The Late and Final Middle Palaeolithic of Central Europe and Its Contributions to the Formation of the Regional Upper Palaeolithic: a Review and a Synthesis

Abstract

For decades, the relationship of pre-modern hominins to anatomically modern humans (AMH) and the transition from mode 3 to mode 4 industries remain topics of ongoing scientific debate. Over the last 20 years, different disciplines have added new data and much detail to these questions, highlighting the demographic and social and cultural complexity underlaying these major changes or turnovers in human evolution. As with most other regions outside Africa, archaeologists faced long-lasting discussions whether or not the central European archaeological record is to be understood as a regional transition from the Middle Palaeolithic (MP) to the Upper Palaeolithic (UP) or if it is characterised by the replacement of Neanderthal MP techno-complexes by industries of overall UP character imported by modern humans. These debates have been re-fuelled by the discoveries of new sites, of new hominin fossil remains and by aDNA studies pinpointing towards the arrival of AMH in Europe several millennia earlier than previously thought (Slimak et al., Science Advances,8, eabj9496, 2022; Hajdinjak et al., Nature,592, 253-257, 2021; Prüfer et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution,5, 820–825, 2021). Together with new radiometric age-estimates and detailed archaeological site studies, these developments call to recapture the present knowledge of the Late (LMP) and Final Middle Palaeolithic (FMP) of central Europe, viewed from the perspective of lithic technology and typology, raw material exploitation and land-use strategies. We will review and characterise this record as it represents the demographic and cultural substrate that AMH had met and will discuss to which degree this substrate contributed to the formation of the central European UP.

An unusual depiction of a woolly rhino from the Late Magdalenian hunting camp of Bad Kösen-Lengefeld in Central Germany

“…According to more than twenty 14C-dates produced from the site (Fig. 6), the principal occupation (upper layer) took place around 15,350 cal BP would place Bad Kösen into the consolidation phase of the Central European Magdalenian (Magdalenian V), about 500 years after the expansion phase (Maier, 2015;Küßner, 2010;Küßner & Jäger, 2015;Jöris, 2021). The above mentioned lower layer produced three dates of the same age.…”

Loess formation and chronology at the Palaeolithic key site Rheindahlen, Lower Rhine Embayment, Germany

“…Approximately 50 cm below find layer B1 a single Micoquian hand axe was found stuck in the profile (Thieme et al, 1981: 56). Irrespective of the problem of single finds, this find would be attributed to the Micoquian (Bosinski, 2008), which was particularly widespread in eastern Central Europe during MIS 5a to 5a/MIS 4 or MIS 4 to early MIS 3 (Bosinski, 2008;Richter, 2016;Jöris, 2003;Jöris et al, 2022). The Rhine river marks the western boundary of the main distribution area.…”

Neanderthal subsistence, taphonomy and chronology at Salzgitter‐Lebenstedt (Germany): a multifaceted analysis of morphologically unidentifiable bone

“…Five Neanderthal remains were identified from the 1952 excavation area, including one occipital, two conjoining fragments of a right parietal (Hublin, 1984) and two fragmentary left femurs (one adult and one infant; Gaudzinski, 1998). The Salzgitter-Lebenstedt stone tools are characterized by the production of Levallois flakes, blades, scrapers and bifacial tools (Pastoors, 2001(Pastoors, , 2009 and have been classified as belonging to the Middle Palaeolithic Keilmessergruppe (KMG; Jöris, 2004;Ruebens, 2013;Jöris et al, 2022). Further, the dominance of reindeer remains has been linked to autumn hunting of reindeer by Neanderthals, followed by the butchery of their carcasses and extraction of the marrow, with a preference for the adult reindeer carcasses (Gaudzinski and Roebroeks, 2000).…”