Early anthropogenic use of hematite on Aurignacian ivory personal ornaments from Hohle Fels and Vogelherd caves, Germany Elizabeth Velliky, Patrick Schmidt, Ludovic Bellot-Gurlet, Sibylle Wolf, Nicholas Conard To cite this version: Elizabeth Velliky, Patrick Schmidt, Ludovic Bellot-Gurlet, Sibylle Wolf, Nicholas Conard. Early anthropogenic use of hematite on Aurignacian ivory personal ornaments from Hohle Fels and Vogelherd caves, Germany. Journal of Human Evolution, Elsevier, 2021, 150, pp.102900. 10.1016/j.jhevol.2020.102900. hal-03029720 HAL Id: hal-03029720 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03029720 Submitted on 14 Feb 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Journal of Human Evolution 150 (2021) 102900 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Human Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol Early anthropogenic use of hematite on Aurignacian ivory personal ornaments from Hohle Fels and Vogelherd caves, Germany * Elizabeth C. Velliky a, b, c, , Patrick Schmidt c, d, Ludovic Bellot-Gurlet e, Sibylle Wolf c, f, Nicholas J. Conard c, f a SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), Faculty of Humanities, University of Bergen, Øysteinsgate 3, Postboks 7805, 5020, Bergen, Norway b Archaeology/Centre for Rock-Art Research and Management, M257, Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia c Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, Schloss Hohentübingen, 72070, Tübingen, Germany d Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Department of Geosciences, Applied Mineralogy, Wilhelmstraße 56, 72074, Tübingen, Germany e Sorbonne Universite, CNRS, “de La Molecule Aux Nano-objets: Reactivite, Interactions et Spectroscopies”, MONARIS, UMR 8233, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252, Paris Cedex 5, France f Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, Germany article info abstract Article history: The Aurignacian (ca. 43e35 ka) of southwestern Germany is well known for yielding some of the oldest Received 6 July 2020 artifacts related to symbolic behaviors, including examples of figurative art, musical instruments, and Accepted 13 October 2020 personal ornaments. Another aspect of these behaviors is the presence of numerous pieces of iron oxide Available online xxx (ocher); however, these are comparatively understudied, likely owing to the lack of painted artifacts from this region and time period. Several Aurignacian-aged carved ivory personal ornaments from the sites of Keywords: Hohle Fels and Vogelherd contain traces of what appear to be red ocher residues. We analyzed these Mineral pigments beads using a combination of macroanalytical and microanalytical methods, including scanning electron Upper paleolithic Archaeometry microscopy equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. We found that the Raman spectroscopy residue is composed of the iron oxide mineral hematite (Fe2O3). Further analyses on associated Symbolic behavior archaeological sediments by X-ray diffraction revealed the absence of hematite and other iron oxide mineral phases, suggesting that the hematite residues were intentionally applied to the ivory personal ornaments by human agents. These findings have important implications as they represent evidence for the direct application of ocher on portable symbolic objects by early Homo sapiens in Europe. Further- more, our results reveal shared behavioral practices from two key Aurignacian sites maintained over several millennia and illuminate aspects of pigment use and symbolic practices during a pivotal time in the cultural evolution of humans. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction mediation (d'Errico and Henshilwood, 2011; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Wadley, 2006). A series of iron oxideebased pigments, 1.1. Pigments and ornaments in the Upper Paleolithic collectively referred to as ‘ocher,’ are some of the most frequently encountered earth pigments in archaeological contexts. Evidence Early use of earth pigments is viewed by many archaeologists as for the presence of ocher extends as far back as ca. 300 ka in an important facet of early hominin behavior, from which a range of southern Africa (Barham, 2002; Watts et al., 2016) and eastern other equally important behaviors can be deduced: the emergence Africa (McBrearty and Tryon, 2006; Brooks et al., 2016, 2018) and of language (d'Errico and Henshilwood, 2011; d'Errico et al., 2009), ca. 100 ka in the Levant (Hovers et al., 2003; Salomon et al., 2012). the development of complex cognition and abstract thinking The manipulation of earth pigments has played a key role in (Nowell, 2010; Wadley, 2010), and the use of symbols for cultural identifying and interpreting symbolic expression or the ways and mediums in which humans communicated social ideas, constructs, and conventions nonverbally (d'Errico and Henshilwood, 2011; * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (E.C. Velliky). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2020.102900 0047-2484/© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). E.C. Velliky, P. Schmidt, L. Bellot-Gurlet et al. Journal of Human Evolution 150 (2021) 102900 Henshilwood and Marean, 2003; Wadley, 2001), in early hominin of anatomically modern humans into central Europe (Conard and behaviors. Bolus, 2015). Our main goal is to determine if the residues on the In Europe, there is early evidence of the presence of red ocher in Aurignacian ivory beads contain iron oxide mineral phases (ocher). Neanderthal contexts at ca. 200 ka (Roebroeks et al., 2012) and at Our secondary goal is to then investigate the iron oxide content of ca. 115 ka (Hoffmann et al., 2018), although it is debated whether the associated archaeological sediments to determine whether the these isolated occurrences constituted a common Neanderthal residues result from postdepositional processes. If the sediments behavioral practice. After the arrival of Homo sapiens into the are devoid of iron oxides, the most likely interpretation is that the continent, the use of mineral pigments for parietal cave art is well residues are the result of anthropogenic actions. documented in the Aurignacian (ca. 42e30 ka) of Western Europe (d'Errico et al., 2016; Gonzalez-Sainz et al., 2013; Pike et al., 2012; 1.2. Archaeological background Valladas et al., 2001; Wood et al., 2018). Following the Aurignacian, the Gravettian (ca. 33e24 ka) and Magdalenian (ca. 17e12 ka) pe- The Swabian Jura is a limestone plateau located in southwestern riods contain evidence of ocher use in a variety of forms, including Germany in the present-day state of Baden-Württemberg. It bor- as paint in parietal and portable art (Hradil et al., 2003; Gialanella ders the Neckar Valley to the north and the Danube River to the et al., 2011), as residue on personal ornaments (Poplin, 1972; south, and of the Danube's many tributaries, two are particularly Albrecht et al., 1983), on processing tools, or on stones in general rich in archaeological sitesdthe Ach and Lone valleys. These sites (Couraud and Bahn, 1982; Conard and Floss, 1999, 2001; Floss and have been of archaeological interest since the late 1800s (Fraas, Conard, 2001; Velliky et al., 2018), and associated with burial 1862, 1872). Most of the known sites contain both Middle and contexts (Pettitt et al., 2003; Trinkaus and Buzhilova, 2012; Roman Upper Paleolithic deposits and are particularly rich in Aurignacian et al., 2015). sediments (Fig. 1; Conard, 2011; Conard and Bolus, 2006, 2008; In Central Europe, however, no painted portable or parietal art Conard et al., 2012). containing mineral pigments is reported until the Magdalenian The Aurignacian assemblages from these sites are among the (Conard and Floss, 1999, 2001; Floss and Conard, 2001). There is earliest material evidence of the technocomplex in Europe: they one possibly painted limestone fragment from the Aurignacian at date to ca. 43e35 ka (Conard and Bolus, 2003, 2008; Conard, 2009; the cave of Geißenklosterle€ in southwestern Germany (Hahn, 1988), Higham et al., 2012). Two caves in the Swabian Jura have yielded an but the orientation and morphology of the pigments warrants exceptionally high number of Aurignacian personal ornaments: further investigation to confirm its anthropogenic origins. This lack Hohle Fels and Vogelherd. Hohle Fels was first excavated in of painted art is not due to the absence of humans, who lived in this 1870e1871 (Fraas, 1872) and has yielded a relatively intact Auri- area not having access to ocher. A recent study found almost 900 gnacian stratigraphic sequence dating to 43e35 ka. The Vogelherd ocher pieces and a Gravettian ocher grindstone at the cave site of Cave was discovered in 1931 and then excavated by Gustav Riek in