Variability within the Aurignacian: New Research Outlooks

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Variability within the Aurignacian: New Research Outlooks" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since the early twentieth century, debates concerning the Aurignacian have focused largely on its definition and chronology. Research over the past three decades has helped ground both of these dimensions on much more solid empirical foundations, especially as concerns the reevaluation of material from classic sites complemented by the excavation of new archaeological deposits that have refined our understanding of its nature. This has led to a growing appreciation of the fact that, even at sites where it is well-dated and characterized, Aurignacian assemblages indicate a substantial amount of internal variability that opens up anthropological inquiry into human behavior over its course, eschewing prime movers and one-size-fits-all explanations. This session seeks to bring together scholars to discuss how to document, study, and interpret this dynamism as well as to present new deposits likely to inform us about the macro-scale level of variability within the Aurignacian technocomplex. Discussions assessing variability in dimensions other than lithic technology are particularly welcome.