Threading the Weft, Testing the Warp: Population Concepts and the European Upper Paleolithic Chronocultural Framework

Abstract

Interpretations of the European Upper Paleolithic archaeological record have long relied on concepts of past populations. In particular, cultural taxonomic units-which are used as a framework for describing the archaeological record-are commonly equated with past populations. However, our cultural taxonomy is highly historically contingent, and does not necessarily accurately reflect variation in the archaeological record. Furthermore, we lack a secure theoretical basis for the inference of populations from taxonomic units. In order to move past these problems and satisfactorily address questions of Upper Paleolithic 2 populations, we need to entirely revise our approach to chronocultural framework building. Here, I outline a specific way of describing the archaeological record that deliberately avoids the use of cultural taxonomic units and instead concentrates on individual features of material culture. This approach may provide a more appropriate basis for the archaeological study of Upper Paleolithic populations and for comparison with genetic data.

A quantitative analysis of Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic cultural taxonomy and evolution in Europe

“…Likewise, the mid-Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian is divided by some into a plethora of different units variously defined on the presence or absence of particular lithic elements [e.g. [208][209][210]. Cultural taxonomic debates also occur on the other side of the Pleistocene-Holocene divide where the sheer number of NACs rises steeply while their epistemological status often remains far from clear [e.g.…”

Human Population Dynamics and the Emergence of Microblade Technology in Northeast Asia during the Upper Palaeolithic: A Current View

“…Indeed, it is often argued that population movements are responsible for changes in the archaeological record, such as in the case of NAIMA. However, other researchers have proposed criticisms of the theoretical and empirical basis for the use of distinctive sets of artefacts as proxies for past populations [44][45][46]. A recent point of controversy related to the question whether similarities in material culture across different regions reflect migration, diffusion (cultural transmission) or convergent evolution among human populations and the basis on which to distinguish these factors (e.g., [47][48][49]).…”

The Antler, Ivory, and Bone Artefacts from Maszycka Cave (Southern Poland). New Signals from a Late Upper Palaeolithic Key Site

“…It has been 30 years now since the artefacts of antler, ivory, and bone were last published as part of a comprehensive overview of the site (Kozłowski et al, 1993). Since then, new methods of documentation and analysis have been developed, and the meticulous reconstruction of the processes of raw material selection, production, use, and discard, commonly referred to as chaîne opératoire or operation chain, has become as important in research on osseous industries as typology (e.g., Averbouh, 2000;Malgarini, 2014;Pétillon, 2006;Pfeifer, 2016;Wild, 2020), since it is equally valuable for the construction of analytical units of the Upper Palaeolithic (Reynolds, 2020). One aim is therefore to provide a complete record of osseous tool types from Maszycka and to link them to their corresponding operation chains whenever possible.…”