| Title: |
A quantitative analysis of Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic cultural taxonomy and evolution in Europe |
| Authors: |
Riede, Felix; Matzig, David; Biard, Miguel; Crombé, Philippe; de Pablo, Javier Fernández-Lopéz; Fontana, Federica; Groß, Daniel; Hess, Thomas; Langlais, Mathieu; Mevel, Ludovic; Mills, William; Moník, Martin; Naudinot, Nicolas; Posch, Caroline; Rimkus, Tomas; Stefański, Damian; Vandendriessche, Hans; Hussain, Shumon |
| Contributors: |
Aarhus University Aarhus; Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives (Inrap); Technologie et Ethnologie des Mondes Préhistoriques (TEMPS); Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (UP1)-Université Paris Nanterre (UPN)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universiteit Gent = Ghent University = Université de Gand (UGENT); Universidad de Alicante; Università degli Studi di Ferrara = University of Ferrara (UniFE); Zentrum für Skandinavische und Baltische Archäologie; De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie (PACEA); Université de Bordeaux (UB)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Palacky University Olomouc; Culture et Environnements, Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen-Age (CEPAM); Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA); Naturhistorisches Museum Wien = Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW / NHM); Klaipėda University Lituanie (KU); Archaeological Museum Kraków; Universität zu Köln = University of Cologne |
| Source: |
ISSN: 1932-6203. |
| Publisher Information: |
CCSD; Public Library of Science |
| Publication Year: |
2024 |
| Collection: |
Université Paris Lumières: HAL |
| Subject Terms: |
[SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory |
| Description: |
International audience ; Archaeological systematics, together with spatial and chronological information, are commonly used to infer cultural evolutionary dynamics in the past. For the study of the Palaeolithic, and particularly the European Final Palaeolithic and earliest Mesolithic, proposed changes in material culture are often interpreted as reflecting historical processes, migration, or cultural adaptation to climate change and resource availability. Yet, cultural taxonomic practice is known to be variable across research history and academic traditions, and few large-scale replicable analyses across such traditions have been undertaken. Drawing on recent developments in computational archaeology, we here present a data-driven assessment of the existing Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic cultural taxonomy in Europe. Our dataset consists of a large expert-sourced compendium of key sites, lithic toolkit composition, blade and bladelet production technology, as well as lithic armatures. The dataset comprises 16 regions and 86 individually named archaeological taxa (‘cultures’), covering the period between ca. 15,000 and 11,000 years ago (cal BP). Using these data, we use geometric morphometric and multivariate statistical techniques to explore to what extent the dynamics observed in different lithic data domains (toolkits, technologies, armature shapes) correspond to each other and to the culture-historical relations of taxonomic units implied by traditional naming practice. Our analyses support the widespread conception that some dimensions of material culture became more diverse towards the end of the Pleistocene and the very beginning of the Holocene. At the same time, cultural taxonomic unit coherence and efficacy appear variable, leading us to explore potential biases introduced by regional research traditions, inter-analyst variation, and the role of disjunct macroevolutionary processes. In discussing the implications of these findings for narratives of cultural change and diversification across the ... |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| Language: |
English |
| DOI: |
10.1371/journal.pone.0299512 |
| Availability: |
https://hal.science/hal-04502177; https://hal.science/hal-04502177v1/document; https://hal.science/hal-04502177v1/file/main.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299512 |
| Rights: |
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.BA017DBF |
| Database: |
BASE |