Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition Research Articles

Lithics, landscapes & la Longue-durée – Curation & expediency as expressions of forager mobility

With the recognition that practically all archaeological sites are depositional composites unrelated to the activities of any contemporaneous group of individuals (i.e., palimpsests) and that forager adaptations are not ‘site-specific’ but rather landscape-scaled phenomena, statistical approaches designed to take these predicates into account have been developed over the past 20 years that depart from the traditional techno-typological systematics used for decades in much of Europe and the Levant. Based on artifact density and the frequency of retouched pieces scaled to the volume of sediment excavated in cave and rock shelter sites, and – for surface sites – the ratio of retouched artifacts to artifact totals scaled to unit area, they can potentially determine whether or not changes in mobility and land-use often assumed to have coincided with major evolutionary events (e.g., the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition) actually occurred. Lithic artifact counts and densities from the cave of La Riera (Posada de Llanes, Asturias, Spain) are used here to illustrate the potential of the approach. Changes in artifact volumetric density are then compared with a radiocarbon summed probability curve using calibrated BP dates scaled against changes in oxygen isotope ratios in the GISP2 ice core. The intent is to determine to what extent macroclimatic change over the 30–10 ka cal BP interval compares with changes in the La Riera sequence.

Bondi Cave and the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in western Georgia (south Caucasus)

Abstract The late Pleistocene expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) into Eurasia and the concurrent demise of the Neanderthals appears to be a complex and regionally variable process. The southern Caucasus region, with its rich cave-sites, has recently provided important results regarding this process. In this paper we report on the results of fieldwork in Bondi Cave, Western Georgia, providing a new radiocarbon chronology, stratigraphic observations, analyses of lithic technology and provenance, faunal and floral remains as well as paleoenvironmental data. The cave includes Middle Palaeolithic (ca, 45,000 ka cal. BP) cultural horizons and a long Upper Palaeolithic sequence (ca. 40,000–27,000 cal. BP from layer V to IV). A modern human tooth was found in layer Vb. We estimate its age at 39,000–35,800 Cal BP (95.4%), based on the Bayesian age model we built. If the context of the tooth is reliable, as we think it is, this would make it the oldest morphologically modern human in the Caucasus. Upper Palaeolithic hunting of tur and bison, as well as the collection of various plants including flax is attested. Mobile Upper Palaeolithic foragers inhabited the cave in generally cold and dry periods, but a mosaic of environments, including forests and meadows, was nonetheless available to them. The archaeological sequence of Bondi and adjacent sites indicates a substantial time gap between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic occupations, thus disproving Neanderthal-AMH interaction in this area and lending support to a replacement scenario in the southern Caucasus, assuming of course that the Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) is related to the arrival of AMHs.

Marine mollusc exploitation as evidenced by the Gorham's Cave (Gibraltar) excavations 1998–2005: The Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition

There is increasing evidence that humans have exploited intertidal and shallow-water species for much longer than has been previously considered, and certainly not restricted to Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH). One of the principal reasons for the lack of evidence up till recently has been a lack of consideration for the temporal and spatial backdrop to such activities throughout human evolution, in particular related to changes in sea-level during the Pleistocene (Bailey et al., 2008). This study reports on the marine molluscs excavated from Gorham's Cave between 1998 and 2005, focussing in particular between levels III and IV, corresponding to the Upper (AMH) and Middle Palaeolithic (Neanderthals), respectively. Given that Gorham's Cave was never more than approximately 2 km away from the coastline, it still preserves evidence of exploitation of marine molluscs for food by Neanderthals and in this article the data obtained are compared across the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition. The results obtained suggest a high degree of consistency in the mode of marine mollusc exploitation between levels, and comparisons with extant communities supports the contention that marine molluscs were exploited in direct proportion to their relative abundance and accessibility. Patterns in shell size distributions for some of the main species exploited are discussed, as are possible anthropic valve selection and the marine climatic signals that can be extracted from such data. The main difference that emerges between Upper and Middle Palaeolithic levels was a lack of evidence of collection for decoration in Middle Palaeolithic levels, but even here the relatively small size of the Level IV sample precluded totally excluding this possibility based only on absence of evidence.

