Human responses to Late Pleistocene environmental change in South-Western France

Summary

A key question for archaeologists studying the late Pleistocene is how human populations responded and adapted to the dramatic, and often rapid, global climatic changes which characterised this glacial period. Using a range of archaeological data attributed to the Upper/Final Magdalenian and Azilian techno-complexes (15 000-10 000 uncal BP), this paper assesses the evidence for changes in settlement patterns and human demography during the Late Pleistocene in South-Western France. Data on numbers and location of archaeological sites, site size, and densities of material culture remains were analysed for differences which correlated chronologically with, and could potentially be attributed to; 1) the climatic warming of the Bölling/Alleröd interstadials (Greenland Interstadial 1), and; 2) the subsequent Younger Dryas cold period (Greenland Stadial 1) which interrupted the general trend of late-glacial warming. Drawing upon ethnographic data, I interpret these results with recourse to the ways in which hunter-gatherers both respond to, and are affected by, climatic and environmental change and the expected archaeological signatures of these effects and adaptations.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Human adaptations to environmental change during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene - Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage