The Upper Paleolithic Period

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The Upper Paleolithic Period

• 40,000 to ? 10,000 ya

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The Upper Paleolithic

• By 28 kya Neanderthals gone.
• Humans expand into most of the world.
• Art appears and spreads.
• Numerous technological innovations occur.
• Domestication of the Dog

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Summary of Chronology

• Basal Paleolithic
• 2.5 to 1.8 mya
• Time of Homo habilis
• Olduwan tools
• Lower Paleolithic
• 1.8 m to 250 kya
• Time of Homo erectus
• Acheulean hand axes
• Middle Paleolithic
• 250 to 40 kya
• Time of H. neanderthalensis
• Mousterian tools

The Upper Paleolithic 40 to 10 kya Chatelperronia
n Aurignacian Gravettian Solutrean Magdalenian
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Tool Industries

• These are tool complexes that are associated and
  are useful time markers for the UP.
• Chatelperronian intermediate Mousterian to
  Aurignacian
• Aurignacian 36 22 kya. Earliest blade
  industry.
• Gravettian 33 22 kya. Thinner, more finely
  made blades than Aurignacian.
• Solutrean 22 18 kya. Extremely refined blade
  technology.
• Magdalenian 18 10 kya. Final UP blade
  industry. ART.

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Two important definitions

• Blades flakes that are at least twice as long
  as they are wide.
• Composite tools ones formed from multiple
  materials.
• E.g., a spear has a stone point, wooden shaft,
  bone fore-shaft, sinew hafting, and resins.

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Mousterian Technology (Middle Paleolithic)
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Making blades during the Upper Paleolithic Period.
Composite tools during the Upper Paleolithic
Period.
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Aurignacian Tools 40 to 30 kya in Europe
www.hf.uio.no/iakk/ roger/lithic
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Aurignacian Tools 40 to 30 kya Early Upper
Paleolithic Europe
www.hf.uio.no/iakk/ roger/lithic
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Other Features of the Aurignacian

• Diverse, efficient, flexible tool kit.
• Beads Jewelry made from mammal bones teeth.
• Bone needles awls suggesting tailored clothing.
• Portable art of engraved bone and ivory
• Southern Germany Vogelherd Cave Hohlenstein
  Stadel.
• Grotte du Renne, France.

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Tool Industries

• These are tool complexes that are associated and
  are useful time markers for the UP.
• Chatelperronian intermediate Mousterian to
  Aurignacian
• Aurignacian 36 22 kya. Earliest blade
  industry.
• Gravettian 33 22 kya. Thinner, more finely
  made blades than Aurignacian.
• Solutrean 22 18 kya. Extremely refined blade
  technology.
• Magdalenian 18 10 kya. Final UP blade
  industry. ART.

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Gravettian Tools 30 to 20 kya Mid Upper
Paleolithic Europe
www.hf.uio.no/iakk/ roger/lithic
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Two Important Gravettian Sites

• Dolni Vestonice 27 kya (Czech Republic)
• Complex campsite.
• Kostenki 27 kya (Russia).
• Nine pit houses
• Hearths in centers of huts
• Storage pits cut into permafrost

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Dolni Vestonice
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Dolni Vestonice
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Kostenki
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Bone-framed house
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Implications of Sites

• People becoming a bit more sedentary
• Diet, however, still hunting gathering
• Find large herbivore remains
• Small mammals remains
• Some fish bones

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Solutrean Tools 22 to 18 kya in Europe
www.hf.uio.no/iakk/ roger/lithic
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The Dog

• Domestication an organism relying on humans for
  survival reproduction.
• Dogs come from wolves, which are pack animals.
• Dogs have abilities that humans dont have.

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The Venus Figurines

• Portable art that appeared during the Upper
  Paleolithic period.
• Female figures carved from soft stone or mammoth
  bone.
• Thought to symbolize fertility.

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Venus of Willendorf, Austria
Venus of Gagarino, Ukraine
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Implication of Figurines

• Suggest communication and interaction over long
  distances.
• Suggest symbolic thinking.

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Cave Painting

• Painters used charcoal red ochre
• Lascaux (France) emphasis on animal paintings
  human renderings are simple.
• Altamira (Spain) use of natural features of the
  cave to enhance animal art.
• Chauvet Cave (discovered 1994).

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Chauvet Cave 33 20 kya

• Large cave galleries
• Compositional groupings of herbivores
  predators.
• Find rare species not depicted in other caves
  rhino, lion, long-eared owl, hyena.
• Appear to be stylistically unified (same culture).

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Lascaux 34 12 kya
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Chauvet Cave, France 33 - 20 kya
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The Magdalenian

• 20 10 kya.
• Stone/bone tool industry becomes more diverse.
• Microlithic blades.
• New weapons (e.g., harpoon).
• Large scale climate change occurred
  (deglaciation).
• Sites were occupied for longer than during
  Gravettian (more sedentary).
• Important sites Madeliene Rockshelter, Laugerie
  Haute
• People lived there for entire seasons, not year
  round.

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Magdalenian Tools 20 to 10 kya Late Upper
Paleolithic
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Mezhirich, Russia Magdalenian
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Summary of Upper Paleolithic

• Diet became gradually more diverse
• People became gradually less mobile
• Artwork proliferates
• Climate warms, deglaciation during Magdalenian
• Sets the stage for more regionalization and
  diversification during the Mesolithic

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The Mesolithic

• The transition from foraging to farming

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The Mesolithic

• Starts at roughly 10 kya in many areas
• Ends when agriculture is firmly established
• The last ice age is definitely over
• Climate becoming gradually warmer
• Diet continues to change
• Patterns of the Mesolithic are widespread

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Diet is diverse

• Find all kinds of fishing equipment
• Ground-stone tools
• Diverse projectile weapons from many materials
• Some cultivation is apparent
• Cultigens are plants that are cultivated but this
  does not equal domestication.

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Widespread

• This diet pattern can be seen from England to
  Japan
• There are 35,000 Mesolithic sites along the coast
  of Japan
• Lets discuss one site, Nittano (Japan)
• Constantly occupied from 6 to 5 kya

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Nittano

• There were roughly 4 to 8 pithouses at any one
  time (they were often rebuilt)
• These houses had stone-lined hearths
• It is thought that people settled here year-round
• Intensification of architecture is important

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Broad Spectrum Revolution

• BSR refers to the way people adapted around 15
  kya in the Middle East 12 kya in Europe.
  During the Mesolithic, many plants animals were
  hunted, gathered, collected, caught, fished.
• Farming and life as we know it grows out of the
  BSR.

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BSR Mesolithic

• Star Carr (England)
• Vedbaek (Denmark)
• Nittano (Japan)
• Elands Bay (South Africa)
• Mount Sandel (Ireland)
• It really is broad!