Hunting in the Middle Palaeolithic (original) (raw)
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Introduction: The Study of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Hunting
Archeological Papers of The American Anthropological Association, 1993
Whatever may be the analytic utility of any specific model (Binford's or anyone else's) for the early development of hunting behavior, the broader question of the relationship between behavioral modernity and anatomical modernity at the end of the Pleistocene is a matter of widespread concern within anthropology (e.g., Trinkaus 1989; Mellars and Stringer 1989; Mellars 1990;). Regardless of when technologically assisted hunting may have started, it is clear that hunting was practiced during the later Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. Whether or not it is uniquely "modern," hunting is undeniably an important part of "modern" human behavior. Because the technology associated with hunting activities became more complex and more elaborated during the course of the Upper Pleistocene, and because the hunting weaponry and the osteological results of hunting form such major parts of the relevant archaeological record, the study of animal exploitation strategies and associated technology provides some of the most direct insights into the development of human societies existing at and immediately following the end of the Pleistocene.
Coward, F. and Grimshaw, L. Hunter-Gatherers in Early Prehistory
in 'Investigating prehistoric hunter-gatherer identities: case studies from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe, eds. Cobb, H., Coward, F., Grimshaw, L. and Price, S. Oxford: Archaeopress. BAR International Series 141. , 2005
The success of the post-processual critique of processual models of prehistory has led to the development of models of human behaviour that prioritise people and their activities in a social milieu. However, although some aspects of these approaches have crept in to the late Mesolithic, the vast majority of illustrations of such paradigms in archaeology have been post-Neolithic. Why is there no social archaeology of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic? Firstly, the nature of the data is argued to be insufficient both quantitatively and qualitatively to address the lifeways of people in the past. The questions considered appropriate for the study of the Palaeolithic have thus been largely restricted to those considering the economics of subsistence or raw material procurement and lithic manufacture. Secondly, the problem is one of identification; the attitudes of researchers towards post-Neolithic farmers and Mesolithic and Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer (and particularly pre-human hunter-gatherer) populations have meant that the two branches of research are considered fundamentally different. The effect of this process of estrangement of hunter-gatherer archaeology from the rest of the discipline is the establishment of an a-personal Palaeolithic. The pre-eminence of the evolutionary paradigm, which equates change and evolution, identifies the process of evolution as purely a factor of time; change is conditional only on time passing, and is thus virtually unrelated to humans and their activities. The focus of research into Pleistocene archaeology has been at continent-wide geographical scales and geological timescales, which have removed the possibility of accessing personal experiences and actions. In addition, the conception of a culture as a system seeking homeostasis means that change requires external causality – usually, in the Palaeolithic, the environment. This session would like to reintroduce the not-so-radical notion of ‘people’ to the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, as creators of the archaeological record, and as inhabitants of the Pleistocene world. How can we access aspects of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer past that would have had meaning for its inhabitants/creators? How does the recognition of hunter-gatherer ‘persons’ in prehistory affect the generalizing, continent- and geological/climatic- scale models of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic which are current in the discipline? We invite papers that use new perspectives to ‘crack open’ the ‘black box’ of hunter-gatherer ‘persons’ of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic to access new perspectives on and understandings of the period.
The Middle Palaeolithic site Salzgitter Lebenstedt (northern Ger many), excavated in 1952, is weil known because of its well-preservedfaunal remains, dorninated by aduit reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). The archaeological assembiage accumulated in an arctic setting in anearlier part of the last (Weichsel) glacial (01S5-3). The site is remarkable because of the presence of unique Middle Palaeohthic bone tools and the occurrence of the northernrnost Neanderthal rernains, but this paper focuses on an analysis of its reindeer assemblage. The resuits indicate autumn hunting of reindeer by Middle Palaeolithic hominids. After the hunt, carcasses were butchered and in subsequent marrow processing of the bones a selection against young and sub-adult animals occurred. Aduits were clearly preferred, and from their bones, again, poorer marrow bones were neglected. This focus on primeness of resources has been documented in other dornains of Neanderthal behaviour, hut Salzgitter Lebenstedt is the best example yet known in terms of systematic and routinized processing of garne. The Salzgitter Lebenstedt assernblage displays sorne rernarkable sirnilarities to the Late Glacial reindeer assernblages from the Ahrensburg tunnel valley sites. The subsequent review ofthe evidence on subsistence strategies from earher periods of the European Palaeolithic shows that hunting of large mammals may have been a part of the behavioural repertoire of the Middle Pleistocene occupants of Europe from the earlfest occupation onwards. At the same time, it is suggested that these eariy hunting strategies were incorporated in ways of rnoving through landscapes (“settlement systems“) which were different frorn what we know from the middleparts of the Upper Palaeolithic onwards.
The transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic is a major biological and cultural threshold in the construction of our common humanity. Technological and behavioral changes happened simultaneously to a major climatic cooling, which reached its acme with the Heinrich 4 event, forcing the human populations to develop new strategies for the exploitation of their environment. The recent fieldwork at Les Cottés (France) transitional site offers a good opportunity to document subsistence strategies for this period and to provide for the first time high-resolution insights on its evolution. We present the results of the complete zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of the transitional sequence, associated with a large regional synthesis of the subsistence strategy evolution during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic. We conclude that, while there is no major change in the hunting strategies, the butchery activities evolved in strict correlation with the development of range weapons. In addition, the demise of carnivore seems to be a consequence of the human pressure on the environment. Our study demonstrates how the faunal component of the environment became a structuring element of the human social organization, being at the base of future cultural evolutions. The Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition is well known for the major demographic shift that occurred with the arrival of anatomically modern humans (AMH) in Europe, their interbreeding with the local Neanderthal populations 1 , whom they eventually replaced. We assist to major behavioral changes with the gradual development of the cultural components of what would define the Upper Paleolithic and the cultural modernity 2. Scarce during the European late Middle Paleolithic 3-6 , evidences of symbolic behavior exploded in term of quantity and diversity in the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) cultural material 7-11. Significant technological advances were developed with the production of blades and notably bladelets in the Châtelperronian 12,13 , the intensification of the bladelet production with the Proto-Aurignacian and finally the individualization of their reduction sequence during the Early Aurignacian 14,15. Simultaneously, craftsmen explored and mastered new raw material 10,16,17 , bones and teeth, producing a brand-new set of tools as a response to arising needs. The development of these new needs and subsequently these new bone technologies had direct consequences on the resources procurement and management strategies and, in a more general way, on the cultural relationships constructed by human with their animal counterpart. This is specifically attested by the development of figurative art, where mammals play a quasi-exclusive role during the EUP, and the introduction of mammal bones and teeth in the personal ornaments 10 , where previously only minerals and malacofauna were used 5. These symbolic and economic transformations of the societies occurred in a changing environment characterized by the major climatic shift of the MIS3 18. In Southwestern France, the final Mousterian took place in a
Ahead of the Game Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Hunting Behaviors in the Southern
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 Middle-early 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 techno-typological 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 Middle-Upper 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. public of Georgia. Special thanks are due to members of the museum's staff, including N. Jakeli and H. Koridze, and the students and volunteers who took part in fieldwork and laboratory analyses.
The aim of this paper is to more clearly classify Middle Paleolithic subsistence tactics by considering this evidence against an Upper Paleolithic background, where we discern a clearer picture of human subsistence tactics. Therefore, a diachronous comparative analysis of reindeer assemblages from northwestern European archaeological sites was undertaken. Differences in exploitation strategies become clearly visible for the late Upper Paleolithic, which can be interpreted to partly reflect the demands of elaborate settlement dynamics, evidence of which we especially lack for the Middle Paleolithic. Because of these differences in social networking strategies between Middle and Upper Palaeolithic groups, it seems highly likely that subsistence behavior involving the careful selection of large mammal resources was particularly crucial to maintaining high foraging return rates during the Middle Palaeolithic.