ANTHROPOLOGIE

Volume 36/1-2, 1998, pp. 43-68

SOFFER O., ADOVASIO J. M., HYLAND D. C., KLÍMA B., SVOBODA J.
Perishable Technologies and the Genesis of the Eastern Gravettian

Past research on Paleolithic technologies has focused on the manufacturing and use of stone and, to a lesser extent, bone, antler, and ivory artifacts and the implications of these inventories for hunting strategies, subsistence practices, and settlement systems. Coeval technologies in less-durable media, sporadically reported from Paleolithic sites, have received much less attention and their implications for past lifeways have been left unexplored. This paper reports on numerous fiber, cordage, and textile impressions on fired clay fragments recovered from the Gravettian site of Pavlov I in the Czech Republic. This, together with coeval data from the nearby sites of Dolní Věstonice I and II, attests to the use of plant-derived fiber for the production of a broad range of perishable implements including cordage, possibly netting, and non-heddle-loom-woven twining 15,000-20,000 years before such items are documented in the European Mesolithic or Neolithic.
The extensive use of this perishable technology carries a number of important implications and ramifications concerning past human lifeways for this portion of Europe. Specifically, as suggested by ethnographic data indicating that the fibers most likely employed in perishables production were harvested and processed in the fall, the existence of this industry suggests the Moravian sites were also occupied during that season. Moreover, since ethnographic data also indicate that the procurement, processing, and use of plant fibers is strongly associated with females, we argue that women were present and processing these items in Upper Paleolithic Moravian sites, thus supporting their identification as base camps.
The existence of a fiber-based weaving technology at these sites, in what has heretofore been considered a big game hunting cultural milieu, indicates that our basic reconstructions and characterizations of this lifeway are in error. Instead of being dependent on hide and animal products processed largely as a consequence of stone and bone industries, at least some Upper Paleolithic groups led a far different life style in which fiber-based technologies played a major role, not only in storage and transportation needs, but also in basic food procurement. The group(s) who produced the Pavlov textiles also produced cordage and cordage byproducts like hunting nets and snares. This way of hunting is far different from directly confronting an animal with stone-tipped spears; first, it is communal, and second, it is far less stressful and dangerous. Both of these distinctions carry implications about selection pressures for morphology as well as for social organization.
Our findings suggest that the Gravettian adaptations – elaboration of processing rather than kill weaponry, large seasonal aggregations, and harvesting of numerous fur bearers – taken together, point to the central role played by hunting utilizing perishable technologies. Thus, we suggest that the genesis of Gravettian material culture inventories may not lie in the influx of new populations but in a change in hunting technology and the concomitant change in the organization of the hunt.

Gravettian – Pavlovian – Perishable technologies – Mass harvesting – Female labour