From Trinkets to Privileged Artifacts: The Transition in our Understanding of Paleolithic Personal Ornaments

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Among Paleolithic archaeologist, there is general consensus that body adornments are important for exploring the origins of cognitive, artistic and symbolic behavior from an evolutionary perspective. This view contrasts with how Palaeolithic ornaments were perceived during most of the twentieth century when they were rarely considered in debates concerning human evolution, art and symbolism. In this paper, we explore this shift in the understanding of beads, pendants and other similar artifacts and discuss epistemological challenges posed by the current revalorization of personal ornaments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25771