Book review: Seeing Lithics: A Middle-range Theory for Testing for Cultural Transmission in the Pleistocene

Seeing Lithics represents a doctoral thesis submitted to Harvard University by Gilbert Tostevin in 2000. Tostevin is currently a professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and has written extensively on human evolution, lithic technology, Old World archaeology, and Palaeolithic archaeology. These interests can be clearly seen in this book which develops a new theoretical and analytical approach to the study of cultural transmission in the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition.

Taphonomic implications for the Late Mousterian of South-West Europe at Esquilleu Cave (Spain)

Both the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition and the disappearance of the Neanderthals in Europe are frequent issues in the archaeological and paleoanthropological literature. The northern area of the Iberian Peninsula has become a place of remarkable importance for these studies, particularly the Cantabrian cave of Esquilleu, which provides valuable information as well as new dates for understanding the situation at the end of the European Mousterian. The areas used by the last Neanderthals in Esquilleu demonstrate the exploitation of local resources as well as short and sporadic occupations. In this paper we consider these issues from a zooarchaeological and taphonomical perspective and propose an alternative explanation for the unexpected dating for a final Mousterian occupation in the cave: the significance of carnivores in the upper levels may explain this anomalous chronology.

Some clarifications on the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in Abric Romaní: Reply to Camps and Higham (2012)

Some clarifications on the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in Abric Romaní: Reply to Camps and Higham (2012)

The Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Moravia in the context of the Middle Danube region

The Middle Danube area is one of the key regions of Europe, in which significant interactions between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans occurred at the transition of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. In the last few decades, interdisciplinary research of the key sites has produced valuable findings that may be applied in the creation of a model of the populations’ behaviour in the area. Characteristic features of archaeological cultures in the given period may be reconstructed on the grounds of a critical assessment of the available data. A model of the development of the Palaeolithic at the transition between its Middle and Upper phases was created through a comparison of technology, typology, composition, and distribution of lithic raw materials, settlement strategies, and dating of archaeological sites. The model assumes a relatively long occupation of Neanderthals in Moravia, with Szeletian, the manifestation of their material culture, territorially respecting Bohunician, the penecontemporaneous culture. Judging by the known radiocarbon dating, anatomically modern humans penetrated to Moravia relatively late, and their arrival was probably a cause of disappearance of the Bohunician. Distribution of lithic raw materials and a typological comparison suggest a possibility of local interactions between Aurignacian and the developed Szeletian.

Current issues in late Middle Palaeolithic chronology: New assessments from Northern Iberia

The Iberian Peninsula plays a central role in the current debates on the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition and the Neanderthal extinction. This is largely due to the chronological data which some authors have suggested show a clear divide between Northern Iberia, where the Upper Palaeolithic appeared as early as 36.5 ka 14C BP, and Southern Iberia, where the Middle Palaeolithic survived until ca. 32–30 ka 14C BP or later. The best example of this view is the Ebro Frontier hypothesis. However, there are chronological data in both Northern and Southern Iberia that do not fit this pattern, and some of the evidence supporting the Ebro Frontier hypothesis has been questioned in recent years. This paper focuses on the chronology of the final Middle Palaeolithic of Northern Iberia, where several assemblages have been found to post-date the first Upper Palaeolithic in the region, and be of a similar age to the final Neanderthal occupations of the south. In order to improve the chronological framework of the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic boundary in the Northern Iberian Peninsula, a radiocarbon dating program is focused on sites from both the Cantabrian and Mediterranean regions. The first results of this program are presented in this paper. New radiocarbon dates have been measured by two laboratories using a range of pre-treatment methodologies. These do not support a late Middle Palaeolithic in Northern Iberia.

Palaeoenvironmental forcing during the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition in central-western Portugal

Geoarchaeological analysis of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic record preserved in cave, rock-shelter and open-air sites in the northern sector of the Meso-Cenozoic of the Western Iberian Peninsula margin (Portugal) reveals several disconformities (erosive unconformities), hiatuses and surface stabilization phases. A recurrent disconformity, dated to ca. 29,500–32,000 cal yr BP, in the time range of Heinrich event 3, must correspond to a main erosive event related to the impacts of climate change on the landscape, including a reduction in vegetation cover and altered precipitation patterns, with the consequent accelerated down-cutting by stream systems, slope reactivation and endokarstic reorganisation, causing the erosion of sediments and soils accumulated in cave, rock-shelter and open-air sites. These processes create a preservation bias that may explain why Early Upper Palaeolithic finds in primary deposition context remains exceptional in the carbonate areas of central-western Portugal, and possibly elsewhere in the other places of Iberia. The impact of such site formation processes must therefore be duly considered in interpretations of the current patchy and scarce archaeological record of the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in south-western Iberia.

The emergence of modern-like forager capacities & behaviors in Africa and Europe: Abrupt or gradual, biological or demographic?

It is increasingly difficult to defend the existence of an absolute, abrupt break between “simple” MSA/Middle Paleolithic (Mode 3) technologies or human adaptions on the one hand and those of a more “complex” or “modern” LSA/Upper Paleolithic on the other hand. What went on during both blocks of cultural time was far from uniformity or stasis–quite to the contrary. Cultural evolution, as a long, drawn-out, mosaic process, must be disentangled from the question of the purely European replacement of the Neandertals by African-originated Homo sapiens idaltu/sapiens. A brief review of the African and European records points to the arbitrariness of the so-called Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition and to the notion of unilineal cultural evolution. The utility of the “transition” idea is as questionable as is the reality and homogeneity of the MSA/MP and LSA/UP culture-stratigraphic constructs. Variability is more relevant than essentialism in the study of any Paleolithic cultural adaptations; the notion of change with considerable continuity is more appropriate to describe what was going on throughout the late Upper Pleistocene than saltation. Demographic factors are probably more important in understanding many of the important changes that characterized the last 50-70,000 years of the Pleistocene than putative advances in human capacities-- mental and linguistic. The growth of human populations during MIS 3 seems to have led to increasingly complex technologies, subsistence intensification, burgeoning social relations mediated through symbolic behavior with material manifestations in “art” and personal ornamentation. The time has come to really acknowledge and grapple with complexity (e.g., multilineality, non-directionality, regional and functional variation) in the development of “modern-type” hunting-gathering adaptations among humans throughout the Old World during the last phases of the Paleolithic, regardless of the 19th-early 20th century labels archeologists may still use to describe classic culture-stratigraphic subdivisions.

Last glacial climates, “Refugia”, and faunal change in Southeastern Europe: Mammalian assemblages from Veternica, Velika pećina, and Vindija caves (Croatia)

The large mammal and micromammal assemblages from Paleolithic cave sites in northwestern Croatia (Veternica, Velika pećina, and Vindija) suggest the presence of relatively temperate environments without dramatic oscillations in faunal composition during MIS 3, and possibly also including MIS 2 and 4. Species such as woolly rhinoceros, arctic fox, varying hare, and saiga antelope were not present, and the micromammal assemblages show that all taxa are indicators of a temperate, continental climate characterized by somewhat less forested conditions than those present today. Nonetheless, the region does not appear to have served as a refuge for mammals whose distribution today is north of Croatia. The region appears to have had a fairly diverse and productive mammal fauna, which in turn could have supported significant hominin populations. Faunal composition did not dramatically change across the Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition (ca. 40 000–30 000 BP). The apparent stability in mammalian faunas could be owing to several factors: A) a depositional/preservational bias for warmer phases, B) dampered climatic oscillations in the region, C) faunal communities buffered from climatic oscillations owing to microclimate, topography, etc. Resolution of these factors requires further research.

