Investigating the Aurignacian as basic science in paleoanthropology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Variability within the Aurignacian: New Research Outlooks" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Probably more so than any other technocomplex, research on the Aurignacian sensu lato has been a crucible of basic science in Paleolithic archaeology and paleoanthropology. Over the past century and a half, steady research on this industry has greatly refined our understanding of its defining features and, increasingly, its internal variability, leading researchers to investigate it from a holistic anthropological perspective. However, its age, its context, association with scant human remains and with new technologies and exploited prey species have also led to the development of cutting-edge methods to investigate it and its material manifestations. In many cases, these methods have subsequently been incorporated into day-to-day research in other Paleolithic contexts, thus yielding fundamental new data to contextualize the adaptation of various hominin groups over time. This paper presents an overview of what this implies for research into this technocomplex going forward and for how we consider its place in the development of paleoanthropology as a discipline overall.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Variability within the Aurignacian: New Research Outlooks

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51036