Upper Palaeolithic hunting technology and prey selection in southwest France
Description
The attainment of subsistence goals is a fundamental pursuit of all human groups, and hunting and gathering was the sole means of subsistence prior to the advent of agriculture. The hunter-gatherer adaptation is thus of particular interest to anthropologists and archaeologists alike; it has the potential to make important contributions to an understanding of human biological and cultural evolution The Upper Palaeolithic of southwest France provides fertile ground for a geographically and temporally limited study of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. The region has been intensively studied for over a century, and its sequence of Upper Palaeolithic industries is well known. Requisite artifactual (lithic and organic) and faunal data are available in both the quantity and quality necessary for the application of multivariate statistical techniques The traditional typological classification system employed in French Palaeolithic archaeology, however, hinders the examination of isochrestic variability within a single functional tool class--in this case, projectile weapon armatures of stone, bone, antler, and ivory. An attribute-based multivariate statistical analysis revealed that the traditional enumerated types of Upper Palaeolithic lithic and organic weapon armatures are underlain by several broad morpho-functional classes based upon general morphology and the mechanics of hafting. These morpho-functional classes of lithic and organic weapon armatures transcended both cultural and temporal boundaries in the French Upper Palaeolithic Additional multivariate statistical analyses confirmed the existence of the patterned exploitation of important faunal species during the French Upper Palaeolithic, including the preferential use of specific weapons systems against select game targets. For example, the Gravettian exploitation of red deer was related to the use of macrolithic elements tronques and points with hafting specializations. During the Late Upper Palaeolithic, the use of small backed microliths and composite weaponry was related to the introduction of the atlatl and the resulting ability to exploit routinely prey species that inhabited less accessible environmental zones. In general, the hunter-gatherers of the very Late Upper Palaeolithic selectively exploited specific prey species, using carefully chosen lithic and/or organic weapon armatures best suited to climate, terrain, and the ethology of the species in question