Hovk 1 and the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of Armenia: a preliminary framework

The territory of present day Armenia is a geographic contact zone between the Near East and the northern Caucasus. Armenian Middle and Upper Paleolithic records are both few and patchy as a result of the historical paucity of systematic archaeological research in the country. Consequently, it is currently difficult to correlate the Armenian Middle and Upper Paleolithic records with those from other neighboring regions. We present new archaeological and chronometric data (luminescence, U-Th, and 14C) from our ongoing research at Hovk 1 Cave in northeast Armenia. We discuss in particular two activity phases in Hovk 1 Cave for which we have outline chronometric data: (1) an early Middle Paleolithic occupational phase, dated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to 104 ± 9.8 ka BP OSL; and (2) a Paleolithic occupational phase characterized by microlithic flakes dated by AMS 14C to 39,109 ± 1,324 calibrated years BP Hulu. The two phases are separated by a hiatus in hominin occupation corresponding to MIS 4 and an episode in early MIS 3. These chronometric data, taken together with the preliminary paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Hovk 1 Cave and environment, suggest that these activity phases represent short-lived and seasonal use of the cave presumably by small groups of hunters during episodes of mild climate. Neither tool manufacture nor butchery appears to have taken place within the cave, and consequently, the archaeological record included, for the most part, finished tools and blanks. We address the chronology and techno-typological aspects of Hovk 1 lithics in relation to: (1) the Paleolithic records of Armenia, and (2) the broader interregional context of early Middle Paleolithic hominin occupation and the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in the Caucasus.

Standing at the gates of Europe: Human behavior and biogeography in the Southern Carpathians during the Late Pleistocene

This study presents a behavioral analysis of Middle and Upper Paleolithic lithic assemblages from 14 sites located in the southern Carpathian Mountains. Using a whole assemblage behavioral indicator, we show that the hominins that manufactured those stone tools do not appear to have differed in terms of the flexibility of the mobility strategies they employed to exploit their landscapes. Rather than biological change, we argue that large-scale climate changes are likely more important drivers of behavioral changes during the Late Pleistocene of the region, including during the Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition. These results agree well with the results of studies having employed this methodology in other regions, suggesting that this is a generalized feature of the transition across Eurasia. Recasting the transition as a mainly ecological rather than purely biocultural process allows us to generate new perspectives from which to approach the question of behavioral change during the Late Pleistocene, and ultimately suggests that the process referred to as the ‘Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition’ is essentially a brief segment of a much more extensive process driven by prehistoric human–environment interactions that would culminate in the highly logistical mobility strategies documented throughout the continent at the Last Glacial Maximum.

Are Upper Paleolithic blade cores more productive than Middle Paleolithic discoidal cores? A replication experiment

It is widely believed that the change from discoidal flake production to prismatic blade-making during the Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe led to enhanced technological efficiency. Specifically, blade-making is thought to promote higher rates of blank production, more efficient and complete reduction of the parent core, and a large increase in the total length of cutting edge per weight of stone. Controlled replication experiments using large samples, computer-assisted measurements, and statistical tests of several different measures failed to support any of these propositions. When resharpened, the use-life of flake edges actually surpasses that of blades of equivalent mass because the narrower blades are more rapidly exhausted by retouch. Our results highlight the need to replace static measurements of edge length that promote an illusion of efficiency with a more dynamic approach that takes the whole reduction sequence into account. An unexpected by-product of our replications was the discovery that real gains in cutting-edge length per weight of stone are linked to surface area. There is now a need to test the proposition that all the perceived advantages currently bestowed upon blades only occurred during the shift from macroblade to bladelet production. If our results are duplicated in further experiments, the notion of “economical” blades will have to be rejected and alternative explanations sought for their appearance in the early Upper Paleolithic. While Aurignacian bladelet (Dufour) production could signal the advent of composite tool technology (wooden handles or shafts with bladelet inserts), this does not help to explain why macroblades were also produced in large numbers. We may need to reexamine the notion that macroblades were of more symbolic than functional significance to their makers.

