UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Upper Palaeolithic Systematics


If not just looking at tool types but at dynamic systems of raw material procurement, technological practices and activity zones do "distinct industrial types" in the Bordean sense of discrete recurring assemblages of artifact clusters in fact exist"
(Sackett)

If so, do they correlate with climatic condition, site types, and faunal remains and do they have chronological patterning

If assemblages are studied in dynamic terms distinctions between typology and technology or between style and function no longer hold. They are constructs which we impose on the data in order to break variation up into manageable pieces which do not reflect the real situation or have anything to do with the makers and users of the tools, or the way they interact with the environment and with each other, either as groups or individuals.
The 'Bordean block' means that people are reluctant to abandon formal typologies but perhaps we should "stand on his shoulders rather than in his shadow." (Sackett)

The distinction between industries are exaggerated. e.g. Flake industries still exist in the Magdalenian due to raw material availability i.e. small gravel flint is flaked because it is not suitable for blade production.

Burins of the same type are found on different blanks.

Carinated end scrapers become nosed as part of a reduction sequence i.e. use and then reduction.

Variation reflects specialized functional tools within general tool kits .

Solutrean points are not new functional tools, they are projectile points made in a different way (i.e.. pressure retouch) therefore the technology used to make the tools is cultural indicative rather than the form of the tools ?

Rather than there being more typological variation in the upper Palaeolithic most industries are of 5-10 basic types if you 'lump' i.e. burins, end scrapers e.g. there is only a slight variation between bec and a piercer.

The variation between these generic tool types is slight, only the rare peripheral types vary e.g. at Solvieux 70% of some of the assemblages are of burins and end scrapers.

In the Magdalenian 1 at Solviex, dihedral burins, end scrapers and backed bladelets make up to 80% of the assemblage, dihedral burins alone account for 54%

Looking for activity differences:

Open sites found in upper Palaeolithic mean that spatial information is better than the rock shelters of the middle Palaeolithic, were the archaeological levels are relatively thick they probable represent palimpsests of a number of occupations rather than representing activity zones as is inferred from UP open sites.

At Flageolet 2 the spatial grouping of the artifacts is more due to the topography of the cave, with the large boulders and fluvial action, rather than being due to human activity.

La CERISIER has use modified burins with notches and denticulates- nothing like the rest of the Magdalenian so this must represent either a functional difference or a different ethnic group.

Does the upper Palaeolithic represent industrial polymorphism rather than standardized sets of tools ?

Fossil directoir have been used as chronological indicators
(e.g.. Azilian points = final Magdalenian) whereas the same assemblages without Azilian points would be called middle Magdalenian.

Does this simply reflect activities so that the presence or absence of Azilian points has no chronological significance.

Assemblages studied from the theoretical base of an organic model of diachronic change with the expectancy that at any given time the industry should be the same, wherever it is found, means that any significant variation must therefore be due to time differences.

With improvements in statigraphic studies and chronology it now seems there is much greater variability in contemporary assemblages than was thought i.e.. synchronous polymorphism
This will represent variability within a culture or different cultures overlapping in time.

This leads to the suggestion that we are dealing with an unbroken cultural continuum whose rate of evolution (development) could involve an exponential function that in the fore shortened perspective of the archaeological record gives the false appearance of abrupt transitions

These changes are gradual developments but to us they look abrupt especially if the classification device that we use (i.e..typology) exaggerates the differences and in fact imposes these discrete differences on a continuum.