Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:33:31.581Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Keeping Up with the Magdalenian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Clive Gamble
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The northern Magdalenian, as Rensink so clearly points out, has outstripped the efforts of ethnoarchaeologists to provide descriptive models of how it was organized. Perhaps with hindsight this was always going to be case since the models of land use and mobility which have been developed in the past thirty years were always more at home in the caves and abris of the southern Magdalenian. Here it was possible to describe assemblages as curated or expedient without having to worry too much about variation within sites, such as that now revealed by the complex settlement archaeology of say Verberie or Gönnersdorf. The only added complication in the southern Magdalenian was the cave art, but that could always be treated separately, and may have to be if the 30,000 bp plus dates for the new Ardèche cave are found to spill over into the Dordogne. I therefore agree with Rensink that we must become our own ethnographers of the Magdalenian rather than constantly trying to fit our patterns to those derived from a particular actualistic study. But in this respect it must be remembered that Binford, one of the suppliers of such models, has always warned against working towards definitions; the belief that by naming an assemblage as curated we have done a good archaeological job. Far from it. All we have achieved is a congratulatory nod towards our own descriptive systems. If we are to understand the palpable variation in the archaeological record then we must understand contexts and the conditions for their use which causes patterning in what was left behind. This requires a focus on what we mean by magdalenian society rather than concentrating solely on the properties of the adaptive system.

Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 1995 , pp. 107 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arts, N. and Deeben, J., 1987: On the northwestern border of Late Magdalenian territory. Ecology and archaeology of early Late Glacial band societies in northwestern Europe, in Burdukiewicz, J.M. and Kobusiewitz, M. (eds), Late Glacial in Central Europe. Culture and environment, Wroclaw, 25–66.Google Scholar
Audouze, F., 1992: L'occupation magdalénienne du Bassin parisien, in Le peuplement magdalénien. Paléogéographie physique et humaine, Paris (Actes du colloque de Chancelade), 345–356.Google Scholar
Audouze, F., Cahen, D., Keeley, L. and Schmider, B. 1981: Le site magdalénien du Buisson Campin à Verberie (Oise), Gallia préhistoire 24, 99–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Audouze, F. and Enloe, J. 1991: Subsistence strategies and economy in the Magdalenian of the Paris Basin, France, in Barton, N., Roberts, A.J. and Roe, D.A. (eds), The Late Glacial in north-west Europe. Human adaptation and environmental change at the end of the Pleistocene, London (Council for British Archaeology. Research report 77), 63–71.Google Scholar
Audouze, F., Karlin, C., Cahen, D., de Croisset, D., Coudret, P., Larrière, M., Masson, P., Mauger, M., Olive, M., Pelegrin, J., Pigeot, N., Plisson, H., Schmider, B. and Taborin, Y., 1988: Taille du silex et finalité du débitage dans la magdalénien du Bassin parisien, in Otte, M. (ed.): De la Loire à l'Oder. Les civilisations du Paléolithique final dans le nord-ouest européen, Oxford (British archaeological report. International series 444), 55–84.Google Scholar
Bender, B., 1985: Prehistoric developments in the American Midcontinent and in Brittany, Northwest France, in Price, T.D. and Brown, J.A. (eds), Prehistoric hunter-gatherers. The emergence of cultural complexity, New York, 21-57.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1973: Interassemblage variability. The Mousterian and the ‘functional’ argument, in The explanation of culture change, London, 227–254.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1977a: General introduction, in Binford, L.R. (ed.), For theory building in archaeology.: Essays on faunal remains, aquatic resources, spatial analysis, and systemic modeling, New York, 1–10.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1977b: Forty-seven trips. A case study in the character of archaeological formation processes, in Wright, R.V.S. (ed.), Stone tools as cultural markers, Canberra, 24–36.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1979: Organization and formation processes. Looking at curated technologies, Journal of anthropological research 35, 255–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1980: Willow smoke and dog's tails.: Hunter-gatherer settlement systems and archaeological site formation, American antiquity 45, 4–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1981a: Bones.: Ancient men and modern myths, New York/London.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1981b: Behavioral archaeology and the “Pompeii Premise”, Journal of anthropological research 37, 195–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1982: The archaeology of place, Journal of anthropological archaeology 1, 5–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1983: Working at archaeology, New York.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1989: Isolating the transition to cultural adaptations. An organizational approach, in Trinkaus, E. (ed.), The emergence of modern humans. Biocultural adaptations in the later Pleistocene, Cambridge, 18–41.Google Scholar
