Household art and activities, Palaeolithic style: the psychology of 16000 year old domestic culture at Gönnersdorf (Rhineland) and Oelkitz (Thuringia)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 448417265

How did people function in their lifespace, and how did the mechanics of routine actions interact with the creation and function of Palaeolithic art? What did domestic life look like in the Upper Palaeolithic?We will deploy methods from the psychology of vision and action to explore hearth-focussed activities within and without of tents on two 16,000 year old Upper Palaeolithic campsites; Gönnersdorf and Oelknitz (Germany). Each possess several well-excavated and well-understood hearths both on flat surfaces and in shallow depressions, covered with cobbles and flat stone plaquettes which are found more widely on contemporary sites in France and Switzerland. At Gönnersdorf 406 plaquettes (at Oelknitz only two) bear engravings of important prey animals (notably horse, reindeer and bison) and highly-stylised depictions of human females. Tent structures of varying form is evidenced by patterned refuse dumps indicative of walls, pits and stones used to support superstructures, and refitting of stone tools and butchered animal bones that reveal where particular activities took place and what areas of internal and external space were linked in daily life. Given the exceptional quality of their preservation, excavation and archival recording, the two sites offer a remarkable database for interrogation.The project's team includes specialists with the greatest familiarity with these sites (MONREPOS, Germany), a cutting edge traceology laboratory (MONREPOS), and a Palaeolithic archaeologist and psychologist of vision and action who are collaboratively developing formal methods for the psychological exploration of early gestures and art (Durham, UK). We will employ a UK PDRA who has been developing this field of visual palaeopsychology as our jointly supervised PhD, and a German PDRA who will carry the traceological studies through a cumulative process of five workpackages. We will undertake the experimental (physical) and VR simulated reconstruction of their hearths and activities occurring around them. In both replication and simulation we can approximate light levels at the time (daylight, lamplight). We will body- and eye-track participants in each, and build up a motion characterisation of domestic activities such as hearth construction/clearing/reuse; tool manufacture and maintenance, and engraving. We will characterise the experimentally created engravings in the MONREPOS traceology laboratory; by comparing these to the traceology of the actual art we can ascertain exactly how these were engraved. The resulting biomechanical & visual characterisation of such will allow us to ascertain how the constrained space in tent interiors determined/restricted action, and how this differed in the open air. It will allow us to characterise the biomechanics of routine actions, and investigate how 'domestic' art arose out of this. How did visibility affect the nature of these early engravings, and how were they constrained by their environments?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Robert William Kentridge; Professor Dr. Paul Pettitt
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Olaf Jöris