Hunters of the Golden Age
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HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN AGE THE MID UPPER PALAEOLITHIC OF EURASIA 30.000 - 20,000 BP EDITED BY WIL ROEBROEKS. MARGHERITA MUSSI. JIRI SVOBODA & KELLY FENNEMA UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN 2000 Wil Roebroeks Periodisations and double standards in the study Raymond Corbey of the Palaeolithic Periodisations a/'the Palaeolithic, while in fail mere have noted, archaeologists' preference to think in threes working h\potheses. lend to he taken Ion se/ ion\l\ h\ main (ages ol stone, bron/e and iron: ( iordon (Inkle's three researchers. Using various archacolttgical ease studies we revolutions: Neolithic, urban, and industrial, etc.) has led to show how tlifjerentiiillv phenomena are treated depending a type of reasoning in which the period in the Middle is upon their position in relation to the 'Art hait-Modern' compared favourably with the Lower and unfavourably with boundary. The hat k ground to these scientifically unhealthy the I 'ppcr. with Upper Palaeolithic humans often treated as />;</< lu i's is anahsctl. and it is concluded that the essentialist the ultimate goal of all preceding evolutionary processes. thinking at the root of this double standard constitutes a Periodisations are also 'fossilised expectations', and major prohlem for a discipline whit h tries to i hart and expectation is a powerful guide to action and interpretation, e\phnn cultural developments in terms <>/ e\olutionar\ trends ('onkey (19S5) has given a clear example of how such rather than in l\pological modes. expectations steer our activities to what she calls "spatio- temporal collapse" approaches. This term indicates the 1. Introduction lumping of sociocultural phenomena which are distributed The terms Lower. Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic are more both in space and time into sels ot attributes considered than just neutral and straightforward divisions of 2.5 million characteristic tor one specific period. For instance, the whole years of human cultural development. They are essential Middle Palaeolithic, roughly 250.000 years, is thus building blocks loi our understanding of the prehistoric past contrasted with "the" Upper Palaeolithic for its absence of id. (iambic and Roebroeks 1999). Periodisations are. in fact. art. despite the fact that there were many regions and periods never neutral or 'objective'. In historical disciplines they are. within the latter that had no archaeologically visible an in the first instance, working hypotheses that order the production at all (C"onke\ 1985: 301). In the same vein, the confusingly large amount of historical data and developments Lower and Middle Palaeolithic are often portrayed as periods into more or less digestable time slices, while at the same ol stable, unchanging and monotonous adaptations, in time expressing specific views on how best to segment time contrast to 'the' Upper Palaeolithic cultural bonan/a. In such sequences, preferring specific characteristics to delineate .1 scientific climate, the position on either suie of the periods rather than alternative ones As such, they express a Middle/Upper Palaeolithic boundary greatly determines the certain viewpoint on how best to approach a study of the past scientific treatment that finds receive: the inferred level ol and on the chronology of key events and transitional periods 'humanity' of the hominid involved forms the basis of As working hypotheses, periodisations should ideally be behavioural reconstruction. Similar finds are interpreted subjected to continuous testing and reassessment. This is differently. The fact that many researchers tend to focus on rarely done in archaeology, and when it is. it is mostly done specific time periods also triggers a social and institutional in an implicit and unsystematic way. It is striking to see that clustering ot researchers around the time blocks and hence a our divisions of the prehistoric past have survived all kinds continuous reinforcement of such periodisations. of major changes on both theoretical and empirical levels ( )ne of the explicit aims of the European \< tem e since the emergence of the basic framework in the second l-oiindation Network on the Palaeolithic - which organised halt'of the 19th century. Periodisations can become the meeting from which this volume resulted - was to break dangerous instruments when long periods ol uncritical usage through this state ol altairs and to treat the three periods have incised them too deeply in the sedimentary bedrock of under discussion during the meetings as periods an su h scientific practice, when their longevity seduces scholars to according to their own. however heterogeneous structure, not treat these working hypotheses, these abstractions, as realities as a part of the ascendence of modem humans. This, and to take them too seriously. In the case of palaeolithic however, proved to he difficult at the Pavlov workshop that archaeology, there is the extra danger of thinking in dealt with the period from .W,(XX) to 2().(XX) years bp. Ideological sequences. As (iambic and Roebroeks (1999) Despite these explicit goals and an awareness of the 78 HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN AOE problems just mentioned, various participants commented Belter-Cohen and Hovers (1992) compared interpretations of upon the striking differences in the approach to the Natufian burials with interpretations of the controversial archaeology of that period as compared with the workshops Levantine mousterian interments. The description of the on earlier periods. In dealing with the Lower and Middle common Natufian burial is identical to that of many of the Palaeolithic, a highly critical approach prevailed in which, mousterian inhumations, but nevertheless Nalufian burials for instance, hearths and dwelling structures were concepts to are generally seen as intentional, while Middle Palaeolithic be applied only after a careful scrutiny of the data. Similarly, burials are given differential treatment and are hotly debated. there was also a kind of 'double standard' with regard to the Within the group of Levantine Middle Palaeolithic burials, association of taunal remains and stone artefacts: at earlier the anatomically modern Qal'/eh/Skhul hominids have been sites, the actual degree and type of interaction between credited with some symbolic behaviour, e.g., intentional humans and animals had to be convincingly demonstrated burial, whereas Neanderthal skeletons in comparable settings time and time again, whereas in the context of modern are not seen as reflecting mortuary practices. Belfer-Cohen humans, such critical examinations seemed less important and Hovers conclude that there is a clear bias against Middle- and interpretations of stones and bones flowed more freely in Palaeolithic hominids other than //. ,«//>/V/i\ W//WH.V. They terms of hunters and their prey (Mussi and Roebroeks 1996). are treated as poor relations who did not survive and "must We will now give a few more examples of double- therefore have been inferior to their // \<//>/r//.\ w//«V/j.v standard operations, then move to a general discussion and a contemporaries" (1992: 470). tentative explanation of what may be at stake here. We will end with some suggestions on how to deal with such double- 2.2 REPI IIIIYI BI.HAVIOUR standard approaches. In the discussion on behavioural differences between 'ancients' and •moderns', a part of the debate has focused on 2. Double standards at work differences in the way both 'groups' operated in their Most readers are aware of examples of double standards in their respective landscapes, among other things, the distances over own field of expertise. We shall present four cases here: four which raw materials were transported (Roebroeks et al. very specific ones, and a more general one. which perhaps 1988; Stringer and Gamble 1993), the spatial organisation on touches most clearly on what might be the core issue here. the site-level (Gamble 1986; Pettitt 1997; Kolen 1999). and differences in the geographical expansion of ancients and 2.1 GRAVI: SHORTCOMINGS moderns. In general, these inferred differences have been In a paper entitled "Grave Shortcomings", Robert Gargett summarised and explained in terms of Binford's ( 1987) ( 19X9) gave a critical review of the evidence for intentional distinction between a niche and a cultural geography: "We burial by Neanderthals. The criteria he developed to recognise can imagine two very different types of organi/ed land use. purposeful interment - a new stratum, i.e., a well-defined One articulates a cultural geography with an environmental grave fill and grave walls with visible contact between the fill geography; the other simply creates an archaeological and the overlying sediments - removed intentional burying landscape in direct response to the structure of the natural entirely from the Neanderthal behavioural repertoire. But as geography as it differentially offers "need servicing" and Paola Villa (1989) pointed out, if this criterion was applied as conditions the behavior of an animal species" (1987: 18). strictly to the Upper Palaeolithic evidence, 22 out of 28 Whereas modern human populations construct environments Upper Palaeolithic burials in France and Italy would not (residences, settlements, etc.) and operate out of "camps" classify as burials, including the double burial at the Grölte into an environment, pre-modern archaeological landscapes des Enfants and the Grotte Paglicci burial of a boy covered were probably generated episodically, in the same way many with ochre. That did not bother Gargett too much ("so be animals "move within their