Biogeografie umană şi organizare tehnologică în Pleistocenul Superior în regiunea Carpaţilor Meridionali / Human bio-geographie and technical organization in upper Paleolithic in the souther Carpathian Mountains

Acest studiu reprezintă o analiză comportamentală a mai multor industrii litice aparţinând Paleoliticului mijlociu şi superior, provenite din 14 situri localizate în regiunea Carpaţilor Meridionali. Folosind analiza întregului ansamblu litic, arătăm că hominizii care au realizat aceste unelte de piatră nu par să fi diferit fundamental, în termenii flexibilităţii strategiilor de mobilitate teritorială, pe care le-au folosit în exploatarea mediului. Considerăm că schimbările climatice pe scară mare au fost factori motrice mai importanţi decât schimbările biologice, la nivelul modificărilor comportamentale de-a lungul Pleistocenului superior, în această regiune, inclusiv în intervalul tranziţiei de la Paleoliticului mijlociu la superior. Rezultatele la care am ajuns sunt similare celor obţinute în alte regiuni, cu ajutorul aceleiaşi metode, sugerând faptul că aceasta este o trăsătură generalizată a „ tranziţiei” pe întregul Eurasiei. Remodelarea tranziţiei sub forma unui proces mai degrabă ecologic, decât unul pur biocultural, permite oferirea de noi perspective în abordarea problemei modificărilor comportamentale pe parcursul Pleistocenului superior şi sugerează, că procesul denumit „ Tranziţia de Paleoliticul mijlociu la Paleoliticul superior” este esenţialmente un scurt segment al unor procese mult mai extinse, determinate de interacţiunea om-mediu, ce vor fi culminat cu strategiile logistice foarte mobile, documentate pe tot continentul odată cu Ultimul Maximum Glaciar.

Ahead of the Game

Over the past several decades a variety of models have been proposed to explain perceived behavioral and cognitive differences between Neanderthals and modern humans. A key element in many of these models and one often used as a proxy for behavioral modernity is the frequency and nature of hunting among Palaeolithic populations. Here new archaeological data from Ortvale Klde, a late Middleearly Upper Palaeolithic rockshelter in the Georgian Republic, are considered, and zooarchaeological methods are applied to the study of faunal acquisition patterns to test whether they changed significantly from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic. The analyses demonstrate that Neanderthals and modern humans practiced largely identical hunting tactics and that the two populations were equally and independently capable of acquiring and exploiting critical biogeographical information pertaining to resource availability and animal behavior. Like lithic technotypological traditions, hunting behaviors are poor proxies for major behavioral differences between Neanderthals and modern humans, a conclusion that has important implications for debates surrounding the MiddleUpper Palaeolithic transition and what features constitute modern behavior. The proposition is advanced that developments in the social realm of Upper Palaeolithic societies allowed the replacement of Neanderthals in the Caucasus with little temporal or spatial overlap and that this process was widespread beyond traditional topographic and biogeographical barriers to Neanderthal mobility.

A mosaic of change: the Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition as viewed from New Mexico and Iberia

