For a fistful of geometric microliths: Reflections on the Sauveterrian industries from the upper and middle Ebro Basin (Spain)

Soto, Adriana; Domingo, Rafael; García-Simón, Luis Miguel; Ruiz, Alfonso Alday; Montes, Lourdes

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2019.09.044

Cited by 10 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…96,97]. Other recent work has used labels such as 'Sauveterrian' or 'Sauveterroid Epipalaeolithic' in reference to lithic assemblages dated to the onset of the Younger Dryas [96,98], well before the oldest recognition of the Sauveterrian/Sauveterriano NAC in Southern France and Northern Italy where they tend to date to the Preboreal and Boreal [65]. The semantic similarity between these labels may be at odds with the features defining these cultural phenomena.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A quantitative analysis of Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic cultural taxonomy and evolution in Europe

Riede,

Matzig,

Biard

et al. 2024

PLoS ONE

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Archaeological systematics, together with spatial and chronological information, are commonly used to infer cultural evolutionary dynamics in the past. For the study of the Palaeolithic, and particularly the European Final Palaeolithic and earliest Mesolithic, proposed changes in material culture are often interpreted as reflecting historical processes, migration, or cultural adaptation to climate change and resource availability. Yet, cultural taxonomic practice is known to be variable across research history and academic traditions, and few large-scale replicable analyses across such traditions have been undertaken. Drawing on recent developments in computational archaeology, we here present a data-driven assessment of the existing Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic cultural taxonomy in Europe. Our dataset consists of a large expert-sourced compendium of key sites, lithic toolkit composition, blade and bladelet production technology, as well as lithic armatures. The dataset comprises 16 regions and 86 individually named archaeological taxa (‘cultures’), covering the period between ca. 15,000 and 11,000 years ago (cal BP). Using these data, we use geometric morphometric and multivariate statistical techniques to explore to what extent the dynamics observed in different lithic data domains (toolkits, technologies, armature shapes) correspond to each other and to the culture-historical relations of taxonomic units implied by traditional naming practice. Our analyses support the widespread conception that some dimensions of material culture became more diverse towards the end of the Pleistocene and the very beginning of the Holocene. At the same time, cultural taxonomic unit coherence and efficacy appear variable, leading us to explore potential biases introduced by regional research traditions, inter-analyst variation, and the role of disjunct macroevolutionary processes. In discussing the implications of these findings for narratives of cultural change and diversification across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, we emphasize the increasing need for cooperative research and systematic archaeological analyses that reach across research traditions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%