Bleed, P., 1986: The optimal design of hunting weapons, American antiquity 51, 737–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodu, P., 1991: Pincevent, site magdalénien, in Les premiers chasseurs dans la vallée de la Seine, Les dossiers d'archéologie 164, 60–67.Google Scholar
Bodu, , and Valentin, B., 1993: Nouvelles recherches sur le peuplement du Bassin Pansien au Tardiglaciaire, Mémoires du groupement archéologique de Seine-et-Marne 1, 79–86.Google Scholar
Bosinski, G., 1979: Die Ausgrabungen in Gönnersdorf 1968-1976 und die Siedlungsbefunde der Grabung 1968, Wiesbaden (Der Magdalénien-Fundplatz Gönnersdorf 3).Google Scholar
Bosinski, G. and Hahn, J., 1972: Der Magdalénien-Fundplatz Andemach (Martinsberg), Rheinische Ausgrabungen 11, 81–257.Google Scholar
Brunnacker, K., 1978: Geowissenschaftliche Untersuchungen in Gönnersdorf, Wiesbaden (Der Magdalénien-Fundplatz Gönnersdorf 4).Google Scholar
Charles, R., 1994: Towards a new chronology for the Lateglacial archaeology of Belgium. Part II: recent radiocarbon dates from the Oxford AMS system, Notae praehistoricae 13, 31–39.Google Scholar
Chatters, J.C., 1987: Hunter-gatherer adaptations and assemblage structure, Journal of anthropological archaeology 6, 336–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conkey, M.W., 1987: Interpretative problems in hunter-gatherer regional studies. Some thoughts on the European Upper Palaeolithic, in Soffer, O. (ed.), The Pleistocene Old World. Regional perspectives, New York, 63–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Constandse-Westermann, T.S. and Newell, R.R., 1991: Social and biological aspects of the western European mesolithic population structure. A comparison with the demography of North American Indians, in Bonsall, C. (ed.), The mesolithic in Europe, Edinburgh, 106–115Google Scholar
Dewar, R. and McBride, K., 1992: Remnant settlement patterns, in Rossignol, J. and Wandsnider, L. (eds), Space, time and archaeological landscapes, New York, 227–255CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewez, M., 1987: Le Paléolithique supérieur récent dans les grottes de Belgique, Louvain (Publications d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie de l'Université Catholique de Louvain 17).Google Scholar
Dupont, E., 1867: Etude sur l'ethnographie de l'Homme de l'Age du Renne, dans les cavernes de la vallée de la Lesse, Brussels (Mémoires Couronnés 19).Google Scholar
Dupont, E., 1872: L'homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre dans les environs de Dinant-sur-Meuse, Brussels.Google Scholar
Eickhoff, S., 1989: Zur Analyse der latenten Strukturen und der Siedlungsdynamik der Konzentration II von Gönnersdorf, Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums 36, 117–158.Google Scholar
Enloe, J.G., and David, F., 1992: Food sharing in the Paleolithic. Carcass refitting at Pincevent, in Hofman, J.L. and Enloe, J.G. (eds), Piecing together the past. Applications of refitting studies in archaeology, Oxford (British archaeological reports. International series 578), 296–315Google Scholar
Eriksen, B.V., 1991: Change and continuity in a prehistoric hunter-gatherer society. A study of cultural adaptation in late glacial-early postglacial southwestern Germany, Tübingen (Archaeologica Venatoria 12).Google Scholar
Féblot-Augustins, J., 1993: Mobility strategies in the Late Middle Palaeolithic of Central Europe and Western Europe. Elements of stability and variability, Journal of anthropological archaeology 12, 211–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Féblot-Augustins, J. and Perlès, C., 1992: Perspectives ethnoarchéologiques sur les échanges à longue distance, in Ethnoarchéologie. Justification, problèmes, limites, Juan-les-Pins (XIIè rencontres internationales d'archéologie et d‘histoire d‘Antibes), 195–209Google Scholar
Fox, R., 1967: Kinship and marriage, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Floss, H., 1991: Sur l'approvisionnement des matières premières au Magdalénien et Paléolithique final en Rhénanie (Bassin de Neuwied), in Les bassins du Rhin et du Danube au Paléolithique supérieur. Environnement, habitat et système d'échange, Liège (Etudes et recherches archéologiques de l‘Université de Liège 43), 104–113Google Scholar
Floss, H., 1994: Rohmaterialversorgung im Paläolithikum des Mittelrheingebietes, Bonn (Monographien Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum 21).Google Scholar
