Grave goods from the Saint-Germain-la-Rivière burial: Evidence for social inequality in the Upper Palaeolithic

Rectangular Beads from the Final Gravettian Level of the Abri Pataud: Raw Material Identification and its Archaeological Implications

“…Th is choice could be linked not only with the mortuary context, but also with age, gender and social status of people who were buried (Vanhaeren & d'Errico, 2005). However, the comparison with the other French Final Gravettian sites is relatively limited: only two other sites, Les Peyrugues and Le Blot, provided similar rectangular beads and at Les Peyrugues these beads are supposed to be made of reindeer antler (Allard et al, 1997).…”

Supernaturalizing Social Life

“…This advance included more cooperative and effective hunting strategies, more sophisticated tool and cultural production, and dramatic increases in group size, social complexity, and political organization (Hayden 2003, pp 122-131;Mellars 1996;O'Shea and Zvelebil 1984;Vanhaerena and d'Errico 2005;see Dickson 1990, pp 84-92, 180-189 for a summary). Coincident with this social advance is the first evidence for the religious practices of shamanism, animism, and ancestor worship.…”

“…Resource abundance and technological advances allowed some Upper Paleolithic peoples to move from being egalitarian hunter-gatherers to transegalitarian or complex hunter-gatherers (Butzer 1971, pp 463;Dahlberg and Carbonell 1961;Dickson 1990, pp 182;Hayden 2003, pp 122-131;O'Shea and Zvelebil 1984;Price and Brown 1985;Vanhaerena and d'Errico 2005). Complex hunter-gatherers typically use more sophisticated technologies for harvesting and storing seasonally abundant resources (e.g., nets or traps to catch large quantities of fish during spawning season).…”

“…Burial sites such as Sungir (White 1993), Dolni Vestonice (Klima 1988), and Saint-Germain-la-Riviere (Vanhaerena and d'Errico 2005) attest to the presence of an elite class whose members were laid to rest with great ceremony and lavish grave offerings. Among more recent complex hunter-gatherers, burial of this character usually occurs under the expectation that the deceased is soon to take his or her place as a powerful ancestor in the supernatural realm (Hayden 2003, pp 239;Sandarupa 1996).…”

The causes and scope of political egalitarianism during the Last Glacial: a multi-disciplinary perspective

“…1), and even abandoned whole regions (Churchill et al 2000;Guthrie and Kolfschoten 2000). There are also some archaeological examples that may be interpreted as ascribed status during this period, such as burials in which children and adults were interred with rich assemblages of ornaments and ochre (Derev'anko 1998;Kuzmin 1997;White 1999;Vanhaeren and d'Errico's 2005). But the scarcity of these examples, combined with the lack of evidence for sedentism or cemeteries, makes it is doubtful that they constitute evidence for established, long-standing structures of political hierarchy in Palaeolithic Europe, and such a case has not been made in the literature.…”