Site-internal spatial organization of hunter-gatherer societies: Case studies from the European Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. RGZM-Tagungen 12 (RGZM: Mainz) (original) (raw)
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2011
Two hut structures from an early Mesolithic site at Alyst, (Denmark) – A preliminary report In the period from 1998 2005 the Museum of Bornholm undertook a large scale rescue excavation campaign at the Maglemose settlement complex at Alyst. The investigations revealed a settlement complex with at least 26 flint concentrations and two hut structures from the Early Mesolithic. The two hut structures and adjacent activity areas are presented along with recently obtained 14C dates. The lithic artefacts from the huts show a high degree of tool diversity when compared with the lithic artefacts from the other units at the site, and the two hut structures seem to represent another aspect of the internal settlement pattern of the site. Most of the other units have been interpreted, on the basis of their lithic remains, as short term transit, hunting and fishing camps, whereas the huts indicate a more long term settlement strategy. It is argued that the Mesolithic habitation and activity area...
Over the past five decades, archaeologists have proposed a wide range of methods for the study of spatial organization within hunter-gatherer sites. Many of these methods sought to identify the spatial location of activities based on patterns of behavior observed in ethnographic contexts. While this resulted in productive observations at certain sites, many of these methods were tailored to specific situations and thus could not be applied to a wide range of sites. For example, open-air sites rarely contain preserved bone or features, such as hearths, which were central components to identifying characteristics of site structure. In addition, many of these methods often did not take into consideration the temporal dynamics of the occupation, i.e., that many sites were formed through subsequent occupations of differing duration. This paper proposes the use of two related methods that assume many assemblages are the result of more than one occupation. The methods target the distribution of lithic artifacts, the most ubiquitously preserved of archaeological materials, and accounts for the potential that the final resting place of artifacts was the result of both intentional and unintentional movement by humans and a host of biological and geological processes. The main goal of this paper is to use an understanding of how these processes influenced the formation of site structure to estimate the relative number and duration of occupations for each site in the sample. These new methods will be presented and explained through the study of seven open-air Middle Paleolithic sites in France but are applicable to a wide range of hunter-gatherer sites.
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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