Humans at the End of the Ice Age: The Archaeology of the Pleistocene—Holocene Transition

379 Pages·1996·10.12 MB·English

by  Lawrence Guy Straus (auth.)

Humans at the End
of the lee Age
The Archaeology of the
Pleistocene-Holocene
Transition
INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHAEOLOGY
Series Editor: Michael]ochim, University of Califomia, Santa Barbara
Founding Editor: Roy S. Dickens, Jr., Late of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hili
Current Volurnes in This Series:
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF WEAL TH
Consumer Behavior in English America
James G. Gibb
CASE STUDIES IN ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Edited by Elizabeth J. Reitz, Lee A. Newsom, and Sylvia J. Scudder
CHESAPEAKE PREHISTORY
Old Traditions, New Directions
Richard J. Dent, Jr.
DARWINIAN ARCHAEOLOGIES
Edited by Herben Donald Graham Maschner
DIVERSITY AND COMPLEXITY IN PREHISTORIC MARITIME SOCIETIES
A Gulf of Maine Perspective
Bruce J. Bourque
HUMANS AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE
The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition
Edited by Lawrence Guy Straus, Berit Valentin Eriksen, Jon M. Erlandson and
David R. Yesner
PREHISTORIC CULTURAL ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Insights from Southern Jordan
Donald O. Henry
REGIONAL APPROACHES TO MORTUARY ANALYSIS
Edited by Lane Anderson Beck
STATISTICS FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS
A Commonsense Approach
Roben D. Drennan
STONE TOOLS
Theoretical Insights into Human Prehistory
Edited by George H. Odell
STYLE, SOCIETY, AND PERSON
Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives
Edited by Christopher Carr andJill E. Neitzel
A Chronological Listing of Volurnes in this series appears at the back of this volurne.
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Humans at the End
of the lee Age
The Archaeology of the
Pleistocene-Holocene
Transition
Edited by
LA WRENCE GUY STRAUS
University 01 New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
BERIT VA LE NT IN ERIKSEN
University 01 Aarhus
H0jbjerg, Denmark
JON M. ERLANDSON
University 010regon
Eugene, Oregon
and
DA VID R. YESNER
University 01 Alaska
Anchorage, Alaska
PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Humans at the end of the Ice Age : the archaeology of the Pleistocene
-Holocene transition I edited by Lawrence Guy Straus ... [et al.l.
p. cm. -- (Interdisciplinary contributions to archaeology>
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-306-45177-8
1. Man, Prehistoric. 2. Man--Influence of climate.
3. Agriculture--Origin. 4. Paleoecolo~y--Holncene.
5. Paleoecology--Pleistocene. 6. Glacial epoch. I. Straus,
Lawrence Guy. II. Series.
GN741.H85 1996
930.1--dc20 96-8914
CIP
ISBN 978-1-4612-8447-5 ISBN 978-1-4613-1145-4 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-1-4613-1145-4
© 1996 Plenum Press, New York
Softcover reprint of hardcover 1s t edition 1996
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N. Y. 10013
1098765432
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or
otherwise, without written.permission from the Publisher
Contributors
C. Melvin Aikens • Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
97403-1218
Takeru Akazawa • University Museum, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113, Japan
Jim Allen • Department of Archaeology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083,
Australia
David G. Anderson • National Park Service, Atlanta, Georgia 30303
Ofer Bar-Yosef • Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Robson Bonnichsen • Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis,
Oregon 97331
Luis Alberto Borrero • Prehistoric Studies Program, University of Buenos Aires, 1039
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Angela E. Close • Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash
ington 98195
Pavel M. Dolukhanov • Department of Archaeology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle
upon-Tyne NEl 7RU, United Kingdom
Berit Valentin Eriksen • Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Aarhus,
Moesgaard, 8270 H0jbjerg, Denmark
]on M. Erlandson • Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
97403-1218
George C. Frison • Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyo
ming 82071
Albert C. Goodyear • Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South
Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208
Michael A.]ochim • Department of Anthropology, University of Califomia, Santa Barbara,
Califomia 93106
v
vi CONTRIBUTORS
Peter Kershaw • Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash Univer
sity, Melboume 3168, Australia
Peter J. Mitchell • Pitt Rivers Museum Research Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford
OX2 6PN, United Kingdom
Dan E Morse • Arkansas Archeological Survey, State University, Arkansas 72467
Madonna L. Moss • Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
97403-1218
John E. Parkington • Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch
7700, Cape Town, South Africa
Surin Pookajom • Faculty of Archaeology, Silpakom University, Bangkok 10200, Thailand
William R. Powers • Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska
97707
Romuald Schild • Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences,
00-140 Warsaw, Poland
Lawrence Guy Straus • Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albu
querque, New Mexico 87131
Royden Yates • Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700,
Cape Town, South Africa
David R. Yesner • Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska
99508
Preface
This book is about the diverse responses ofhuman societies worldwide to the environmental
changes of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition between 13,000 and 8,000 years ago. Those
changes were extreme in many regions, especially at the middle and high latitudes, and
attenuated in equatorial regions. But in all inhabited continents, there were shifts in climate,
seasonality, sea levels, ice cover, vegetation, fauna, and soils across the Last Glacial
Interglacial boundary. Just as some aspects of environmental change were abrupt and others
more gradual, so too were the adaptive reactions ofhuman forager groups around the world.
This book chronicles and explores the significance of the variety of cultural responses.
The transition from the Last Glacial to the Present Interglacial, centered on 10,000 BP
and now known in great detail, was just one of a couple of dozen such transitions that have
occurred since the Cenozoic Ice Ages began some 2.5 million years ago. Yet only at this last
glacial-interglacial boundary were there anatomically modem humans living on all the conti
nents and major islands (except Antarctica and Greenland), at relatively high densities in
some regions, and in some cases at fairly high latitudes. And only shortly after this glacial
interglacial transition did many human groups find it necessary or at least very useful to
adopt food production, shifting from a 5-million-year-old universal subsistence strategy of
pure exploitation of wild food resources that had involved gathering, scavenging, hunting,
and eventually fishing. What was it about the last glacial-interglacial transition that was
different? What was this transition so significant in the history of our hominid family? A
subtext of this book is this question: Why was agriculture adopted quickly thereafter in
some regions but not in others? Why did hunter-gatherers successfully adapt as such in
many regions and in some cases survive into the twentieth century?
This volume includes chapters by speciahsts in the Late Last Glacial prehistory of many
of the most -studied regions of the world. Each addresses in his or her own way the specific
nature and consequences of the environmental changes of the end of the Pleistocene,
detailing the nature, speed, and magnitude of the cultural changes that occurred in the
chosen regions. Continental overviews and comparisons are provided throughout by the
volume's editors and in a general concluding chapter by series editor Michael Jochim,
himself a specialist in hunter-gatherer ecology and in the prehistory of the transition in
Germany.
The volume had its origin in and is the first publication of a Working Group on
Archeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, established by Hans-Jurgen Müller-
vii
viii PREFACE
Beck, President of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) Commission
for the Paleoecology of Early Man. Preliminary versions of the chapters were presented at
the 1994 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Anaheim, California, with
financial support from Müller-Beck and the International Research and Exchanges Board.
LAWRENCE GUY STRAUS
Chair of the INQUA Working Group
Contents
PART I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 1. The World at the End of the Last Ice Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Lawrence Guy Straus
PART 11. THE PLEISTOCENE-HOLOCENE TRANSITION IN AFRICA
AND THE NEAR EAST 11
Lawrence Guy Straus
Chapter 2. At the Transition: The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-
Holocene Boundary in Southern Africa ..................... 15
Peter ]. MitchelI, Royden Yates, and John E. Parkington
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Palaeoenvironmental Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Cultural-Stratigraphic Framework .................................. 18
Subsistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Art, Personal Ornament, and Burial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Changes in Human Settlement Patterns, Demography, and Interaction .. . . . . . . . 28
Discussion ......................................................... 33
References ...... .................................................. 36
Chapter 3. Plus 'a Change: The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in
Northeast Africa ........................................ 43
Angela E. Close
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Environments of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition ...................... 43
Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition ....................... 46
Conclusion and Aftermath ............................................ 56
References 57
ix
x Contents
Chapter 4. The Impact of Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Climatic
Changes on Humans in Southwest Asia .................... 61
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
The Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
General Considerations in Reconstructing the Paleoclimatic Sequence of
Southwest Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
The Reconstructed Paleoclimatic Sequence ............................... 66
The Impact of Climatic Changes on Humans ............................. 68
The Impact of Climatic Changes on Cultural Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
References ......................................................... 74
PART III. THE PLEISTOCENE-HOLOCENE TRANSITION IN EUROPE 79
Berit Valentin Eriksen
Chapter 5. The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in
Southwest Europe ....................................... 83
Lawrence Guy Straus
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Chronostratigraphie and Paleoclimatic Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Traditional Cultural-Historical Frameworks .............................. 87
Resources and Subsistence Strategies .................................... 90
Conclusions ........................................................ 94
References ......................................................... 96
Chapter 6. Resource Exploitation, Subsistence Strategies, and
Adaptiveness in Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Northwest
Europe ................................................ 101
Berit Valentin Eriksen
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 10 1
Geographie Study Areas .............................................. 102
Geochronologieal Framework-Climate and Vegetation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
The Faunal Remains-Source Evaluation and Fauna History ................ 110
Exploiting the Faunal Resources-Subsistence Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
References ......................................................... 125
Chapter 7. The North European Plain and Eastern Sub-Balticum between
12,700 and 8,000 129
BP .....................................
Romuald Schild
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 129