Cultural development or culturally specific way of living? A contribution on the ethnography of the Palaeolithic

Abstract

The presented contribution discusses the close relationship between Palaeolithic archaeology and ethnography. Therefore, the analysis of ways of living, both of recent and of fossil people, requires certain standards aiming towards the recognizing concepts inherent to one’s own culture. For that reason, this essay emphasizes stone artefacts as the prime object of prehistoric research. Specific methods are employed for their analysis, i. e. fitting together and mapping. If we consider only those results gained under the named premises, the emergence of sites at the beginning and at the end of the Palaeolithic can be interpreted as evidence for culturally specific ways of living. In the Lower Palaeolithic of Britain and northern France, the successive transformation of flint in the context of everyday human movement induced a widespread occurrence of single artefacts, in some places concentrated. In the late Upper Palaeolithic at the Lake Neuchâtel, the repeated consumption of the kill by few individuals with the help of heat led to the accumulation of flint, stone and bone close to the place of killing. By means of these two examples, the difference between  the beginning and end of the Palaeolithic can seem remarkably insignificant. We have left open the question whether both interpretations serve as models for other regions and periods of the Palaeolithic. Instead , we have dedicated the central interest of the paper on the emphasis of research object and methods, by exclusive means of which interpretations can be achieved.