From the cultural (archeological) perspective, there is growing evidence that there was not only considerable variability, but also significant change within the block of time that prehistorians call the Middle Paleolithic (MP). This was not a period of stasis, and thus the actors— Homo sapiens neanderthalensis in Europe—were quite capable of adapting to new environmental circumstances in sensu lato. Likewise, the so-called Upper Paleolithic (UP) was a cultural monolith neither in time nor in space. In particular, humans had to react in significant ways to the environmental crisis of the Last Glacial Maximum that began some 20 14C kyr after “the transition” to “modernity”. Adaptation is a continuously ongoing process, sometimes slow, but at other times fast. The complementary opposition that has been set up by archeologists between the MP and the UP obscures the considerable amount of variation and change that existed both before and after the mythic date of 40 14C kyr. This paper reviews and compares relevant aspects of the records from Europe and Africa, and then focuses on the Iberian Peninsula, to highlight the arbitrary nature of our concept of an MP–UP transition. Changes took many forms, not all of them novel or abrupt, with many examples of UP-type precursor behaviors and products in the MP, many clear cases of continuity across “the transition”, and abundant evidence that the entire phenomenon was a cultural (and biological) mosaic, rather than starkly “black-and-white” replacement of one adaptive system by another. The Iberian evidence is a microcosm of the complexity of the situation, which cannot be glossed over for the sake of mere simplification or to continue to prop up 19th century culture–historical notions and analytical units.

Why not the Neandertals?

Some workers have suggested that a hypothetical genetic mutation in an African population less than 100,000 years ago led to a cascade of neurological changes in the human brain that culminated in the appearance of modern language. Language then triggered the socioeconomic and cognitive changes we associate with behavioral modernity and Africans, armed with behavioral modernity, then spread out from that continent, out-competing, displacing, extirpating, outbreeding or, most generally, replacing the Neandertals and other archaic humans throughout the middle latitudes of the Old World. The Neandertals of Europe are the best-known, best-represented and longest studied test case for this theory. In this paper we present evidence from skeletal anatomy, mitochondrial DNA, morphology and genetics of speech and the archaeology of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe that directly contradicts all of the elements in this replacement scenario. The processes leading to modernity involved the entire human species, and were based on the ethnogenic principle of communication and reticulation among populations.

Shamanism and Cognitive Evolution (with comments)

Shamanic referents in Upper Palaeolithic cave art indicate its pivotal role in the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition. Etic models of shamanism derived from cross-cultural research help articulate the shamanic paradigm in cave art and explicate the role of shamanism in this transition. Shamanism is found cross-culturally in hunter-gatherer societies, constituting an ecological and psychosociobiological adaptation that reflects the ritual and cosmology of early modern humans. Shamanism played a role in cognitive and social evolution through production of analogical thought processes, visual symbolism and group-bonding rituals. Universals of shamanism are derived from innate modules, particularly the hominid ‘mimetic controller’ and music and dance. These induced altered states of consciousness, which produce physiological, cognitive, personal and social integration through integrative brain-processing. Shamanic altered states of consciousness have the cross-modal integration characteristic of the emergent features of Palaeolithic thought and facilitated adaptations to the ecological and social changes of the Upper Palaeolithic. Cross-modular integration of innate modules for inferring mental states (mind), and social relations (self/others), and understanding the natural world (classificatory schemas) produced the fundamental forms of trope (metaphor) that underlay analogical representation. These integrations also explain animism (mental and social modules applied to natural domains); totemism (natural module applied to social domain); and guardian spirit relations (natural module applied to self and mental domains).

Neandertal ArchaeologyImplications for Our Origins

This article identifies key aspects of the metaphysical paradigms under which European Paleolithic archaeological research is conducted and contrasts the anthropological approaches typical of anglophone New World workers with those of the "his- tory-like" natural science-based traditions of Latin Europe. Because the Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe is thought by many to correspond to the biological replacement of Neandertals by modern humans over the ten millennia bracketing 40 kyr B.P., generalizations about the archaeological transition invoked in support of biological replacement are examined and are found to lack empirical support. Patterns in lithic technology, typology, raw material variability, reduction strategies, blank frequencies, bone and antler technologies, Paleolithic art, subsistence strategies, and settlement patterns all indicate a temporal-spatial mosaic of changing monitors of human adaptation over the transition interval that cannot be reconciled with any construal of a relatively abrupt and complete biological replacement. [Key words: conceptual frameworks, research traditions, archaeological systematic, Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition, Neandertals, adaptation]