Gravettian Body Ornaments in Western and Central Europe / Taborin, Y

ANALECTA PRAEHISTORICA LEIDENSIA 1999 ANALECTA PRAEHISTORICA LEIDENSIA 31 ANALECTA PRAEHISTORICA LEIDENSIA PUBLICATION OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHAEOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN AGE THE MID UPPER PALAEOLITHIC OF EURASIA 30,000 - 20,000 BP EDITED BY WIL ROEBROEKS, MARGHERITA MUSSI, JIRI SVODOBA AND KELLY FENNEMA UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN 1999 This volume is dedicated to the memory of Joachim Hahn Published in cooperation with the European Science Foundation Editorial supervision of this volume: W. Roebroeks ISSN 0169-7447 ISBN 90-73368-16-2 Copyright 2000 Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden Subscriptions to the series Analecta Praehistorica Leidcnsia and single volumes can be ordered exclusively at: Faculty of Archaeology P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands contents 1 Margherita Mussi, Wil Roebroeks and Jiri Svoboda: Hunters of the Golden Age: an introduction / 2 Dale Guthrie and Thijs van Kolfschoten: Neither warm and moist, nor cold and arid: the ecology of the Mid Upper Palaeolithic 13 3 Paul Pettitt: Chronology of the Mid Upper Palaeolithic: the radiocarbon evidence 21 4 Steven Churchill, Vincenzo Formicola, Trenton Holliday, Brigitte Holt and Betsy Schumann: The Upper Palaeolithic population of Europe in an evolutionary perspective 31 5 Olga Soffer: Gravettian technologies in social contexts 59 6 Wil Roebroeks and Raymond Corbey: Periodisations and double standards in the study of the Palaeolithic 77 7 Jean Clottes: Art between 30,000 and 20,000 bp 87 8 Margherita Mussi, Jacques Cinq-Mars and Pierre Bolduc: Echoes from the mammoth steppe: the case of the Balzi Rossi 705 9 Ludmila Iakovleva: The gravettian art of Eastern Europe as exemplified in the figurative art of Kostenki 1 125 10 Yvette Taborin: Gravettian body ornaments in Western and Central Europe 135 11 Martin Oliva: The Brno II Upper Palaeolithic burial 143 12 Lars Larsson: Plenty of mammoths but no humans? Scandinavia during the Middle Weichselian 155 13 Pavel Pavlov and Svein Indrelid: Human occupation in Northeastern Europe during the period 35,000 - 18,000 bp 165 14 Sergey Vasil'ev: The Siberian mosaic: Upper Palaeolithic adaptations and change before the Last Glacial Maximum 173 15 Jiri Svoboda, Bohuslav Klfma, Lenka Jarosova and Petr Skrdla: The Gravettian in Moravia: climate, behaviour and technological complexity 197 16 Martin Oliva: Some thoughts on pavlovian adaptations and their alternatives 219 17 Viola Dobosi: Interior parts of the Carpathian Basin between 30,000 and 20,000 bp 231 18 Anta Montet-White: A scarcity of MUP sites in the Sava Valley, stratigraphic hiatus and/or depopulation 241 19 Joachim Hahn: The Gravettian in Southwest Germany - environment and economy 249 20 Anne Scheer: The Gravettian in Southwest Germany: stylistic features, raw material resources and settlement patterns 257 21 Gerhard Bosinski: The period 30,000 - 20,000 bp in the Rhineland 271 22 Martin Street and Thomas Terberger: The German Upper Palaeolithic 35,000 - 15,000 bp. New dates and insights with emphasis on the Rhineland 281 23 Wil Roebroeks: A marginal matter: the human occupation of northwestern Europe - 30,000 to 20,000 bp 299 24 Francois Djindjian: The Mid Upper Palaeolithic (30,000 to 20,000 bp) in France 313 25 Jean-Philippe Rigaud: Human adaptation to the climatic deterioration of the last Pleniglacial in southwestern France (30,000 - 20,000 bp) 325 26 Joäo Zilhäo: Nature and culture in Portugal from 30,000 to 20,000 bp 337 27 Margherita Mussi: Heading south: the gravettian colonisation of Italy 355 28 Catherine Pedes: Greece, 30,000 - 20,000 bp 375 General index 399 Site index 405 Yvette Taborin 10 Gravettian body ornaments in Western and Central Europe In the Aurignacian, the redundancy in the choice of forms, The answer in each case depends on the distribution and sea shells, animal teeth or formed ornaments in ivory, antler quantity of new kinds of ornaments. But our knowledge is or hone, is a well-known aspect. The Gravettians reduced limited and an absence of certain objects does not necessarily their choice and showed considerable variability between constitute proof of their true absence. One of the difficulties local groups. In the western part of France, Atlantic shells inherent in the study of personal ornaments is that there is a were used, while in the oriental part and also in Germany large base of chosen forms and objects common to the entire sonic mediterranean forms exist. The fossil species are Upper Palaeolithic and hence without precise cultural value. present far from the sea. Fox canines and formed ornaments Moreover, increases in the overall quantity and in the in ivory or soft stone are more frequent in Central Europe diversity of forms of Upper Palaeolithic personal adornment than in Western Europe. Except for the production of beads are very uneven and their status as cultural markers can only in scries, the gravettian people always kept the aurignacian be evaluated in relation to the lithic assemblages with which symbolic ornaments but they diversified their fashioned they are associated. It is indeed worth noting that ornaments in each region. transformations in lithic industries and art/ornamental repertoires have different tempos and rhythms. 