evidence assigned to the Magdalenian and a better stratigraphic definition for this period offer a favourable context for discussing the social implications of the results of several analyses: the distribution of themes in space, the presence of types of sign or figurative subjects contained in a narrow space, the identification of individual images and collective graphic norms. Comparing these approaches to series from the Middle and Upper Magdalenian, in which the evidence is the most abundant, will allow us to consider the nature of perceptible “territories”. Then we will question the relationships between human groups through identity and mechanisms of otherness in Magdalenian societies.

Symbolic territories in pre-Magdalenian art?

The legacy of specialists in Upper Paleolithic art shows a common point: a more or less clear separation between Magdalenian art and earlier symbolic manifestations. One of principal difficulty is due to little data firmly dated in the chronology for the “ancient” periods, even if recent studies precise chronological framework.There is a variability of the symbolic traditions from the advent of monumental art in Europe, and there are graphic elements crossing regional limits and asking the question of real symbolic territories existence. The different thematic choices also allows to raise territorial kinships between various caves and various regions.The object of this paper is to define where these rich and varied symbolic records appear, and how graphic traditions are distributed in the Western European Paleolithic area, throughout these 15 000 years. To provide some elements of response to this question, we will draw on the one hand, on the formal approaches in the figures, and on the other - on the thematic range used by Paleolithics.

Istállóskő revisited: the osseous artefacts from the lower layer

The Istállóskő cave is one of the classical Palaeolithic sites in Hungary, generally regarded as the only important Aurignacian locality in Hungary with two discrete culture bearing layers. The lower unit, characterised by the presence of split based points played a key role in several theories on the appearance of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, while in the upper layer some Mladeč or Olschewa type points were found. In this paper the author reviews the antler and ivory artefacts found in the lower layer stored in the Hungarian National Museum. The reconstruction of assemblage formation was rather complicated, but the high number of fragments, the occurrence of typical macrofracture patterns and the rejuvenated implements shed light to the human behaviour. Finally a few pieces with sufficient preservation allow us to point some details to the operational chain of the osseous tool production. All these aspects of the assemblage were determined by the topographic location of the cave, lying at a large relative height by the end of a long and deep valley, determining the nature of the human occupation of this locality. This raises the question of the comparability of the assemblages with other collections.

Drawings of Representational Images by Upper Paleolithic Humans and their Absence in Neanderthals Reflect Historical Differences in Hunting Wary Game

AbstractOne characteristic of the transition from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe was the emergence of representational charcoal drawings and engravings by Aurignacian and Gravettian artists. European Neanderthals never engaged in representational drawing during the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic, a property that might reflect less developed visuomotor coordination. This article postulates a causal relationship between an evolved ability of anatomically modern humans to throw spears accurately while hunting and their ability to draw representational images from working memory. Unlike Neanderthals, archaic and anatomically modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa adopted longer-range hunting practices using hand-cast spears as a compensation for the emergence of increasingly wary game. For Neanderthals, paleoclimatic fluctuations likely precluded consistent hunting of cold-adapted game, a property making game more approachable for close-range hunting with thrusting spears. As evidence of less historical wariness of humans, many of the species hunted by Neanderthals were eventually domesticated. Due to strong sources of natural selection on archaic and anatomically modern humans for effective hunting, the parietal cortex that integrates visual imagery and motor coordination expanded progressively, yielding the globular shape of the human cranium that is not evident in Neanderthals. To characterize how the cognitive properties employed for throwing spears and drawing line work are similar, the Upper Paleolithic drawings of animals in Chauvet cave, France, are discussed in the speculative context of how these artists engaged simultaneously in overt attention to guide their hand movements and covert attention to their mental images during the drawing process.

The lifeworld of hunter-gatherers and the concepts of territory

In this paper, I intend to show that the notion of an exchange network is much more useful than that of territory in the study of Paleolithic societies. The heuristic benefit of the notion of exchange network is demonstrated by its adaptability to different spatial scales, from local to regional and supra-regional, the last one being difficult to integrate in the traditional concept of territory.Models issued from the study of contemporary hunter-gatherers are easily applied to the European Upper Paleolithic. Interactions between groups should satisfy two contradictory requirements: each group needs to maintain its identity through specific markers, but on the other hand, it needs to communicate with neighbors and share with them material resources and cultural features such as beliefs and symbols. Hence the complex patterns that can be found in rock art and portable art, consisting in a mixture of strictly localized traits and other widely shared features. Exchange networks may be analyzed at different scales and their fluctuations over the course of time give us some access to the dynamics of Paleolithic human geography. In particular, I will evaluate this hypothesis using examples from the graphic images and forms of the Upper Paleolithic “arts”.

