Storage, sedentism and the Eurasian Palaeolithic record

Soffer, Olga

doi:10.1017/s0003598x00076857

Cited by 87 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…These include techniques for food acquisition, such as spear throwers, new forms of projectile heads, and even archery, perhaps basketry, as well as new tools for food preparation such as grinding stones (de Beaune 1989;Wright 1991). New trapping and storing techniques may have become available, although the evidence for this is still meagre (Soffer 1989b). Stable food provisioning in seasons of stress resulted in population increase as newborns had a better chance of surviving and reaching adulthood.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the capabilities of Middle Palaeolithic humans, Upper Palaeolithic populations within the 30 ka following their appearance did technologically much better, most of the time, in every ecological context. A striking illustration is successful survival in subarctic conditions, through numerous technological innovations (Soffer 1989b), and their success in colonizing the Americas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins

Bar‐Yosef

1994

CAJ

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This article discusses two major revolutions in the history of humankind, namely, the Neolithic and the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic revolutions. The course of the first one is used as a general analogy to study the second, and the older one. This approach puts aside the issue of biological differences among the human fossils, and concentrates solely on the cultural and technological innovations. It also demonstrates that issues that are commonplace to the study of the trajisition from foraging to cultivation and animal husbandry can be employed as an overarching model for the study of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic. The advantage of this approach is that it focuses on the core areas where each of these revolutions began, the ensuing dispersals and their geographic contexts.Revolutions occur from time to time during the evolution of humankind. Although scholars disagree on the number of recognizable major cultural changes that merit the label 'revolution', there is hardly any doubt that both the transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic and the transition from foraging to agriculture should be included.Several years ago I suggested that the models available for the agricultural or Neolithic revolution might assist us in building models and seeking information about the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic revolution (Bar-Yosef 1992;. Current knowledge of the processes involved in the Neolithic Revolution brings major advantages when we examine other dramatic changes which occurred some 50,000 to 40,000 years earlier. First, the Neolithic Revolution was the achievement of a single human species, namely our own Homo sapiens. Second, archaeological knowledge of this revolution indicates a direct relationship between the Near East and Europe. Third, the large body of data on the transition to agriculture, collected from a single well-defined geographic region, clearly demonstrates temporal and spatial trajectories.As with the agricultural revolution, several generalizations concerning relatively rapid cultural changes and long-range movements of populations can be made on the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic revolution. In my view, what has hampered a better understanding of this earlier revolution is the fact that most scholars have presented their hypotheses from a West European perspective. It would be advantageous to look at the same problem from a Near Eastern viewpoint, without of course endorsing the automatic assumption of ex oriente lux.For the purpose of clarity I will move through time from the recent to the more remote past. After all, one can only excavate a site from the recent surface to the bedrock and not the other way around. Adopting such a trajectory is not much different from the way we build our models: by using analogies derived from the recent historical past, from fields such as ethnohistory and ethnoarchaeology, and by testing our assumptions through actualistic studies, we try to overcome the epistemological obstacles.The discipline of archaeology is used to recons...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins

Bar‐Yosef

1994

CAJ

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“…As with southern France, Italy and Iberia, the central part of the Russian Plain was never devoid of human settlement throughout the UP, not even during the LGM, shortly after which a remarkable type of feature appears for the irst time, and ubiquitously, in the regional record: bone-illed pits, 1 m deep and 1.5 to 2.0 m in diameter, for which a short chronology, with all sites falling in the millennium centred around 17,500 years ago, seems to be the best reading of the dating evidence (Soffer 1989;Soffer et al 1997;Iakovleva & Djindjian 2005). These pits -dug during the seasonal thaw of the suricial part of the permafrostwere natural refrigerators/freezers used to store processed carcasses (or, after consumption, to pile the bone leftovers for later use as fuel) in the framework of a settlement-subsistence system that involved summer acquisition, via the hunting of reindeer and mammoth, of the following winter's entire supply of meat.…”

Section: Storagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Upper Palaeolithic of Europe

Zilhão¹

The Cambridge World Prehistory 3 Volume Set

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the later part of the MP were lake-based, whereas, after about forty-ive thousand years ago, blade/bladelet production became predominant, if not exclusive, and remained so for thirty millennia; (b) such blade/bladelet blanks were obtained in the framework of volumetric core reduction schemes, while the Levallois method, characteristic of the MP, was entirely abandoned, even for the production of lake blanks; (c) as a result, the domestic component of retouched tool assemblages became dominated by end-scrapers and retouched blades instead of side-scrapers, notches and denticulates; (d) a component of points and barbs designed to be mounted on projectile tips and shaped to recognisable templates became readily apparent (probably in relation to the widespread adoption of complex composite tools requiring standardised blanks); and (e) implements made of bone and antler became ubiquitous at about the same time, even in those parts of the continent where wood was never in short supply, not even when climatic conditions were at their harshest. Secondly, in terms of demography, society and culture, the evidence for territoriality and identity, both individual and social, rare prior to ~45,000 years ago, became widespread thereafter and until the end of the Palaeolithic (Gamble 1983(Gamble , 1999 Vanhaeren & d'Errico 2006).After a review of current knowledge concerning the climatic and environmental background, this chapter will discuss issues of human ecology, culture and history. Given the limitations of space, the geographical and chronological coverage is of necessity imbalanced, and the emphasis will lie on describing and proposing interpretations for perceived general patterns, using speciic case studies to support the arguments, rather than on the illustration of regional or temporal particularities. The aim is to bring into focus what the UP as a whole represents in evolutionary terms by comparison with preceding times, namely where (a) technological innovation and adaptive success relate to demographic growth and social complexiication, and (b) these and related factors set a base line for the momentous developments that led to the emergence of food production in the later prehistory of Europe and the Greater Mediterranean.Throughout, calendar ages before present will be used (i.e., when relying upon radiocarbon results, after calibration; Reimer et al. 2009). The location of all sites mentioned in the text is given in Map 3.19.1, and the units of analysis are the different techno-complexes recognised in the literature (Table 3.19.1), grouped into four major phases: Transitional, The Upper Palaeolithic of EuropeEarly, Full and Final. The irst phase begins some time between ifty thousand and forty-ive thousand years ago with a period during which European Neanderthals experimented with novel technological systems in regionally diverse ways, and ends with the Protoaurignacian intrusion, which at present seems to be devoid of local roots and thus may well represent the archaeological signature of the irst wave ...

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“…Deadwood production does not appear to vary much with inter-annual climatic 136 fluctuations as live biomass production does, but instead is rather stable year-to-year 137 (Shackleton, 1998). Stable deadwood productivity implies that fuel supplies and harvesting 138 patterns can be predicted, and thus managed (Picornell Gelabert et al and II (the latter the site of a triple human burial; Klíma, 1987), these sites are best seen as 168 logistical basecamps (sensu Binford, 1980) repeatedly occupied by large groups of hunter-169 gatherers (Soffer, 1989). Excavations at the Pavlov Hills sites also revealed large numbers of 170 charcoal-rich features described as hearths (Figure 2), for example: 56 at Pavlov SE, 11 at 171…”

Section: Procuring Firewood 84mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflections on Gravettian firewood procurement near the Pavlov Hills, Czech Republic

Pryor

Pullen

Beresford‐Jones

et al. 2016

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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This paper draws attention to firewood as a natural resource that was gathered, processed and consumed on a daily basis by Palaeolithic groups. Using Gravettian occupation of the Pavlovské Hills as a case study (dated to around 30,000 years B.P.), we investigate firewood availability using archaeological, palaeoenvironmental and ecological data, including making inferences from charcoal in Pavlovian hearths. The collated evidence suggests that while dead wood was likely readily available in woodland areas where humans had not recently foraged, longer term occupations -or repeated occupation of the same area by different groups -would have quickly exhausted naturallyoccurring supplies. Once depleted, the deadwood pool may have taken several generations (~40-120 years) to recover enough to provide fuel for another base camp occupation. Such exhaustion of deadwood supplies is well attested ethnographically. Thus, we argue that Pavlovian groups likely managed firewood supplies using methods similar to those used by recent hunter-gatherers: through planned geographic mobility and by deliberately killing trees years in advance of when wood was required, so leaving time for the wood to dry out. Such management of fuel resources was, we argue, critical to human expansion into these cold, hitherto marginal, ecologies during the Late Glacial. Highlights-Firewood strongly influenced mobility and basecamp location in the Palaeolithic -Unexplored wooded areas likely contained substantial firewood supplies -Depleted deadwood pools required generations (40-120 years) to recover naturally -Groups managed their deadwood supply by deliberately killing trees years in advance.

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Storage, sedentism and the Eurasian Palaeolithic record

Cited by 87 publications

References 28 publications

In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins

In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins

The Upper Palaeolithic of Europe

Reflections on Gravettian firewood procurement near the Pavlov Hills, Czech Republic

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