Cross-referencing proxies to refine the Aurignacian socio-cultural geographies

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.

The Aurignacian is a pivotal technocomplex in European prehistory marked by the development of novel socio-economic strategies, and symbolic and cultural systems at a continental scale. In recent decades, efforts were made to outline the contour of the cultural provinces occupied by the human groups comprised within the Aurignacian metapopulation and to evaluate the nature and extent of their interactions. Here, we use continental-scale database on the morphology of Aurignacian osseous projectile points and personal ornaments to explore the cultural geography of Europe circa 35,000 years ago. Significant relationships between personal ornament types and point’s proximal morphologies allow the definition of three geographic clusters: southwestern France, southern Europe, and the area encompassing the Meuse watershed and the Swabian Jura. We then focus on connectivity between clusters and on the variability documented for sites that do not belong to one of them to discuss the factors, e.g., site function, cultural variability or boundary, that likely contributed to the emergence of original regional and local expressions.

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): 52153