Origin of symbolic behaviour

Portable objects with figurative decoration found at sites in the Iberian Peninsula (Hornos de la Peña, Salitre, El Castillo, Covalejos, Morín, Lumentxa, Antoliñako Koba, Les Mallaetes
and El Parpalló) are presented and discussed. The stratigraphic position of each object is assessed, characterizing and, in some cases, discussing the nature of the decoration. The oldest figurative mobile art in the Iberian Peninsula can be attributed, based on the study of the portable ensembles, to about ~31.5 ky cal BP. Its morpho‐stylistic characterization reveals a graphic construction focusing on simple depictions in which the outlines of the animals are given priority.

The hand stencils of European Paleolithic art tend to be considered of pre-Magdalenian
age and scholars have generally assigned them to the Gravettian period. At El Castillo Cave, application of
U-series dating to calcite accretions has established a minimum age of 37,290 years for underlying red hand
stencils, implying execution in the earlier part of the Aurignacian if not beforehand. Together with the series
of red disks, one of which has a minimum age of 40,800 years, these motifs lie at the base of the El Castillo
parietal stratigraphy. The similarity in technique and colour support the notion that both kinds of artistic
manifestations are synchronic and define an initial, non-figurative phase of European cave art. However,
available data indicate that hand stencils continued to be painted subsequently. Currently, the youngest,
reliably dated examples fall in the Late Gravettian, approximately 27,000 years ago.

В статье представлены результаты технологического и экспериментально-трасологического анализов персональных украшений многослойной археологической стоянки Обишир-5 – ключевого объекта позднего плейстоцена – раннего голоцена в западной части Центральной Азии. Изучаемые артефакты из раннеголоценового комплекса памятника (литологические слои 2 и 3) – три подвески овальной, подтреугольной и подпрямоугольной формы, украшение-«лабретка» и заготовка подвески – составляют наиболее раннюю и многочисленную для данного региона серию каменных шлифованных украшений. Все изделия обнаружены в надежных стратиграфических условиях, для вмещающих культурных отложений получена серия радиоуглеродных дат. В результате комплексного петрографического, экспериментально-трасологического и технологического исследования реконструированы операционные последовательности изготовления украшений. Установлено, что в эпоху раннего голоцена их делали из местного сырья – талькита и серпентинита, источник которого находился в 4,5 км от стоянки. Заготовками подвесок служили мелкие гальки, обломки и сколы с более крупных отдельностей сырья. Процесс изготовления включал обработку поверхностей изделий шлифовкой и строганием, биконическое сверление и полировку. Выдвигается предположение о существовании традиции изготовления персональных украшений из мягких пород камня в западной части Центральной Азии 10,700–8,200 кал. л.н. Сопоставление изделий рассматриваемого типа из археологических комплексов финального плейстоцена – раннего голоцена западной части Центральной Азии, Среднего и Ближнего Востока позволило считать их одним из ярких индикаторов развития этих комплексов в одном направлении.

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The stratified site of Obishir-5 is one of the most important Final Pleistocene to Early Holocene sites in western Central Asia. In the Early Holocene component (10,700–8200 cal BP) of this site (layers 2 and 3), we discovered one of the oldest and largest assemblages of soft stone ornaments known from the region. It includes 5 items: three oval, sub-triangular, and sub-rectangular pendants, one “labret”-like ornament, and one ornament blank. All specimens come from stratified and well-dated contexts. As a result of the petrographic, experimental, use-wear, and technological analysis, we reconstructed the chaîne opératoire of these artifacts. To produce them, local raw materials (talcite and serpentinite) were transported from a source located 4.5 km away from the site. Small pebbles, shatters, and spalls split from nodules were used as blanks. The surface of the blank was first prepared using grinders and burins, then biconical drilling and polishing were used to finish the artifact. Our results point to an established tradition of personal ornament production from soft stone in western Central Asia during the Early Holocene. Comparison of these nonutilitarian artifacts with those from other Final Pleistocene to Early Holocene archaeological complexes across Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Near East suggests that personal ornament manufacture may be an important hallmark of social developments across a broad geographic region.

Perforated shells are often used to study socially mediated behavior in past hunter-gatherer groups. The assumption is that their exclusive symbolic function makes them ideally suited to investigate social networks, dispersal activity, and social interaction. Before making any statements regarding human behavior, however, it needs to be
established whether perforated shells from archaeological assemblages were used as personal ornaments. One of the key issues regarding beach-collected marine taxa is whether beached specimens were purposefully collected, e.g., preferentially selected naturally holed specimens, or whether human-made perforations may be identified.
Past studies have investigated these questions by comparing datasets from modern death assemblages of shells with archaeological collections and through manufacture and use-wear analysis (e.g., Bouzouggar et al. 2007; Vanhaeren et al. 2006) This study introduces a novel approach using μCT scans of pristine shells to create a threedimensional model of shell thickness in Tritia (Nassarius) gibbosula. This model is used to map robust and fragile
zones on shells of this taxon. The goal of this approach is to identify structurally weak zones that would be prone to natural perforations. Heat maps of shell thickness are then used to investigate perforation locations in modern natural death and archaeological assemblages. Our results show that in natural death assemblages, most perforations occur in structurally weak zones, and that their distribution is random. In our archaeological samples, from early Upper Paleolithic contexts at Ksâr ‘Akil, (Lebanon), we found that perforations in T. gibbosula mainly occur
in structurally weak zones, but their distribution within these zones is not random and favors locations facilitating easy suspension (e.g., on cordage). This suggests that at Ksâr ‘Akil, T. gibbolusa shells were used as beads, and that shells with conveniently located natural perforations were intentionally sought for, that humans perforated the shells themselves, or that they used a combination of both. This in turn, warrants investigations into the social and behavioral implications of these perforated beads. Further aspects of human involvement with the shells should be explored, for example, through use-wear analysis.

The recently discovered of an engraved giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus) bone from Einhornhöhle in Lower Saxony, Germany contributes an important new element to the body of knowledge connected to Neanderthal symbolic behaviour. A review of the corpus of symbolic behaviour in Neanderthals and Palaeolithic modern humans suggests that both hominins did similar things rather simultaneously yet on different continents. Engraved objects reported from South Africa dating c. 80 -70 ka old (Blombos Cave, Diepkloof and are connected to H. sapiens, while engraved objects in Europe are connected to Neanderthals beginning c. 70 ka ago (e.g. La Ferrassie, Les Pradelles). Shell beads were perforated and coloured with red ochre in the Middle East by H. sapiens c. 120 ka ago (Skhul, Qafzeh) and somewhat later in Europe by Neanderthals before 50 ka ago (Cueva Anton, Cueva de los Aviones, Fumane Cave). However, personal adornment in the form of bird feathers, talons, and phalanges seem to have a long tradition in European Neanderthals going back as far as 130 ka (e.g. Krapina, Combe-Grenal). The emerging pattern indicates that symbolic behaviour in Neanderthals and H. sapiens was ubiquitous, yet expressed sporadically before c. 45-40 ka while a clear difference in either quantity or quality is not apparent. Only with the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic such expressions become more frequent, and figurative art in the form of cave paintings, carved figurines and decorated tools represent a new quality of symbolic expressions in H. sapiens. There is thus a clear shift in the world of art some 40 ka ago “from abstract to figurative” while sustaining abstract expressions in the form of personal adornment and objects decorated with line patterns. Consequently, current evidence suggests that symbolic behaviour is not species-specific, but may rather reflect aspects of human cognitive evolution and/or social behaviour.

This paper presents a study of a pecked pebble from the Middle Paleolithic recovered more than 30 years ago in Axlor rockshelter in the Spanish Basque Country. At the time of the discovery, the piece was described as being deliberately modified, but since then it has been either ignored or described only as problematic evidence of Neanderthal symbolic behavior. In this work, we provide a new description and additional documentation of the piece, and we discuss its anthropic nature and the possibility that its meaning can be related to the small but credible record of graphic behavior known for early hominin groups prior to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The linear design theme of the Axlor piece is similar to that of other items made by European Neanderthals. These artifacts confirm the capability of pre-Homo sapiens sapiens humans to create and use portable “art.” This tradition is evidence of the emergence of “behavioral modernity” among late Neanderthals.

Paleolithic cave art is an exceptional archive of early human symbolic behavior, but because obtaining reliable dates has been difficult, its chronology is still poorly understood after more than a century of study. We present uranium-series disequilibrium dates of calcite deposits overlying or underlying art found in 11 caves, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo, and Tito Bustillo, Spain. The results demonstrate that the tradition of decorating caves extends back at least to the Early Aurignacian period, with minimum ages of 40.8 thousand years for a red disk, 37.3 thousand years for a hand stencil, and 35.6 thousand years for a claviform-like symbol. These minimum ages reveal either that cave art was a part of the cultural repertoire of the first anatomically modern humans in Europe or that perhaps Neandertals also engaged in painting caves.

The stratified site of Obishir-5 is one of the most important Final Pleistocene to Early Holocene sites in western Central Asia. In the Early Holocene component (10,700–8,200 cal BP) of this site (layers 2 and 3), we discovered one of the oldest and largest assemblages of soft stone ornaments known from the region. It includes 5 items: three oval, sub-triangular, and sub-rectangular pendants, one " labret "-like ornament, and one ornament blank. All specimens come from stratified and well-dated contexts. As a result of the petrographic, experimental, use-wear, and technological analysis, we reconstructed the chaîne opératoire of these artifacts. To produce them, local raw materials (talcite and serpentinite) were from a source located 4.5 km away from the site. Small pebbles, shatters, and spalls split from nodules were used as blanks. The surface of the blank was first prepared using grinders and burins, then biconical drilling and polishing were used to finish the artifact. Our results point to an established tradition of personal ornament production from soft stone in western Central Asia during the Early Holocene. Comparison of these nonutilitarian artifacts with those from other Final Pleistocene to Early Holocene archaeological complexes across Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Near East suggests that personal ornament manufacture may be an important hallmark of social developments across a broad geographic region.

The study of graphic convergences and divergences in Palaeolithic art is used to understand the culture, territories and interaction systems of human groups. The concept of graphic territory should be understood from a wide perspective. It represents a part of the symbolic territory and, at the same time, of the social territory. Therefore, graphic territory should be taken as the representation of convergences in form, techniques and/or style in the graphic language and expression of Palaeolithic groups.
The present reflection takes as its point of departure the bison in La Covaciella Cave in Cabrales, Asturias (north Spain). The ensemble consists of 15 animal representations, 14 linear motifs, four groups of dots, one geometric motif and one stain of colour. Radiocarbon dates are available for two bison: 14,260±130 BP (carbon) and 13,710±180 BP (humic acid fraction) for Bison 18, and 14,060±140 BP (carbon) and 13,290±140 BP (humic acid fraction) for Bison 20. These results correspond chronologically with the start of the middle Magdalenian or the very end of the lower Magdalenian.

Landscapes and features of the everyday world were scarcely represented in Paleolithic art, especially those features associated with the human landscape (huts and campsites). On the contrary, other figurative motifs (especially animals) and signs, traditionally linked to the magic or religious conceptions of these hunter-gatherer societies, are the predominant themes of Upper Paleolithic art. This paper seeks to present an engraved schist slab recently found in the Molí del Salt site (North-eastern Iberia) and dated at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, ca. 13,800 years ago. This slab displays seven semicircular motifs that may be interpreted as the representation of dome-shaped huts. The analysis of individual motifs and the composition, as well as the ethnographic and archeological contextualization, suggests that this engraving is a naturalistic depiction of a hunter-gatherer campsite. Campsites can be considered the first human landscape, the first area of land whose visible features were entirely constructed by humans. Given the social meaning of campsites in hunter-gatherer life-styles, this engraving may be considered one of the first representations of the domestic and social space of a human group.