A 41,500-Year-Old Decorated Ivory Pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland) Reveals the Earliest Punctate Ornament in Central Europe

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

It may be a cliché to say that art is a form of symbolic behavior and modern cognition as old as humankind itself. In Europe, recurring evidence of body decoration and artistic expression is associated with the emergence of cultural innovations introduced by Homo sapiens in the Upper Paleolithic. Thus far, the earliest manipulation of animal teeth to be used as pendants was found in Bulgaria at ∽46,000 BP. Successively, highly standardized manufacturing processes for producing ivory beads are documented in Aurignacian sites in the Swabian Jura and indirectly dated before 40,000 BP based on the chronostratigraphic succession. New cultural innovations emerged, such as making ivory figures and a novel type of punctate decoration used to transfer natural patterns into a new context. However, the timing of the beginning of this artistic explosion is still debated. Here we report the discovery and direct dating of a decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave in Poland. It was created at 41,500 BP, making it the earliest punctate ornament found in Central Europe so far. This finding demonstrates the importance of directly dating an object of Paleolithic art to explain the origin of communication, celebration, and expression of Homo sapiens in Europe.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35960.0