Human ecological niches and ranges during the LGM in Europe derived from an application of eco-cultural niche modeling

We apply eco-cultural niche modeling (ECNM), an heuristic approach adapted from the biodiversity sciences, to identify habitable portions of the European territory for Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), circumscribe potential geographic extents of the Solutrean and Epigravettian technocomplexes, evaluate environmental and adaptive factors that influenced their distributions, and discuss this method's potential to illuminate past human–environment interaction. Our ECNM approach employed the Genetic Algorithm for Rule-Set Prediction (GARP) and used as input a combination of archaeological and geographic data, in conjunction with high-resolution paleoclimatic simulations for this time frame. The archaeological data consist of geographic coordinates of sites dated by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry to the LGM and attributed to the Solutrean and Epigravettian technocomplexes. The areas predicted by ECNM consistently outline the northern boundary of human presence at 22,000–20,000 cal BP. This boundary is mainly determined by climatic constraints and corresponds well to known southern limits of periglacial environments and permafrost conditions during the LGM. Differences between predicted ecological niches and known ranges of the Solutrean and Epigravettian technocomplexes are interpreted as Solutrean populations being adapted to colder and more humid environments and as reflecting influences of ecological risk on geographic distributions of cultures.     

Eco-cultural niches of the Badegoulian: Unraveling links between cultural adaptation and ecology during the Last Glacial Maximum in France

This study details an application of eco-cultural niche modeling (ECNM) using two modeling architectures—a genetic algorithm (GARP) and maximum entropy (Maxent)—aimed at examining the ecological context of sites with archaeological remains attributed to the culture termed the Badegoulian (ca. 22–20 k cal BP), which dates to the middle part of the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 23–19 k cal BP). We reconstructed the ecological niche of the Badegoulian and assessed whether eco-cultural niche variability existed within this technocomplex. We identified two broad but distinct spatial entities in the distribution of Badegoulian sites based on lithic raw material sources and circulation, and found that these spatial units share a similar ecological niche. We discuss the implications of territorial differentiation within this niche in light of research on land use by culturally affiliated groups within a broad cultural entity. We propose that Badegoulian circulation networks reflect distinct social territories associated with particular conditions within a single ecological niche. This study illustrates the utility of combining ecological niche reconstructions with archaeological data to identify and evaluate diachronic trends in cultural continuity for situations where such patterns may be missed when the focus of study is restricted solely to lithic technology and typology.     

THE PALEOLITHIC CAVE ART OF VASCO-CANTABRIAN SPAIN

Summary. This article explores the relationship between cave art and Upper Paleolithic archeology in northern Spain (and extreme southwestern France). Among the 83 known art sanctuaries, only three can probably be terminus ante quem dated to the early Upper Paleolithic (c. 35,000-20,000 BP). Other types of evidence (virtual absence of ornaments and mobile art objects before the Solutrean, stylistic similarities between works of late Upper Paleolithic mobile art and parietal art, overwhelming association of Solutrean and/or Magdalenian cultural deposits with art sanctuaries) clearly suggest that most of the cave art was done in the period between c. 20,000-10,000 BP. Cave art sanctuaries are distributed in non-random fashion. The clusters of sanctuaries usually correspond with dense clusters of habitation sites. The clusters are separated by substantial geographical gaps. These chronological and geographical facts coincide with contemporaneous subsistence intensification, all of which tends to support the hypothesis of increased territorialism in the late Last Glacial.     

First Insights into the Technique Used for Heat Treatment of Chert at the Solutrean Site of Laugerie‐Haute,France

The earliest evidence of flint and chert heat treatment was found in the ~21.5–17 ka old European Solutrean culture. The appearance of pyrotechnology as part of the production of stone tools has important implications for our understanding of Upper Palaeolithic technological evolution and the specific adaptations during the last glacial maximum in Europe. However, the techniques and procedures used to heat‐treat rocks during the Solutrean remain poorly understood. No direct archaeological evidence has so far been found and the most promising approach is to understand these techniques by determining the parameters with which flint and chert were heated at that time. In this study, we investigate the heating temperature of 44 heat‐treated laurel‐leaf points from Laugerie‐Haute, using a non‐destructive technique based on infrared spectroscopy. Our results document that most of the artefacts were heated to a narrow interval of temperatures between 250 °C and 300 °C. This indicates a standardized technique that allowed to created similar conditions during successive heating cycles. The implications of these results for our understanding of the technical complexity during the Solutrean must be discussed in the light of different heating techniques used at different places and periods.     

Ideas no longer written in antler

In the course of the Upper Paleolithic, antler debitage techniques seem to have followed a linear evolution. The earliest one, fracturing by cleaving, appeared during the Aurignacian and is considered by some specialists to be ineffective. According to them, it was not until the invention of the groove and splinter technique during the Gravettian that antler debitage became efficient. Nonetheless, during the Solutrean, fracturing once again became the most common technique, but by splitting. Based on a study of 102 Solutrean pressure tools and experimentations, we reach the conclusion that splitting is a very effective technique that can produce blanks with the same qualities as those made by the groove and splinter technique. The splitting technique was nonetheless excluded in previous studies. We explore the reasons for this and the particularities of the different antler debitage techniques evidenced in the Western Upper Paleolithic.     

Aurignacian ethno-linguistic geography of Europe revealed by personal ornaments

Our knowledge of the migration routes of the first anatomically modern populations colonising the European territory at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, of their degree of biological, linguistic, and cultural diversity, and of the nature of their contacts with local Neanderthals, is still vague. Ethnographic studies indicate that of the different components of the material culture that survive in the archaeological record, personal ornaments are among those that best reflect the ethno-linguistic diversity of human groups. The ethnic dimension of beadwork is conveyed through the use of distinct bead types as well as by particular combinations and arrangements on the body of bead types shared with one or more neighbouring groups. One would expect these variants to leave detectable traces in the archaeological record. To explore the potential of this approach, we recorded the occurrence of 157 bead types at 98 European Aurignacian sites. Seriation, correspondence, and GIS analyses of this database identify a definite cline sweeping counter-clockwise from the Northern Plains to the Eastern Alps via Western and Southern Europe through fourteen geographically cohesive sets of sites. The sets most distant from each other include Aurignacian sites from the Rhône valley, Italy, Greece and Austria on the one hand, and sites from Northern Europe, on the other. These two macro-sets do not share any bead types. Both are characterised by particular bead types and share personal ornaments with the intermediate macro-set, composed of sites from Western France, Spain, and Southern France. We argue that this pattern, which is not explained by chronological differences between sites or by differences in raw material availability, reflects the ethnolinguistic diversity of the earliest Upper Palaeolithic populations of Europe.     

The Upper Paleolithic Rock Art of Iberia

Nearly 200 rock art sites of Upper Paleolithic age are currently known on the Iberian Peninsula, in both caves and the open air. Over half are still concentrated in Cantabrian Spain and they span the period between c. 30–11 kya, but–tracking the course of human demography in this geographically circumscribed region–many of the images were probably painted or engraved during the Solutrean and, especially, Magdalenian. Dramatic discoveries and dating projects have significantly expanded the Iberian rock art record both geographically and temporally in recent years, in close coincidence with the growth of contemporaneous archeological evidence: cave art loci in Aragón and Levante attributable to the Solutrean and Magdalenian, many cave art sites and a few open-air ones in Andalucía and Extremadura that are mostly Solutrean (in line with evidence of a major Last Glacial Maximum human refugium in southern Spain), the spectacular Côa Valley open-air complex in northern Portugal (together with a growing number of other such loci and one cave) that was probably created during the Gravettian-Magdalenian periods, and a modest, but important increase in proven cave and open-air sites in the high, north-central interior of Spain that are probably Solutrean and/or Magdalenian. Despite regional variations in decorated surfaces, themes, techniques and styles, there are broad (and sometimes very specific) pan-Iberian similarities (as well as ones with the Upper Paleolithic art of southern France) that are indicative of widespread human contacts and shared systems of symbols and beliefs during the late Last Glacial. As this Ice Age world and the forms of social relationships and ideologies that helped human groups survive in it came to an end, so too did the decoration of caves, rockshelters and outcrops, although in some regions other styles of rock art would return under very different conditions of human existence.     

Who brought in the rabbits? Taphonomical analysis of Mousterian and Solutrean leporid accumulations from Gruta do Caldeirão (Tomar,Portugal)

In the Iberian Peninsula, leporids, and specifically rabbits, play a key role in the understanding of hunter-gatherer economies. They appear to have been especially important in the Tardiglacial, when large numbers of small prey animals and of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in particular, are a ubiquitous feature of faunal assemblages from archaeological sites. Since a large number of non-human predators can also contribute to the formation of such assemblages, the ability to discriminate between bones accumulated by humans and by other kinds of predators is a key prerequisite to their interpretation. On the basis of systematic actualistic studies carried out on modern leporid remains produced by mammalian terrestrial carnivores, nocturnal and diurnal raptors, and humans, we identified diagnostic taphonomic indicators of the different predators. In this paper, the patterns observed on the modern material are applied to the taphonomical analysis of two archaeological samples of rabbit and hare remains from Mousterian and Solutrean layers of Gruta do Caldeirão, a cave site located in Central Portugal. Our results suggest that Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) were mainly responsible for the Mousterian accumulations, whilst the Solutrean ones were most likely the result of human activity. These data support the notion that, in Iberia, significant reliance on rabbits does not become a feature of subsistence strategies until later Upper Palaeolithic times.     