1. Introduction The only sound research approach is one which establishes The formal diversity and technical underpinnings of differences through time with respect to a traditional 'fund' aurignacian personal ornaments are now well known. of ornaments, the basic source of which is the Aurignacian. According to current knowledge, the Aurignacians were the When in turn these differences stabilise over several first humans to develop a need for personal adornment, generations, they express a sufficiently stable and original testifying to a cohesive society and an elaborate system of corpus that can serve as a partial basis for defining a new values subscribed to by all members of that society. The culture. The approach then is to demonstrate a suite of redundancy in the choice of forms, whether it be sea shells, consistent differences with respect to the preceding culture, animal teeth or formed ornaments in ivory, antler or bone, is even if the tradition emanating from this preceding culture is astonishing. This highly selective appropriation of forms is still alive and well. evident from the beginning of the Aurignacian, with no Fortunately, new objects and forms of personal period of incipiency or transition, and is a characteristic of ornamentation render it possible to identify ensembles that human personal adornment up to the present. are more fine-grained than the overall cultural division. But generations replaced each other and societies changed Often their production is heavily concentrated in a given slowly. The power attributed to the first personal ornaments region (territory) where a group has distanced itself from its would not be forgotten, but ornaments came to express new cultural predecessors. Essentially, personal ornaments, the and regionally diversifying values, and these new needs led final purpose of which is the expression of values, inform us to modifications in the choice and composition of personal directly about the field of ideas within a group, with the ornaments. same sensitivity as art but with fewer means of expression. This recognition allows us to ask questions of personal 1.1 CULTURAL VALUES OR TRIBAL FASHION? ornaments that relate more to the identification of groups Choice, composition and manufacturing techniques are not than of cultures. the random result of individual taste. Rather, they are a The long period falling roughly between 30,000 and fundamental means of communicating meaning to others. 20,000 bp saw the transition from the last Aurignacians to The key problem for researchers is to understand the the first Gravettians, and then a long-lasting gravettian period importance of a change in species choice or qualities of that was relatively homogeneous in its style of lithic formed ornaments. Is it the product of a profound production, but highly diversified geographically. In its final evolutionary change or merely a change in local fashion? phases, this Gravettian saw the emergence of distinct, 136 HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN AGE the most cold-sensitive Mediterranean species, such as Homalopoma sanguineus and Cypraea sp., migrated to more southerly zones, which explains their rarity in the ornaments of that period. The choice of certain species in which to invest meaning originates in aurignacian groups in the Mediterranean zone. From the most archaic Aurignacian, we find the same perforated species at Ksar-'Aqil in the Near East, at La Cala and Fumane in Italy, at Tournal in France, and at Romani in Spain: Homalopoma sanguineus L., Trivia europea Mtg., Columbella rustica L., and Cypraea sp. are often associated with Cyclope neritea L. in aurignacian ornamental assemblages. These species maintain their symbolic importance until the end of the Upper Palaeolithic and some, like Trivia, Cypraea and Columbella rustica, were still 1 cm sought after by post-glacial peoples (Taborin 1993a, 1997). The best example of a relationship between Upper Palaeolithic men and the sea comes from the Ligurian culture in Italy, for instance in certain levels of the Grimaldi caves Fig. 1. Mediterranean seashells: Cyclope neritea L. (Mussi 1995). It is the only example demonstrating a development in shell ornaments in coastal populations. It is of course possible that many archaeological sites located on other coastal lines have existed, especially on the

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