The Aterian Industry: Its Place and Significance in the Palæolithic World Author(s): G. Caton-Thompson Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 76, No. 2 (1946), pp. 87-130 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2844512 . Accessed: 03/01/2013 18:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 18:15:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 87 THIE ATERIAN INDUSTRY: ITS PLACE AND SIGNIFICANCE IN THE PAL2EOLITHIC WORLD The HuxleyMemorial Lecture for 1946 By G. CATON-THOMPSON,F.B.A., F.S.A., F.R.A.I. I. INTRODUCTORY techno-typologicalassemblages, the interactionor WhenI decided,after considering the alternatives, fusionof whichdown the ages gave riseto that ever- that a ratherobscure African palwolithic industry, increasingmultiplication which we ineffectuallytry the Aterian,should be my offeringon an occasion to rationalise. as importantas the Huxley MeemorialLecture, I was We may be rightin supposingthat our perplexities not unaware that my audience and readers might willgradually be, at least partially,composed as soon regretmy choice,regarding it as a somewhatun- as the organised internationalsearch for them, worthy,even trivial,sacrifice to lay upon so noble which we all wish to see instituted,reveals the an altar. If that proveto be so, the faultrests not distributionalpattern, horizontal and vertical, of with the insignificanceof the offering,but with its fossilmen alliedwith their artifacts. But we should presentation.Let me, 'however, indicate why I not be over-optimisticthat it wilLdo so. Possibly chose it. our perplexitieswill not diminish but increase, PrimarilyI did so because it illustratescertain immediatelyif not ultimately,by the multiplicityof larger issues, generalised,ramified and unagreed, humantypes revealed; and ifthe viewof the present which constantlyconfront the prehistorian,and incoherenceof which I complainis notjust a personal which,until nearer an acceptablesolution, impede, in idiosyncrasy,unshared by others, no enduring my opinion,the progressof prehistoryas a science. advancewill be made in ourscience until we modifyor And,secondly, I did so because I believethese larger recast,yet again,some of our slowlywon basic con- issuesare unlikelyto be resolveduntil the groundhas ceptsabout the toolsand weaponsof Pleistoceneman. been firstprepared by the monographicre-examina- In this connection,is it conceivablethat, when tion,one by one,of whatis knownabout any specific de Mortillet'spioneerscheme of linear lithic succession cultureor industry,relating scattered facts, pruning was, rightly,discarded as provincial,the ensuing away dead wood, and discardingtheories, however reactionagainst directtypological evolution led us attractive,without substantial bases. too far in the opposite direction? Are we now The extensionof Pleistoceneprehistory within the slaves or masters of the broad classificationof lifetimeof my generation,beyond its European paleolithsinto so-calledpebble, core, flake and blade nursery-boundariesto the fourquarters of the earth, cultures,rather than techno-typologicaldevices ? has not, as yet,resulted in the moreor less coherent For instance,is the Clactonian,to take one example, vision of man's infancywe had expectedfrom the reallya genericflake culture, or the integralaccom- elimination,one by one,of the GreatEmpty Quarters panimentof a core culture,as some of us heretically of palveolithicstudies. On the contrary,we behold believe, which,when found in apparent isolation, a bewilderingmultiplicity and geographiccom-plexity merely reflects the environmentalconditions, and the of primitivestone cultures,imdustries and groups, local need at that remotemoment for one sort of constantlyaugmented by freshdiscoveries, which, in artifactrather than the other? The correctanswer spiteof theirperennial and sometimesvery ingenious is surelyfar-reaching when one considersthat, from arrangementand re-arrangementby ourarchwological the Clactonian,current doctrine derives the Tayacian leaders, have so far refused,to compose into any and Mousterianalong one evolutionarybranch, and orderedgeneral scheme that can honestlybe called the Levalloisianalong another? convincing. Are we on sure ground when, as at present, We may be right in supposingthat this, to a practicallyany and everysubstantial morphological substantialextent, is due to insufficiencyof fossil changeregistered in a givenindustry at a givenpoint humanremains of the earlierPleistocene period, so in its evolution is attributedto culture-contact, urgently.required by the humanpaleontologist in the usuallyassumed to have operatedeither through the developmentof evolutionary theories ; but neededno borrowing,or assitmilation,of unaccustomedtypes less by the materialprehistorian in orderto verify of implementsand the techniqueof makingthem; a currentassumption that specificstocks of earliest or by the fusionof two presumeddistinct lthic man, proto-sapiens,sapiens or other,pursued specific traditionswhich, in somesort of matrimonial alfiance, ways of producingartifacts, resulting in specific generateda new culture? I This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 18:15:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 G. CATON-THoMPsON,F.B.A., F.S.A., F.R.A.I. Clearlywe are not on sure ground. Such theoriesof a remarkableand too little heeded industry,evidently the moment, numerous and occasionally persuasive, of unusual importancein its own world. but against which the rumble of dissent may be already heard, simply mask the fact that we know Some General Consideration8on the AteritanIndu8try next to nothing about the origins and spread of the The Aterian industry,which appears to be centred techno-typologicalentities invoked, or their relation- in North-West Africa, has been described as a ships and reactions to each other,if any. Mousterian with the addition of the tanged point. Until we know more I urge that assumptions This is an understatement. It habitually includes which at presQnt tend to be based exclusively, as other artifacts equally unfamiliar or rare in the though it were axiomatic, on the hypothesis of the Mousterian. I can find no record of disagreement primarydifferentiation of certainbasic assemblages of with the view of its Mousterian ancestry; but there stone artifacts which we call cultures, and their are many allusions to culture-contactas the cause of diffusionand contact-modifications,might with ad- its typological elaboration. vantage judiciously comprehend the possibility, The firstprerequisite for legitimate hypotheses of not only of linear development, perhaps convergent, culture-contactmust be, obviously,the establishment and spontaneous inventions by gifted individuals; of some sort of time relationshipbetween the contact- but the conception also of functional differentiation ing industries. This aspect is less popular. Apart from within a given Stone Age 'culture-complex,' which questions of contact, the Aterian position in time- encouraged the adoption of new artifactsto facilitate physiographicas well as stratigraphic-is fundamental the function: and which thus disengaged themselves to our study,since the inventionof the tanged point- from the common techno-typologicalpool or sub- probably a javelin-head-must have given the stratum. These appear to us as new integrationsof inventors,whoever they were, a decided advantage artifacts we rightly regard as 'industries,' but we in aggressive action against rival human groups not may be wrongin explaining them as cases of culture- yet so equipped. And when, as in the Aterian, the contact metamorphoses. tanged point is accompanied by unmistakable arrow- Let each case in this respect be studied separately, heads of more than one sort, and spear-blades up to remembering that even in the more accessible 22 cm.-nearly 9 ins.-long, it needs no imagination chapters of recorded historyno theory yet advanced to visualise not only a new and formidablemechanical offersa full explanation of the causes governingthose force let loose in the African world, able, if its relatively sudden cultural surges to higher levels of possessors so desired, to impose their territorialor existence-surges which may, it seems, befall other wishes upon neighbours, as well as to outdo humanityat several geographicalpoints simultaneous- them in hunting prowess; but, for good or evil, a ly without proof of connection. palseolithic group collectively or individually en- Admitted that human history proclaims the dowed intellectuallybeyond its contemporaries,being validity of the biological principle of re-invigoration capable of extending the age-old simple contrivance from the inter-crossingof alien groups, sometimes of the