A juvenile human frontal bone from the French Upper Palaeolithic site of Lacave: significance and problems of interpretation

In 1902, a portion of a juvenile human frontal bone was excavated by Armand Viré from the cave of Lacave in the Dordogne valley of southwestern France. The specimen is clearly from an Upper Palaeolithic context, although problems in interpreting the stratigraphy and postdepositional history in the cave render it essentially impossible to determine whether it is from a Magdalenian or Solutrean context. The morphology of the specimen is modern, as would be expected considering its relatively late Upper Palaeolithic context. Examination of aspects of brow ridge and frontal sinus development, as well as metopic suture obliteration, allows estimation of a developmental age of approximately 7–8 years for the specimen. Sex is indeterminate, and there is no pathology present. Apart from serving as an example of the problems of interpreting fragmentary skeletal remains from early 20th century excavations, the Lacave frontal represents one of the relatively few subadult cranial specimens known from the European Upper Palaeolithic. As such it is a valuable addition to the fossil record of early modern humans from Europe. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa represents a period during which anatomically modern humans adopted a series of diverse cultural innovations. Researchers generally attribute these behavioral changes to environmental, neurological, or demographic causes, but none of these alone offers a satisfactory explanation. Even as patterns at site level come into focus, large-scale trends in cultural expansions remain poorly understood. This paper presents different ways to view diachronic datasets from localities in southern Africa and specifically tests hypotheses of environmental and cultural causality. We employ an array of analyses in an attempt to understand large-scale variability observed during the MSA. We evaluated the diversity of stone tool assemblages to model site use, examined transport distances of lithic raw materials to understand patterns of movement, assessed the cultural capacities required to manufacture and use different sets of tools, applied stochastic models to examine the geographic distribution of sites, and reconstructed biome classes and climatic constraints. Our large-scale analysis allowed the research team to integrate different types of information and examine diachronic trends during the MSA. Based on our results, the range of cultural capacity expanded during the MSA. We define cultural capacity as the behavioral potential of a group expressed through the problem-solution distance required to manufacture and use tools. Our dataset also indicates that the actual behavior exhibited by MSA people, their cultural performance as expressed in the archaeological record, is not equivalent to their cultural capacity. Instead we observe that the main signature of the southern African MSA is its overall variability, as demonstrated by changing sets of cultural performances. Finally, at the scale of resolution considered here, our results suggest that climate is not the most significant factor driving human activities during the MSA. Instead, we postulate that behavioral flexibility itself became the key adaptation.     

陕北地区文化生态旅游开发的价值体系与提升策略

文化生态旅游在概念上已初步形成广泛的共识,成为一个热门的研究课题,其与文化旅游和生态旅游有着许多相互关联,本文对这三个概念进行了辨析。文化产业近年来在我国得到了广泛的重视,陕北地区拥有丰富的文化资源和生态特色,本文对陕北地区发展文化生态旅游的背景进行了分析,并构建了陕北地区文化生态旅游开发的价值体系,其包括资源价值、投资价值、产业价值、品牌价值和生态价值,最后,本文为陕北地区文化生态旅游开发的价值提升提出了几点策略。     

Reindeer Hunting in the Upper Palaeolithic: Sex Ratios as a Reflection of Different Procurement Strategies

This paper is a first attempt to investigate the variability in reindeer-procurement strategies in Upper Palaeolithic sites by means of sex ratios, as reflected by osteometrical data. For this purpose the “Variability Size Index” method is employed. The idea behind the analysis is that sex ratios in reindeer (but also in red deer and in bovids) were mainly determined—as they are in modern populations—by the reproductive biology of the animals and not by environmental conditions. Thus, any deviations from these ratios must be explained in terms of behavioural/cultural variables. The faunal material for the study comes from sites in southwest France, Switzerland and southern Germany. During the Upper Palaeolithic females dominate in all assemblages, but a clear variability can be seen: some sites show sex ratios similar to those found in Palaeolithic carnivore dens, whereas other sites show somewhat higher frequencies of bulls. The variation in the sex ratios of reindeer among Upper Palaeolithic sites cannot be explained by either their chronological position or topographical location, but it is more probably a result from seasonal differences in reindeer-procurement. Thus generalizations about the exploitation of reindeer or other prey species based on results of a single site or layer of a site will mask the variability in the subsistence strategies which existed either during the Upper Palaeolithic or, at a finer scale, even during the Magdalenian.     