The gesture of sight

The origin of images (defined as figurative drawings and including paintings and engravings) constitutes a question that remains unresolved. Ernst H. Gombrich (1971) and Whitney Davis (1986) have formulated hypotheses that prioritize different fundamental factors in their appearance in the European Upper Paleolithic. The current article identifies some problematic assumptions and oversights of these models, and proposes an alternative model for the origins of drawing in the Paleolithic. For Gombrich, images were originally suggested by shapes in natural features, such as cracks and evocative rocks, upon which people imposed semantic values. People would have discovered horses and bulls in vaguely suggestive rock surfaces and would have highlighted them with colors to render them visible to other onlookers. Whitney Davis reverses this process: objects (as evocative rocks) are no longer perceived as marks; rather, marks (traced by hand) are seen as objects. “Once marks are perceived as things, the full analogical power of the line is logically derived and even detached from mere experience of perceptual ambiguity.” Gombrich's hypothetis is paradoxal, as it requires the intellectual ability of “seeing as”- through the previous existence of “natural” images - to explain the emergence of such an ability as intentional drawing. But in David's view, the birth of images arises as a happenstance, even considered as a “logical” and necessary possibility inscribed in lines, that keeps drawing activities separated from any intentionality. If figurative tracings were only a technical development latent in the power of lines, they would have given form to all kinds of figures instead of being so strictly circumscribed to a limited range, namely animals and sexually-charged figures. In that sense, making images reveals an expectation, rooted in drawing activities, that emerges through the specific technical innovation of drawing: the outline. It encircles the dimension of time, internal to the line, in the spatial unity of a surface. It is an inherent and primary symbol of a living body. The visual threshold of resemblance arises from this significant shift. The outlined figures embody the limits of time (death and regeneration) through the sexual theme; and they embody spatial limits, through the animal/species theme. With these living ensembles of simultaneously shared and divided spaces, the question of identity (similar/dissimilar, unity/diversity) begins to be visually revealed.

The first Homo sapiens in Catalonia, hunters and gatherers from the old Upper Palaeolithic

At the end of the Middle Palaeolithic around 40,000 years ago, a population of archaic humans, Neanderthal men descended from the earliest settlers, lived in Europe. They were perfectly adapted to the land and its resources. They and their ancestors had survived all the climate and environmental changes that had occurred throughout the Pleistocene for hundreds of millennia, but they mysteriously disappeared upon the arrival of anatomically modern men, who originated in Africa. The latter were the humans from our own species, Homo sapiens, also called Cro-Magnon men in Europe, and they would gradually replace the archaic populations of the Old World. In Catalonia, archaeology shows how the old civilisation of the Neanderthal men, the Mousterian, which remained in place for many millennia with few changes, was swiftly replaced by another new civilisation which was very different and more dynamic, the Aurignacian, which was a civilisation of modern men. Over time, the Aurignacian evolved to give way to other civilisations of largegame hunters of the European Upper Palaeolithic. In Catalonia, the sites in Serinya, among others, allow us to study the civilisation of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men near the time of their replacement and to precisely date when this took place. They also provide us with the oldest remains of modern men found in Catalonia.

The role of the cave in the expression of prehistoric societies

Abstract One of the major characteristics of prehistoric arts is that they belong to a very specific spatial context, be it open air, rocks, shelters or caves. The presence of these images in these particular places is a mark of their identity and of the heritage left by these ancient societies and their beliefs, ever since the first cultural manifestations of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe. The specific choice of a wall or of a particular background, of a location in the cave can thus be just as significant as the image that one chooses to represent or the way in which they choose to represent it. This is why the present research intends to study the links between the images and their supports, through a family which has already shown a particular affinity with the space: the family of signs. The example of the signs highlights the fundamental role of the supports in the construction of images and the important and sometimes radical influence of the cave on their graphic identity. They illustrate thus “ways of expression” of the prehistoric men, expression of their developed and complex reasoning.

Origin and Development of Aurignacian Osseous Technology in Western Europe: a Review of Current Knowledge

The exploitation of osseous materials is one of the main innovations associated with the advent of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The concept of the Aurignacian, as defined by Abbé Breuil, was used for a long time as a strong argument in favor of a cognitive revolution: its "sudden" appearance was linked to the rapid and systematic diffusion of the Aurignacian culture and the widespread distribution of split-based points in Europe, and upheld the idea of a clear biological and conceptual rupture with the Middle Paleolithic. Since then, several factors have contributed to undermining this model. Renewed studies of Aurignacian osseous technology in Western Europe contribute to the ongoing redefinition of the mechanisms behind the construction of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. Early Aurignacian osseous production was by no means limited to split-based points, and involved a wide variety of activities. The production of the different materials was already well structured and centered around three main spheres: reindeer antlers were mainly used for weapons, bone for the fabrication of domestic equipment and ivory was mostly reserved for ornaments. Although osseous technology was identified in some "transitional" groups, it spread and was durably integrated into techno-economical systems during the Aurignacian. It developed gradually in Europe and based on currently available knowledge, appears to have emerged in the Protoaurignacian societies of Western Europe. The emergence of this new technical domain seems to result from the transfer of wood working techniques to osseous materials, undoubtedly partly linked to a sudden shift in environmental conditions in Europe around 40000 BP. The evolution of osseous production during the course of the first phases of the Aurignacian provides evidence of profound techno-economic changes, which, backed up by data from lithic studies, reveals powerful sociological changes during the transition between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.

The Chronocultural Sequence of Belgian Complexes in the European Aurignacian Context

The study of Aurignacian collections from the Meuse Basin, associated with recent fieldwork data, has led to a new overview of the Aurignacian in this region. This work discredits some of the hypotheses advanced for the earliest Aurignacian occupations in north-western Europe and proposes a hypothetical chronocultural sequence based on the most reliable data for this period. The Meuse Basin presents an important concentration of Aurignacian occupations, some of them very rich and this zone is therefore conducive to large scale comparisons, in particular with regions with a better defined chronostratigraphic framework. The existence of technical and artistic similarities between these different European regions also highlights the strong links binding the Aurignacian complex, and is probably an important element for understanding the transition from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe.

Marine Resource Exploitation during the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic in Europe: Overview of the Available Evidence

In this article, we propose a critical analysis of the available information relating to the first evidence of marine resource consumption in European Pleistocene sites, with particular focus on the existing data for the Mousterian and the Aurignacian. This review concentrates on different aspects, such as the identification and quantification of remains, as well as taphonomic characteristics. In spite of the rarity of the available remains, we consider that mollusks, mammals, crustaceans, echinoderms, fish and birds play a secondary role in the diet of both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans.

Radiocarbon dates as estimates of ancient human population size

Abstract Archaeological radiocarbon (14C) dates are a fundamental source of information documenting patterns in paleodemographic change from prehistoric to modern times. Several open access databases (Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database, Radiocarbon Palaeolithic Europe Database, CONTEXT, RAdiocarbon Dates ONline, and AustArch) and publications which include lists of dates provide easy access to archaeological 14C data, presently totalling over 70,000 dates worldwide. Some parts of the world are more extensively sampled than others including North America, Australia and China, whereas in others the databases have not yet been prepared. A comparison of frequency distributions of 14C dates from North America and Australia to modeled estimates of historical population growth for these continents from the HYDE 3.1 database shows similarities, providing confidence in long-term estimates of population growth using both methods. Our capacity to study global demographic change is currently limited by the spatiotemporal completeness of regional 14C databases. These results suggest the systematic collection and entry of dates into an openly-accessible, global 14C database will allow for significant advances to be made in archaeology, anthropology and Quaternary paleogeography.

The visual brain and the early depiction of animals in Europe and Southeast Asia

The recent discovery that iconic depictions in caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are more ancient than those from Upper Palaeolithic Europe raises questions as to when such images first arose and why the graphic outcomes from the two locations are so similar. In this paper, we show that these questions can be addressed by exploiting the extensive research carried out over the recent past on the psychology of perception and the neuroscience of the visual brain that allows the proper place of iconic depictions in understanding cognitive evolution to be determined.

Cognitive archaeology without behavioral modernity: An eliminativist attempt

During the last decade, evidence of artifacts typically associated with the European Upper Palaeolithic has gradually accumulated in the archaeological record of early modern human and late Neanderthal populations. These artifacts, in particular instances of “symbolic” body ornaments, have been considered proof of “behavioral modernity” and used to draw inferences about the cognitive equivalence between primitive and modern human populations. Very recently, however, proponents of holistic mapping and material engagement theory have provided two separate lines of argument criticizing the notion of behavioral modernity and its use in cognitive archaeology. Major problems with this concept have been identified at both the epistemological and metaphysical levels. In this paper I will articulate a critique of behavioral modernity by integrating the preliminary tenets of the aforementioned approaches within a unitary perspective. This integrative process will provide close examination of behavioral modernity under the lights of scientific eliminativism. I will argue that behavioral modernity fails to instantiate a natural kind and thus it cannot be the object of reliable scientific analysis. Furthermore, behavioral modernity does also not represent a useful functional kind, for it offers no explanatory role in the mapping of artifacts and mental architectures. The current use of behavioral modernity in cognitive archaeology is grounded in a series of arbitrary categories and unwarranted inferences. In consequence, this notion can, and in fact, does harm this domain, because it fosters incommensurable theories. For these reasons, I conclude that behavioral modernity ought to be eliminated from the cognitive archaeology vocabulary.

Neanderthal and Homo sapiens subsistence strategies in the Cantabrian region of northern Spain

The Iberian Peninsula is key for the study of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, as well as for the replacement of Neanderthals by anatomically modern humans (AMH). On this subject, the most widespread misconception assumed that both human species coexisted during a certain period of time, after which Homo sapiens imposed on Neanderthals who finally got extinct. However, recent proposals based on improved dating methods, discuss this possibility, arguing that the arrival of AMH was marked by the complete absence of Homo neanderthalensis in this territory. In that way, new theories deny the possibility of coexistence and the disappearance of Neanderthals by cultural displacement. Covalejos Cave (Velo, Pielagos, Cantabria), one of the few settlements in the northern Peninsula with Final Mousterian and Early Aurignacian levels, supports this hypothesis. Nevertheless, in this paper, we try to avoid a direct discussion about this question in order to centre our analysis on identifying possible different subsistence strategies between H. neanderthalensis and anatomically modern humans in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. Our zooarchaeological and taphonomic studies reflect that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans exploited the same faunal species, pointing out that there does not seem to be significant differences in their behaviour in Covalejos Cave.