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.     

Tsunamigenic Analysis in and around Makran

The Makran region is only segment east of the Mediterranean and west of Andaman arc in which subduction of oceanic lithosphere is still an ongoing process. We applied statistical models for the possible explanation of earthquakes in and around Makran, and described a method of Fault Plane Solutions to present seismicity picture in the investigated region, and their possible tsunamigenic effects on Gwadar Coast. We also applied the Community Modeling Interface for Tsunami (ComMIT) for the estimation of tsunami hazard along the coast of Gwader due to the Arabian and Eurasian plate boundary earthquakes along the Makran subduction zone.     

Gazing at Owls? Human-strigiform Interfaces and their Role in the Construction of Gravettian Lifeworlds in East-Central Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a new perspective on human-owl relations in the Pavlovian, a regional group of the early Gravettian of East-Central Europe. It argues that the regular representation of owls in figurative art and ornamentation in this context must be understood as a result of unique conditions of encounter and interaction emerging at the intersection of Southern Moravian early MIS 2-environments, Pavlovian sociocultural practice, and owl presence and behaviour. It is shown that the diverse and tree-rich environments of East-Central Europe, and the Pavlovian Hill region in particular, provided highly favourable living conditions for a rich owl community. In conjunction with Pavlovian settlement behaviour which produced large-scale aggregation sites and seems to have been associated with a more sedentary mode of life, humans were thus particularly exposed to owls that likely dominated the nightly soundscapes of the region. This coincides with the fact that many of the present owl species are resident birds and aligns with compelling evidence for a pronounced ‘sense of place’ in the region's early Gravettian. The paper therefore suggests considering the saliency of negotiating the owl theme in the Pavlovian as an expression of the general eco-cultural entanglement of humans and owls in this setting. I argue that human-owl relations in the Pavlovian might have ultimately been fashioned by a shared sense of place.