The Chinese Upper Paleolithic: Geography, Chronology, and Techno-typology

This article reviews the archaeology and chronology of the Chinese Upper Paleolithic and the human fossils attributed to this period. The onset of the Upper Paleolithic in China dates to ca. 35,000–30,000 years ago and is marked by the appearance of a few body decorations and well-shaped bone tools that were added to stone tool assemblages, including core-and-flake tools in North China and cobble tools in South China. The proliferation of blade assemblages in northwest China is interpreted as the cultural impact or the physical presence of bearers of blade industries from western Eurasia. The ensuing appearance of microblade assemblages in North China by 23,000–22,000 years ago reflects the use of local siliceous crystalline nodules by a population that recognized the advantages of this raw material. At that time in South China, prehistoric artisans continued to shape their stone objects from the available flat river cobbles. During the later part of the Chinese Upper Paleolithic (ca. 21,000–10,000 BP), foragers also made bone tools, antler objects, pottery, and shell tools, which laid the technological foundations for the early Neolithic period. One difficulty in this research is that human fossils are rare. Few are well dated and morphological, cultural, and biological interpretations are hotly debated. Our review attempts to facilitate the understanding of a poorly known period in Chinese archaeology and its place in human cultural evolution.     

Identifying regional variability in Middle Stone Age bone technology: The case of Sibudu Cave

A few pieces of worked bone were previously reported from Sibudu, a site from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa featuring a stratigraphic sequence with pre-Still Bay, Still Bay, Howiesons Poort, post-Howiesons Poort, late and final MSA cultural horizons. Here we describe an expanded collection of worked bones, including twenty-three pieces. Technological and use-wear analysis of these objects, and their comparison with experimental and ethnographic data, reveals that a number of specialised bone tool types (wedges, pièces esquillées, pressure flakers, smoothers, sequentially notched pieces), previously known only from the Upper Palaeolithic and more recent periods, were manufactured and used at least 30,000 years earlier at Sibudu Cave. These tools appear to be part of a local tradition because they are absent at contemporaneous or more recent southern African sites. Variability in Middle Stone Age material culture supports a scenario in which, beyond broad similarities in lithic technology, significant differences between regions, and trends of continuity at a local scale emerge in other aspects of the technical system, and in the symbolic domain. The archaeological record is revealing a complexity that prevents evaluation of the modern character of Middle Stone Age cultures in antinomic terms. We argue here that it is the detailed analysis of cultural variation that will inform us of the non-linear processes at work during this period, and contribute in the long run to explaining how and when crucial cultural innovations became established in human history.     

TOWARDS UNIFICATION OF THE SOCIO‐ECOLOGICAL SCIENCES: THE VALUE OF COUPLED MODELS

The major environmental problems of the twenty‐first century, including climate change, water scarcity, pollution and resource exhaustion, represent a new category of crisis and highlight the desperate need for an integrated science of socio‐ecological phenomena. To help establish the foundations of such a science, we explore three traditions of mathematical theory: the Lotka–Volterra interactions of ecological theory, niche construction models of population genetics, and theory from the gene–culture coevolution tradition. We review the theoretical tools of each of these traditions in explaining cultural articulation with the environment. Although the theoretical core of the science we propose does not exist, cultural evolutionary theory supplies useful tools to analyse endogenous culture, cultural dynamics, and deeply rooted behavioural links to the environment. We also present a coupled model for demonstration, and suggest that coupled socio‐ecological models can provide a formal theory to help address the emergent socio‐ecological problems of the future.     

Ceramic Technology and Social Boundaries: Cultural Practices in Kalinga Clay Selection and Use

This study examines cultural sources of variation in ceramic compositional patterning in two pottery-making villages of the highland Philippines. In Dalupa, many potters are part-time specialists whereas in Dangtalan, women make pottery less frequently. Previous studies show that both pottery form and decoration correspond well with Kalinga social boundaries, but how do morphological and decorative patterning relate to compositional variability? Although researchers have made substantial advances in our understanding of natural and postdepositional sources of compositional variability, little is known about behavioral factors that affect chemical and mineralogical compositional patterning. This study examines cultural practices of clay selection and use in an ethnographic setting, and undertakes technical analyses to assess the relationship between behavior and material culture patterning. Our study identified paste differences between the clays and fired ceramics from Dangtalan and those from Dalupa. Findings from our compositional research thus parallel earlier morphological and stylistic studies, and illustrate multivariate differences in ceramics from these two Kalinga communities. This ethnoarchaeological and analytical project contributes, therefore, to understanding objective parameters within a behavioral context. It also provides an example of how a combined characterization approach, using chemical and petrographic techniques, can yield insights on intraregional variation at a finer scale of resolution than is often attempted.     

The Upper Paleolithic of Northern Asia: Achievements,problems, and perspectives. II. Central and Eastern Siberia

Earlier scholars believed that the Upper Paleolithic of Central and Eastern Siberia appeared very late. However, modern research has shown that not only was there a local Middle Paleolithic, but also there was a very early series of sites in Central Siberia which show both Middle and early Upper Paleolithic traits. These are called the Makarovo horizon and may be 70,000–50,000 years old; features derived from this horizon can be dated to about 30,000 B.P. and can be seen in the early D'uktai culture. The true early Upper Paleolithic is relatively homogeneous in Central and Eastern Siberia and includes artwork. The local Upper Paleolithic reached its florescence in the culture of Mal'ta and Bur'et', which developed out of local antecedents and which is here reinterpreted in light of recent research (including the artwork, structures, and burials). The final stages of the Upper Paleolithic show considerable variability, perhaps including some exotic traits.     

Streams as Entanglement of Nature and Culture: European Upper Paleolithic River Systems and Their Role as Features of Spatial Organization

Large river valleys have long been seen as important factors to shape the mobility, communication, and exchange of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. However, rivers have been debated as either natural entities people adapt and react to or as cultural and meaningful entities people experience and interpret in different ways. Here, we attempt to integrate both perspectives. Building on theoretical work from various disciplines, we discuss the relationship between biophysical river properties and sociocultural river semantics and suggest that understanding a river’s persona is central to evaluating its role in spatial organization. By reviewing the literature and analyzing European Upper Paleolithic site distribution and raw material transfer patterns in relation to river catchments, we show that the role of prominent rivers varies considerably over time. Both ecological and cultural factors are crucial to explaining these patterns. Whereas the Earlier Upper Paleolithic record displays a general tendency toward conceiving rivers as mobility guidelines, the spatial consolidation process after the colonization of the European mainland is paralleled by a trend of conceptualizing river regimes as frontiers, separating archaeological entities, regional groups, or local networks. The Late Upper Paleolithic Magdalenian, however, is characterized again by a role of rivers as mobility and communication vectors. Tracing changing patterns in the role of certain river regimes through time thus contributes to our growing knowledge of human spatial behavior and helps to improve our understanding of dynamic and mutually informed human-environment interactions in the Paleolithic.     

The Transition to the Acheulean in East Africa: an Assessment of Paradigms and Evidence from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)

The origin of the Acheulean constitutes a key aspect of current research in the archaeology of human evolution. Olduvai Gorge is one of the main sites in Africa in the study of the transition from the Oldowan to the Acheulean, due to both the uniqueness of its archaeological record, and the influence of early investigations at Olduvai on the development of Early Stone Age research. This paper reviews the impact of work at Olduvai in shaping a modern view of cultural evolution from the Oldowan to the Acheulean. It also evaluates the lithic assemblages excavated by Mary Leakey in Olduvai Middle and Upper Bed II, based on a first-hand review of the collections. We conclude that previous paradigms used to explain inter-assemblage variability are not superseded as much as generally assumed, and that a modern view of the origins of the Acheulean requires a reassessment of the cultural, biological, and paleoecological evidence at Olduvai and elsewhere in Africa.     

Bayesian radiocarbon models for the cultural transition during the Allerød in southern Scandinavia

During late Greenland Interstadial 1 (the Allerød chronozone), southern Scandinavia witnessed an abrupt cultural transition. This period marks the end of Late Magdalenian/Final Palaeolithic Federmessergruppen in the region, and the beginning of the Bromme culture. The latter is characterised by a restricted territorial range, loss of bow-arrow technology, and a general reduction in material culture complexity. Different hypotheses for the origin of the Bromme culture have been put forward, variously stressing local continuity or discontinuity. Different environmental and cultural factors have been suggested to force the observed changes, but crucially their precise timing remains elusive. Here, we review competing hypotheses for this cultural transition, and evaluate them using an audited regional database of the available ¹⁴C dates. We construct a series of Bayesian calibration models using the IntCal09 calibration curve to clarify timings of cultural continuity/discontinuity, probable duration of different techno-complexes, and relationships between environmental changes and material culture transitions. Our models suggest that the Bromme culture emerged late in the Allerød, and that the Laacher See-eruption most probably forced this cultural event horizon.