Scenes of spectacular feasts: Gravettian hunters’ sites in Central Europe.

Summary

The Gravettian technocomplex arose about 30,000 years ago and expanded into nearly all of Europe during the next millennia. The most distinctive features of the individual stages of Gravettian cultures are backed bladelets, shouldered points, and zoomorphic and anthropomorphic art objects. Complex early Gravettian sites are found in South Moravia (Czech Republic), dated about 27-25,000 BP. Pavlov I and Dolní Vĕstonice I and II are long-term open-air campsites. Gravettian sites of a later phase are located in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, dated 24-20,000 BP. In the older sites, the human diet was diversified, shown by the presence of bones of different animal groups. At these sites, prey that was small (birds, hares, foxes) and medium size (wolf, reindeer, wolverine) dominate the osteological material, but large mammals (bears, cave lion, horse, mammoth) are also present. Taxa representation is roughly equal, showing that the prey spectrum was wide. In contrast, faunas from the younger Gravettian phase are strongly dominated by woolly mammoth or reindeer, suggesting a specialisation in hunting those animals. Gravettian people were efficient and skillful hunters, not afraid of confronting large and dangerous representatives of Pleistocene fauna. They also well utilised other resources of their environment.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Taphonomy to Human Ecology: Papers in Honor of Gary Haynes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage