The Mediterranean from 50,000 to 25,000 BP

Turning Points and New Directions

Carolyn Szmidt, Marta Camps

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781782972891
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia europea

The passage between the periods which we call Middle and Upper Palaeolithic has long held a special fascination for Palaeolithic archaeologists, but over the past ten years or so it has gone right to the top of the list of 'hot' research topics. Underpinning it all is genuine and apparently enduring public interest in what actually happened at this point in human history. Why so much public interest? Well, it's us, isn't it? - bright, clever, intelligent modern humans replacing those tiresome and deeply flawed, if quite charming, Neanderthals. Modern behaviours, art, population explosion, economic revolution, all happening at once well, probably, or possibly well, maybe not. This book is a highly informative progress report on the state of current research concerning the passage from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic, focusing on the Mediterranean.

1. Where there’s a will there’s a way? 30 years of debate on the Mid-Upper Paleolithic transition in western Europe

Marta Camps

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a personal review of the main works on the phenomenon of the Mid-Upper Paleolithic Transition, particularly as studied in Western Europe. A close look into the debate on this process enables the author to suggest reasons why this topic has proved so contentious for so long, and why it looks as if it is here to stay for a few more years at least.

There seems to be sort of a tradition for newly qualified graduates to be overcritical of their seniors and contemporaries, and the author has no wish to do that. Her aim is merely to review past work and the present level of consensus as a basis for looking forward to the continuation of research in what is currently one of the most exciting and active fields of all Paleolithic archaeology, and which was the focus of the conference where this volume originated.

Introduction

Since the study of the numerous questions that form this research topic began, there have been several authors who have provided syntheses, about one aspect or the other. In 1984, Smith and Spencer (p. ix) edited a volume that responded to the ‘need [that] existed for a detailed consideration of the “origin” of anatomically modern … Homo sapiens…’; it now seems worthwhile to provide an overview of how the debate has evolved in the last thirty years or so, and where exactly it stands at present; here, this is done from the archaeological perspective, and taking into account some of the major publications of this period.

The research on the timing, nature, causes and even the actual existence of the Mid-Upper Paleolithic Transition, as a palaeoanthropological process, is just over thirty years old, if we take Mellars’ contribution to Renfrew’s The Explanation of Culture Change. Models in Prehistory (Renfrew 1973) as a starting point. During the 1980s, the debate began to be a major subject of discussion in international gatherings and edited volumes, and became interlinked with the study of modern human origins. Then, biological and behavioral changes were considered by many to have happened simultaneously and were accordingly very likely to be closely related, a view that still persists today (e.g. Klein 1999, etc.)

It is common to encounter in many of the 1980s and 1990s publications a sense of lack of progress in the study of the Transition (Frayer et al. 1994; Soffer 1994; Willermet and Clark 1995; Freeman 1996; Braüer and Stringer 1997; Clark 1999, etc.), which is widespread, both formally (as mentioned in these and other publications) and informally. This paper aims to look back on this topic of research, to provide the reader with a critical review of the evolution of this subject, and to address the possible causes for its supposed stagnation.

Thirty years on

A critical appraisal of some forty publications shows that what might well have become a really broad debate and perhaps even the most thriving topic in current Paleolithic research has been permanently trapped within two main topics:

•	the characteristics of the Transition
•	the question on Neanderthal acculturation

Before considering these two major components, it is important to note that although this matter became a focus of study per se, the role and the position of Neanderthals in the hominid phylogenetic tree had been a major theme of discussion and disagreement since the discovery of the remains of Feldhofer Cave in 1856 (see Spencer 1984,1–49 for details). The current Mid-Upper Paleolithic Transition debate clearly did not start on a blank slate.

The characteristics of the Transition

The character of the middle-upper palaeolithic transition in south-west France (Mellars 1973) is widely considered as the ‘first real synthesis of data [on] the Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition’ (White 1982). In it, Mellars defined the transitional process as observed in the Périgord as presenting the following characteristics:

•	a much wider range and complexity of tool forms [as compared to the Middle Paleolithic].
•	ability to shape bone, antler and ivory into complex forms.
•	appearance of personal ornaments, defined as ‘small objects for which [there is] no obvious functional explanation’ (Mellars 1973,259).
•	specialized hunting of one species [reindeer].
•	larger dimensions of settlements suggesting larger groups.
•	modifications of the settlements’ natural conditions, thought to indicate a new ability to create a more permanent home-base status than before.
•	existence of long-distance contacts, due to extensive seasonal migrations or some sort of trade with far away areas.
•	increase in population density.

It took nine years for the next major international paper to appear. Rethinking the Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition (White 1982) was published in Current Anthropology, together with other scholars’ views and critical comments. The wide distribution of the journal turned the issue of the Transition into a major international discussion. Although White’s paper was intended as a critical review of previous studies, the strict limitation of the analysis to Mellars’ ‘arbitrarily imposed framework’, as Gamble put it, did not lead to the rethinking of anything; on the contrary, this review, which might have been a revision, became the origin of the transformation of those points into generalizations or even into dogma (Gamble 1982,183). White’s insight on issues such as personal ornaments is probably his main contribution to the early days of the controversy, but his treatment of aspects relating to lithic technology and typology was rather limited and not pursued at length.

A direct reply from Mellars (1982) followed this article, re-asserting his 1973 tenets, yet these papers failed to elicit major further contributions to the debate, as both he and White had intended, until seven years later, with the publication of the proceedings of the conference ‘Origins and Dispersal of Modern Humans’, held in Cambridge in 1987 and published in two edited volumes (Mellars and Stringer 1989; Mellars 1990). Only two of its papers are considered here.

Firstly, Technological Changes across the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic Transition: Economic, Social and Cognitive Perspectives (Mellars 1989a) was based on three assumptions:

•	that biological and cultural changes during the Transition were related.
•	that a complex of closely related technological changes took place, mainly: a general shift from flake to blade producing technologies, in the majority of Eurasia, with the exceptions of areas with poor quality raw materials, appearance of well-defined forms of endscrapers and burins and of a range of morphologically new artifacts, highly distinctive and qualitatively different from Middle Paleolithic artifacts, the remarkable speed with which those new artifacts appeared, production of new bone, antler and ivory artifact types, greater standardization and degree of imposed form, producing a clearer pattern of morphological separation between artifact categories.
•	that these changes can be identified consistently and repeatedly over large areas of Europe and Western Asia (this is the earliest example where observations from Southwestern France are extended to a continental scale).

In this paper, explanations for technological changes are sought through functional and technological models, and socio-cognitive factors are suggested as the causes of those aspects which cannot be explained by the proposed models. There are no formal explanations for any of the three assumptions on which the whole hypothesis is built; no correlations are made between biological and cultural processes. Other papers presented at the same meeting, quoted to justify the second point, are in fact clearly critical of this hypothesis (see below: Clark and Lindly 1989) and the consistency with which that set of changes can be identified throughout the continent is not considered in any detail, when examining regions outside the core area of the Périgord.

The case for Continuity: Observations on the Biocultural Transition in Europe and Western Asia (Clark and Lindly 1989) calls for the need to pay more attention to the epistemological issues underlying this research. They highlight the role of the application of different typologies in presenting a discontinuous scenario, and scrutinize other points such as the general shift from flakes to blades, which to them is an exaggeration: cases are said to be ‘not many’ and where they do exist, such shift is only ‘slight’; hunting practices are thought to remain unchanged until the Solutrean, clearly against Mellars hypothesis. These authors criticize Mellars and White’s papers as a whole, and blame them for concealing variability within the periods (e.g. bone technology variability in the Upper Paleolithic), and downplaying similarities between them.

The same year, Mellars’ Major Issues in the Emergence of Modern Humans in Current Anthropology (Mellars 1989b), approached the changes during the Transition from the behavioral perspective and related them to the existence of a new human species (Homo sapiens sapiens), which had replaced the Neanderthals, particularly in southwestern France. Insistence on better (‘more systematic and intensive’) subsistence techniques, and more complex social organization, precedes points such as higher population densities and language, assumed because they are understood as necessary for the large regional networks, the aforementioned type of organization and the appearance of symbolism. These three aspects, together with the appearance of complex stone, bone and antler technology are taken as proofs of ‘a fundamental transformation of behavior’ in Europe. The technological sphere displays a fourfold ‘radical shift’: standardization (due to specific core preparation techniques), appearance of new tools, more obvious degree of imposed form, and complex bone/antler tools displaying the same characteristics as lithics (standardization and imposed form). The Upper Paleolithic traits of Chatelperronian assemblages are attributed to the Neanderthals’ acculturation by those using Aurignacian technology. The latter aspect will be considered in the second part of this paper.

Kozlowski (1990) and Otte (1990) point to symbolic behavior being already present in the Mousterian (personal ornaments). They both delay changes in subsistence practices, raw materials economy and dwelling structures until the Gravettian. Kozlowski proposes continuity from the Mousterian until the Gravettian, via the leaf/backed points industries of North-central and Eastern Europe and Otte sees the origins of the Upper Paleolithic in particular intermediate industries (e.g. Couvin cave, Belgium), because, as he says, ‘late Middle Paleolithic culture was ready for the evolutionary jump’; he agrees with Mellars, however, that Chatelperronian assemblages are produced by acculturated groups.

The general features supposed to have characterized the Transition ‘in Europe’ are again the focus of Cognitive Changes and the Emergence of Modern Humans in Europe in the first issue of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal (Mellars 1991). Understood as ‘broad generalizations, which varied in detail and precise timing’, they were then outlined as follows:

•	general shift from predominantly ‘flake’ technology to ‘blade’ technology [not taking into account earlier claims against the generalized character of this trait (Clark and Lindly 1989)].
•	increase in variety, complexity, imposed form and degree of standardization [characteristics still not defined beyond what was said in 1989 (Mellars 1989a)].
•	complex bone, antler and ivory artifacts.
•	increase in tempo of technological change, degree of separation and regional diversification [without mentioning the possible influence of specific typological frameworks which may highlight these characteristics, or the differences in these parameters between the early and late Upper Paleolithic].
•	appearance of personal ornaments [contra Otte (1990) and Kozlowski (1990)].
•	appearance of complex naturalistic art.
•	several socio-economic parameters: systematic h...