The Landes de Gascogne (southwest France): periglacial desert and cultural frontier during the Palaeolithic

During the last glacial period, a large part of the Aquitaine basin (southwest France) was a periglacial desert comprising coversands with low-relief dune fields surrounded by loess accumulations. OSL and radiocarbon dates show that the phase of maximum sand deposition coincides with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2. Peats and gleyic palaeosoils intercalated within the sands at some sites indicate that vegetation cover was able to develop locally during short events, possibly D–O interstadials, due to raised groundwater levels in interdunal depressions. Few Palaeolithic sites have been discovered in the coversand area in contrast to the peripheral loess region. Systematic survey along a future highway corridor demonstrates that this paucity of sites is not the result of insufficient survey nor deep site burial, but rather reflects an archaeological reality. This strongly suggests that the sand area was not attractive for hunter–gatherer populations due to its reduced levels of water resources, and available vegetation and animal biomass. The distribution of cultural markers such as art items and projectile points also shows that the coversand area probably acted as a barrier separating two different cultural sub-areas, one in the Pyrenees and Cantabria, the other in the Périgord. As a consequence, the commonly accepted view that southwest France, as a whole, served as a refugia during the cold and arid phases of the Pleistocene should be replaced by a more complex one that reflects the fact that a large part of the territory was almost unoccupied and that human populations were concentrated along alluvial valleys.     

Exploitation of Lithic Raw Material in The Northwestern Caucasus Upper Paleolithic

Sources of lithic raw material discovered by the authors are described with special regard to methods of transporting stone to Upper Paleolithic sites in the northwestern Caucasus. The analysis of obsidian artifacts suggests that materials were imported from remote regions such as the central and South Caucasus, evidencing mobility patterns in the Upper Paleolithic.     

The changing identity of the Central European city: the case of Katowice

The issue of diverse identities imprinted on the urban landscape as the result of political changes and the struggle for power between different social and ethnic groups is analysed here using the example of Katowice, the capital and largest urban centre in Upper Silesia, Poland. Basing their conclusions on systematic investigation of the most important changes and features in the cityscape in five clearly distinct historical periods, the authors explore the conditions and mechanisms of the creation of the city’s symbolic landscape and its links with urban identity. They argue that Katowice represents a peculiar model of urban identity formation in Central and Eastern Europe that has to date not been researched in any depth, in which each successive historical period represents a rupture with the foregoing values and ideas and an attempt to make a new, lasting imprint on the material outlook of the city. The development of such a model of identity is the result of the complex interplay between the city’s changing geopolitical context and its economic and functional development path.     

Ungulates and the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition at Grotte XVI (Dordogne, France)

Grotte XVI (Dordogne, France) contains a rich archaeological sequence that begins during the Mousterian and continues through the Magdalenian and includes Châtelperronian and early Aurignacian assemblages. Analyses of the ungulates from this site show no significant change in skeletal part representation, butchering intensity (as measured by cut mark numbers and placement), degree of bone fragmentation, and intensity of carnivore damage across the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition. Relative taxonomic abundances of ungulates change significantly from the Mousterian to the early Aurignacian, but these changes are consistent with climatic forcing and continue throughout the sequence. Only the Magdalenian ungulate assemblage is clearly distinct from all others when examined in terms of these variables, perhaps because of altered predator/prey ratios on the local landscape. Cave bear relative abundances decline precipitously across the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition; this decline may reflect increased human residence times and/or group sizes during this interval, just as Kurtén observed many years ago.     

Identification of a possible engraved Venus from Předmostí, Czech Republic

One Gravettian feminine representation – the schematic Venus of P?edmostí – is so different from all the others that it has always been regarded as unique. The engraving, which was closely examined for the purpose of comparison in this study, represents a woman composed of geometric shapes, including a triangular head with interior lattice-work, concentric ellipses for the breasts, belly and pelvis, a double ladder for the remaining arm, hatch marks, and a thigh made up of parallel vertical lines. This article presents the discovery and discusses the authenticity of a second, feminine anthropomorph engraved on a bone shaft fragment, which is labelled as coming from the same site and is highly similar to the one described at the end of the nineteenth century. The modern history of P?edmostí reveals that the site was used as a quarry for the extraction of loess and limestone, and that tons of mammoth bones were extracted to produce spodium. Remarkable objects that were found both during early archaeological excavations and the site’s commercial exploitation went towards private collections. The history of the piece under study traces it back through a succession of owners to the collection of René de Poilloüe de Saint-Périer (b.1877–d.1950) and Raymonde-Suzanne de Saint-Périer (b.1890–d.1978). The engraving is on the periosteal surface of a limb bone from a very large mammal, probably a proboscidian. Microscopic analysis of the bone surface and engravings identify the chronology of the grooves and their relations to the stages of the bone’s alteration and fracturing, starting with: 1) heavy weathering of the bone surface that produced longitudinal cracks, which probably led to its breakage, 2) engraving of the feminine representation, 3) intense mechanical and chemical attacks that smoothed all of the bone’s surfaces and wore down the engravings, 4) covering with a consolidation agent, and, most recently, 5) some abrasion, which resulted in the creation of a few straight lines. Since no evidence is found to suggest that the highly worn appearance of the engravings composing the feminine representation resulted from modifications that were meant to artificially age the periosteal surface of the bone, we conclude that the engraving can be plausibly attributed to the Gravettian and that further analyses are warranted.     

Hard core and cutting edge: experimental manufacture and use of Magdalenian composite projectile tips

The technology of the European Upper Palaeolithic yielded abundant evidence of the use of composite projectile heads, in the form of osseous points on the side of which one or several (micro)lithic elements are attached. Yet, little experimental work has been devoted to testing and assessing the parameters of use of this type of composite tips. In this paper we present a pilot experiment with replicas of Magdalenian composite spear tips, made of an antler point with one or two rows of flint backed bladelets. Two series of replicas were manufactured after the lithic and osseous record of, respectively, the Lower Magdalenian from southwest France (c. 20–18 Ky cal BP) and the Upper Magdalenian of Pincevent in the Paris Basin (c. 15–14 Ky cal BP). The 34 experimental composite heads were hafted to spears that were then shot with a spearthrower at the carcasses of two young deer. The results provide some insight into the performance characteristics of the osseous and lithic components, both in efficiency and durability. Finally, possible improvements of the experimental protocol are discussed, as well as the implications of our results for the understanding of projectile point variability in the Upper Palaeolithic.     

Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence in Mediterranean coastal environments: an isotopic study of the diets of the earliest directly-dated humans from Sicily

The subsistence of hunter-gatherers in the Mediterranean Basin has been the object of few studies, which have not fully clarified the role of aquatic resources in their diets. Here we present the results of AMS radiocarbon dating and of isotope analyses on the earliest directly-dated human remains from Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The radiocarbon determinations show that the Upper Palaeolithic (Epigravettian) humans from Grotta di San Teodoro (15 232–14 126 cal. BP) and Grotta Addaura Caprara (16 060–15 007 cal. BP) date to the Late-glacial and were possibly contemporary. The diets of these individuals were dominated by the protein of large terrestrial mammalian herbivores, such as red deer (Cervus elaphus). There is no evidence for the consumption of marine resources, which is probably the result not only of the oligotrophic nature of the Mediterranean, but also perhaps of the lack of adequate technology for exploiting intensively the resources from this sea. In spite of being contemporaneous and of the cultural and technological affinities present between the San Teodoro and Addaura humans, the carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope composition of their bone collagen suggests that significant differences were present in their diets. In particular, the hunter-gatherers from Grotta di San Teodoro, in NE Sicily where coastal plains are backed by high mountain chains (Monti Nebrodi), probably had easy access to resources such as anadromous brown trout (Salmo trutta), which might not have been similarly available in the NW of the island, where reliefs are noticeably lower and watercourses fewer and farther between. This study shows that the high biodiversity of this region, which results from the complex topography of Mediterranean landscapes, was probably exploited opportunistically by Late-glacial foragers. Our data also suggest that intensification and diversification of food acquisition in Sicily did not start in the closing stages of the late Pleistocene, as in other Mediterranean regions, probably because the island had only been (re-)colonized by humans around the Last Glacial Maximum.