Weichselian Climatic Fluctuations and Neanderthals’ Technical Behaviors 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.

During the Weichselian (MIS 5d–MIS 3), the climatic deteriorations and the rapid decrease of the temperatures caused significant difficulties for Neanderthal groups that had to cope with an increased seasonality of resources and faunal turnover. Central European Neanderthals reacted to these new ecological conditions by designing a toolkit composed of asymmetric bifacial knives, bifacial tools, foliate artefacts, and coin-like scrapers (groszaks). This new cultural facies of the Late Middle Paleolithic is named Micoquian (or Central-Eastern European Micoquian; CEEM) spreading from eastern France to Poland, Northern Caucasus, and Altai. This paper presents new technological data from several Micoquian sites in southern Poland. Our results indicate high mobility patterns with fragmented operative chains and toolkits composed of flakes, scrapers, and bifacial knives. The 3D shapes of Micoquian asymmetric bifacial tools were also compared using geometric morphometric analysis. The results indicate some morphological differences between the assemblages, probably related to the different site’s functions. Further comparisons with other Micoquian sites in Central Europe will reveal the Neanderthals’ flexibility in land use during environmental changes.

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): 36059.0