The cultural change from the Aurignacian to the Gravettian in the light of variable strategies of residential mobility. Comparative techno-economic analyses of lithic assemblages

• Applicant: Dr. Luc Moreau
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2012 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 208271080

The time period between 32 and 27 ka BP witnessed a strong socio-economic shift in human evolutionary history, which roughly coincides with the cultural change from the Aurignacian to the Gravettian. This period witnessed a series of important novel features characteristic for the Upper Palaeolithic archaeological record as a whole. Especially, the extremely large, intensively used open-air settlements of the Gravettian, alongside the appearance of the first unambiguous Upper Palaeolithic burials in Europe, attest for the first time to patterns of increased residential stability. Furthermore, the lithic technology of the Gravettian seems to have placed higher constraints on the quality of raw materials, thus justifying the transport of increased quantities of lithic raw materials over distances of 100 km and more. The latter has been interpreted in terms of higher mobility levels in the Gravettian compared to preceding time periods. Thus, the Gravettian seems to correspond to a time period of highly mobile hunter-gatherers, which at times adopted features of temporary sedentism. However, to which degree the hunter-gatherers of the Gravettian were actually more mobile than their predecessors remains difficult to assess. In addition, as the archaeological record of the late Aurignacian has been affected by erosional hiatuses, only a few reliably dated sites can be assigned to this time period, thus hampering an accurate assessment of the overall picture of the cultural shift from the Aurignacian to the Gravettian.My research project aims to present the first systematic comparison of the late Aurignacian and early Gravettian by means of techno-economic analyses of selected lithic assemblages. The investigation is based on the hypothesis that an important key to the causes of the far-reaching socio-economic changes occurring between 32 and 27 ka BP is to be found in changing patterns of residential mobility and intensity of site occupation, which in turn are reflected in strategies of raw material provisioning and use. In order to verify this hypothesis, my analyses aim to systematically reconstruct and compare the technological organization and raw material economy during the late Aurignacian and the early Gravettian. My previous investigations show that decreased residential mobility and increased raw material selectivity already come to the fore in the late Aurignacian. Building on my previous results, the late Aurignacian assemblages of Friedrichsdorf-Seulberg (excavations 2010-2011) and Stratzing/Krems-Rehberg (campaigns 1988-1991) will be analysed and evaluated. The research objective is to scrutinize the validity of the current cultural-historical models with regard to the cultural change from the Aurignacian to the Gravettian and, ultimately, to shed new light on the interpretation of Upper Palaeolithic lithic assemblage variability.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants