SignBase, a collection of geometric signs on mobile objects in the Paleolithic

Abstract

In the Paleolithic, geometric signs are abundant. They appear in rock art as well as on mobile objects like artworks, tools, or personal ornaments. These signs are often interpreted as a reflection of symbolic thought and associated with the origin of cognitively modern behavior. SignBase is a project collecting the wealth of geometric signs on mobile objects in the European Upper Paleolithic, African Middle Stone Age (MSA), as well as selected sites from the Near East and South East Asia. Currently, more than 500 objects of the Aurignacian techno-complex (ca. 43,000 to 30,000 years BP) are registered in SignBase. They are linked to information about geographic and archaeological provenience, the type of object and material, size and preservation, and respective literature references. We identify around 30 different sign types found on these objects across Europe in the Aurignacian and illustrate how SignBase can be used to analyze geographical clusters. Ultimately, we aim to enable quantitative analyses of abstract graphical expression before the emergence of writing.

New insights into the Upper Palaeolithic of the Caucasus through the study of personal ornaments. Teeth and bones pendants from Satsurblia and Dzudzuana caves (Imereti, Georgia)

“…Indeed, personal ornaments constitute a valuable archaeological category since a) they indicate shared aesthetic values and may serve as markers of social identity (be it a status [e.g., age-grade] or group [e.g. family, clan]; b) they have been used by a large number of ethnographically well-documented traditional societies combining both, their aesthetic and symbolic merits; c) they are common at UP sites, and d (they occur during this period in a great typological variety [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58]. It is thus essential to try to assess the preferences in a regional selection of the raw materials, supports and shapes of the ornaments-if any-and compare it with other areas.…”

A 41,500 year-old decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland)

“…The punctate decorative motif is one of the artistic innovations that developed during the Early Aurignacian 1 , 28 in Europe and the EUP in the Russian Plains 26 , 29 . Thus far, these marks on mobile objects have been interpreted as hunting tallies, arithmetic counting systems, or lunar notation 18 , whereas others have suggested aesthetic purposes 7 .…”

Iridescent Beetle Adornments Suggest Incipient Status Competition among the Earliest Horticulturalists in Bears Ears National Monument

“…Such coordination symbolism might characterize the widespread Paleolithic use of ostrich, marine shell, and bone-bead jewelry among Old World foragers as social networking media. In this view, relatively accessible, inexpensive bead jewelry and the symbols inscribed on them would have been part of mutually beneficial resource exchanges among neighboring groups, which would have signaled shared knowledge of exchange systems designed to smooth over incongruities in the spatiotemporal distribution of subsistence resources (Dutkiewicz et al 2020; Stewart et al 2020). Consequently, relatively “cheap” Paleolithic beads may have signaled supergroup membership in an economic system that solved coordination challenges to the mutual benefit of its constituent subgroups (sensu Wobst 1977).…”