Franken, E. and Veil, S., 1983: Die Steinartefakte von Gönnersdorf, Wiesbaden (Der Magdalénien-Fundplatz Gönnersdorf 7).Google Scholar
Gamble, C.S., 1983: Culture and society in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe, in Bailey, G.N. (ed.), Hunter-gatherer economy in prehistory, Cambridge, 201–211Google Scholar
Gamble, C.S., 1986: The Palaeolithic settlement of Europe, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Gamble, C.S., 1993: Exchange, foraging and local hominid networks, in Scarre, C. and Healy, F. (eds), Trade and exchange in prehistoric Europe, Oxford (Oxbow monograph 33), 35–44Google Scholar
Gamble, C.S., in prep.: The palaeolithic societies of Europe, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Gardner, P.M., 1966: Symmetric respect and memorate knowledge: the structure and ecology of individualistic culture, Southwestern journal of anthropology 22, 389–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geneste, J.M., 1986: Zonation économique du milieu et organisation spatiale des vestiges dans des sites Moustériens du Sud-Ouest de la France, in Otte, M. (ed.), Colloque international l'Homme de Neandertal, Liège, 170–174Google Scholar
Gordon, B.C., 1988: Of men and reindeer herds in french magdalenian prehistory, Oxford (British archaeological reports. International series 390).Google Scholar
Gould, R.A., 1980: Living archaeology, New York.Google Scholar
Hahn, J., 1987: Aurignacian and Gravettian settlement patterns in Central Europe, in Soffer, O. (ed.), The Pleistocene Old World. Regional perspectives, New York, 251–261CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, B., 1981: Subsistence and ecological adaptations of modern hunter/gatherers, in Harding, R.S.O. and Teleki, G. (eds), Omnivorous primates, New York, 344–421Google Scholar
Isaac, G.L., 1978: The food-sharing behaviour of protohuman hominids, Scientific american 238, 90–118.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, A.W. and Earle, T., 1987: The evolution of human societies, Stanford.Google Scholar
Julien, M., 1987: Activités saisonnières et déplacements des Magdaléniens dans le Bassin parisien, in Otte, M. (ed.), Le Magdalénien en Europe. La structuration du Magdalénien, Liège (Etudes et recherches archéologiques de l'Université de Liège 38), 177–191Google Scholar
Keeley, L.H., 1988: Hunter-gatherer economic complexity and “population pressure“. A cross-cultural analysis, Journal of anthropological archaeology 7, 373–411.Google Scholar
Kelly, R.L., 1983: Hunter gatherer mobility strategies, Journal of anthropological research 39, 277–306.Google Scholar
Kuper, A., 1988: The invention of primitive society, London.Google Scholar
Layton, R., 1986: Political and territorial structures among hunter-gatherers, Man 21, 18–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R.B., 1976: !Kung spatial organisation: an ecological and historical perspective, in Lee, R.B. and deVore, I. (eds), Kalahari hunter-gatherers, Cambridge (MA), 73–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Léotard, J.M., 1993. Les premiers touristes de la Basse Lesse étaient magdaléniens. L'archéologie en région wallonne 1, 14–16.Google Scholar
Leroi-Gourhan, A., and Brézillon, M., 1966: L'Habitation magdalénienne no.1 de Pincevent près Montereau (Seine-et-Marne), Gallia préhistoire 9, 263–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leroi-Gourhan, A., and Brézillon, M., 1972: Fouilles de Pincevent. Essai d'analyse ethnographique d'un habitat magdalénien, Paris (Vlleme supplement à Gallia préhistoire).Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C., 1969: The elementary structures of kinship, Boston.Google Scholar
Löhr, H., 1979: Der Magdalénien-Fundplatz Alsdorf, Kreis Aachen-Land. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der funktionalen Variabilität jungpaläolithischer Stationen, Tübingen (PhD thesis, University of Tübingen).Google Scholar
Marks, A.E., 1983: The middle to upper palaeolithic transition in the Levant, Advances in world archaeology 2, 51–98.Google Scholar
Mauger, M., 1984: L'apport des microfossilcs dans l‘identification des silex. Exemple du Magdalénien de l'lle-de-France, Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 81, 216–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellars, P.A., 1989: Major issues in the emergence of modern humans, Current anthropology 30, 349–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, F. 1986: Pintupi country, Pintupi self. Sentiment, place and politics among Western Desert Aborigines, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Olive, M., Pigeot, N. and Taborin, Y., 1991: II y a 13.000 ans à Etiolles, Paris.Google Scholar
Otte, M. and Teheux, E., 1986: Fouilles 1986 à Chaleux, Notae praehistoricae 6, 63–77.Google Scholar
Patou, M., 1992: Apports de l'archéozoologie à la compréhension du peuplemcnt magdalénien dans le Bassin mosan (Belgique), in Le peuplement magdalénien. Paléogéographie physique et humaine, Paris (Actes du colloque de Chancelade), 309–316Google Scholar
Poplin, F., 1976: Les grands vertébrés de Gönnersdorf. Fouilles 1968, Wiesbaden (Der Magdalénien-Fundplatz Gönnersdorf 2).Google Scholar
Rensink, E., 1991: L'observation du gibier et le débitage des nucléus: un poste de guet du Magdalénien à Mesch (Limbourg, Pays-Bas), Helinium 31, 5–59.Google Scholar
Rensink, E., 1992: Eyserheide: A Late Magdalenian site on the fringe of the northern loessbelt, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 22, 315–327.Google Scholar
Rensink, E., 1993: Moving into the North. Magdalenian occupation and exploitation of the loess landscapes of northwestern Europe, Leiden (PhD thesis, Faculty of Pre- and Protohistory, Leiden University).Google Scholar
Roebroeks, W., Kolen, J., and Rensink, E., 1988: Planning depth, anticipation and the organization of Middle Palaeolithic technology: the “archaic natives” meet Eve's descendants, Helinium 28, 17–34.Google Scholar
Schmider, B., 1982: The Magdalenian culture of the Paris river-basin and its relationship with the Nordic cultures of the late Old Stone Age, World archaeology 14, 259–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmider, B., 1992: Marsangy. Un campement des dernières chasseurs magdaléniens, sur les bords de l'Yonne, Liège (Etudes et recherches archéologiques de l'Université de Liège 55).Google Scholar
Service, E.R., 1971 (2nd edition): Primitive social organization. An evolutionary perspective, New York.Google Scholar
Stapert, D., 1989: The ring and sector method. Intrasite spatial analysis of stone age sites, with special reference to Pincevent, Palaeohistoria 31, 1–57.Google Scholar
Stapert, D. and Terberger, T., 1989: Gönnersdorf concentration III. Investigating the possibility of multiple occupations, Palaeohistoria 31, 59–95.Google Scholar
Steward, J.H., 1936: The economic and social basis of primitive bands, in Lowie, R.H. (ed.), Essays in anthropology presented to A.L.Kroeber, Berkeley, 331–50Google Scholar
Straus, L.G., 1986: Late Würm adaptive systems in Cantabrian Spain. The case of eastern Asturias, Journal of anthropological archaeology 5, 330–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straus, L.G., 1991: The role of raw materials in Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic stone artifact assemblage variability in Southwest Europe, in Montet-White, A. and Holen, S. (eds), Raw material economies among prehistoric hunter-gatherers, Kansas (Publications in anthropology 19), 169–185Google Scholar
Terberger, T., 1988: Ein Zeltringbefund des Magdalénien-Fundplatzes Gönnersdorf, Neuwieder Becken, Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums 35, 137–159.Google Scholar
Veil, S., 1984: Siedlungsbefunde vom Magdalénien-Fundplatz Andernach. Zwischenbericht über die Grabungen 1979-1983, in Berke, H., Hahn, J. and Kind, C.J. (eds), Upper palaeolithic settlement patterns in Europe, Tübingen, 181–193Google Scholar
Vermeersch, P.M., Lauwers, R. and Van Peer, P., 1985: Un site Magdalénien à Kanne (Limbourg), Archaeologia Belgica 1, 17–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vermeersch, P.M., Symens, N., Vynckier, P., Gijselings, G. and Lauwers, R., 1987: Orp, site Magdalénien de plein air (comm. de Orp-Jauche), Archaeologia Belgica 3, 7–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weniger, G.C., 1987: Magdalenian settlement pattern and subsistence in Central Europe, in Soffer, O. (ed.), The Pleistocene Old World. Regional perspectives, New York, 201–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weniger, G.C., 1989: The Magdalenian in Western Central Europe. Settlement pattern and regionality, Journal of world prehistory 3, 323–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whallon, R., 1989: Elements of cultural change in the Later Palaeolithic, in Mellars, P. and Stringer, C. (eds), The human revolution. Behavioural and biological perspectives in the origins of modern humans, Princeton, 433–454Google Scholar
Winterhalder, B., 1981: Optimal foraging strategies and hunter-gatherer research in anthropology, in Winterhalder, B. and Smith, E.A. (eds), Hunter-gatherer foraging strategies. Ethnographic and archaeological analyses, Chicago, 13–35Google Scholar
Woodburn, J., 1980: Hunters and gatherers today and reconstruction of the past, in Gellner, E. (ed.), Soviet and western anthropology, London, 95–117Google Scholar
Woodburn, J., 1982: Egalitarian societies, Man 17, 431–51Google Scholar
Woodburn, J., 1988: African hunter-gatherer social organization: is it best understood as a product of encapsulation?, in Ingold, T., Riches, D. and Woodburn, J. (eds), Hunters and gatherers 1: history, evolution and social change, New York, 31–64.Google Scholar
Yellen, J.E., 1977: Ethnoarchaeology. Archaeological approaches to the present, New York.Google Scholar
Yellen, J.E., and Harpending, H., 1972: Hunter-gatherer populations and archaeological inference, World archaeology 4, 244–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed