Across Atlantic Ice

by Dennis J. Stanford

  ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

  Cave art became more common and more elaborate during the Solutrean, and both animal and abstract representations continued to develop. Large terrestrial animals such as horses and bison still dominated the subject matter, but there were now instances of great auks (figure 5.11a–b), river and marine fish (figure 5.11c–f), and other sea animals. The best examples of the last are walruses (figure 5.11g–i) and seals (figure 5.11j–l), but there is even a whale. These rare examples of marine animals are mainly in caves in northern Spain, but a cave found near Marseille in Mediterranean France is intriguing.37 Underwater cave explorers found Cosquer Cave; its entrance is well below the modern shore, but the cave interior eventually rises above sea level. There is no direct evidence that Solutrean people created the paintings in this cave, which is just outside the known geographic range of the Solutrean. But radiocarbon dates place the latest paintings at around 18,000 RCYBP, and the entrance would have been exposed only when the sea was near its lowest level during the LGM—that is, in Solutrean times. Along with the usual array of large mammals are several images of what are clearly bearded seals or walruses with lines running into them that we agree depict spears (figure 5.11h–i). Some multiple lines may represent nets (figure 5.11g). This is significant for two reasons. First, it shows that people near the LGM sea were well aware of sea mammals and hunted them. Second, it is clear that sea mammals were hunted before the presumed introduction of toggling harpoons during the Magdalenian.38

  Trout or salmon and flatfish are among the fish depicted in a number of Solutrean cave sites. River fish bones have been found in Solutrean levels at La Riera. While it is possible that flatfish could have been procured from a beach, they are more indicative of deeper water, which may be evidence that Solutrean people fished from watercraft.

  Depictions of three penguin-like birds represent the great auk, a large flightless bird that inhabited the ice edges of the North Atlantic until it was hunted to extinction during the early nineteenth century. This northern penguin could have been one of the favored prey of Paleolithic hunters, as it was for later seafaring people.

  Portable art in the form of carved bone and antler items and incised pebbles is relatively abundant. Incised stones are especially common in eastern Spain, with designs about equally divided between animal and abstract geometric representations.39

  HUMAN BURIAL

  Another aspect of the Solutrean that sets it apart from earlier and later cultures in the area is the lack of intentional human burial. Although this conclusion could be the result of sampling bias, it is unlikely that investigators would have missed human remains in the extensive excavations of Solutrean deposits, such as those in Laugerie Haute, had they existed. Poor preservation can also be ruled out because animal remains, even down to delicate fish bones, are preserved in some Solutrean deposits, and human remains have been found both above and below Solutrean strata. Perhaps the dead were buried in the elusive open-air settlements or in isolated locations away from dwellings; perhaps they were placed aboveground on scaffolds or the like. The lack of human remains has hampered our ability to make standard physiological comparisons. Refined genetics techniques are now making progress in recovering ancient DNA, and future studies hold great promise for tracing human gene flow and identifying the biological relationships among members of prehistoric cultural groups, but they will not help elucidate Solutrean relationships until human remains are found in good Solutrean contexts.

  ORIGINS AND THE END OF THE SOLUTREAN

  It is abundantly clear that the Solutrean was highly variable through space and time. Individual sites and layers within sites exhibit major differences, although at least some of these can be explained by the use of different sampling and excavation techniques. There may also be other differences in assemblages that are related to changes in site use through time, as well as regional differences, possibly related to local stone resources. Still, the underlying flaked stone technology was remarkably consistent, with the singular focus on bifacial thinning setting it apart from other western European Upper Paleolithic archaeological cultures. It was not a simple technology; it included methods and techniques as complex as those employed much later during the Neolithic.

  Bifacial flaking technology is not present in the earliest levels of the Solutrean, which is primarily identified by the introduction of flat (invasive) retouch and plane face points. There are two opposing explanations for the technology’s appearance: independent invention and diffusion. Philip Smith argues that the technology evolved in-place through time, whereas Jean-Philippe Rigaud and Jan Simek think the Solutrean had been fully developed elsewhere before appearing in Europe.40 It is interesting that arguments over Clovis origins have revolved around the same issues.

  In terms of technology and timing, there is a candidate for a Solutrean progenitor in the western Eurasian plain, known as the Streletskayan archaeological culture.41 It falls before the LGM and includes sophisticated bifacial thinning technology and possibly pressure flaking and heat treating. The main objection to this theory is that there is little evidence of contemporaneous bifacial flaking between the two widely separated areas. This is only a problem, however, if we assume that diffusion had to occur through slow group-to-group interaction or large-scale migration. Ideas transferred over long distances by solitary individuals would be virtually impossible to detect in the archaeological record. What if a Streletskayan knapper ended up in southwestern Europe? We would not expect to be able to trace his journey, but such a person could be responsible for the introduction of a new technology.

  Another possible antecedent for Solutrean bifacial flaking is in southern Britain, where thinned leaf-shaped bifaces (figure 5.12a–f) and plane face points have been recovered from sites more than 25,000 years old, although the specific context in each case is not clear.42 It is possible that these artifacts date to the same time as those in France and Spain. Since the British Isles were attached to France during the LGM, it is easy to imagine a direct cultural connection.

  On the basis of similar flaked stone technologies, the noted Paleolithic archaeologist Marcel Otte has proposed a North African origin for the southern Solutrean, even though this process would have required watercraft.43 Yet if the Paleolithic archaeologist Curtis Runnels is correct about boats getting to Crete 130,000 years ago, an excursion across the Strait of Gibraltar 110,000 years later does not seem far-fetched.44 Otte’s theory is contrary to the usual notion that people move to milder climes in the face of a glacial advance. On the other hand, drought might have pushed people out of North Africa. And who are we to say that only the things that make sense to us could possibly have happened? If we take this approach it is difficult to see why the High Arctic would ever have been colonized, let alone during the LGM. In any case, it is encouraging that other researchers are using the same kinds of archaeological comparative criteria that we are.

  Explanations for the origin of Solutrean biface technology that invoke independent invention are also well represented and often refer to the vague concept of adaptation to a changing environment. We find this less than compelling. To begin with, we have seen no good argument that there was a need for a new technology in the Solutrean environment. True, it was getting colder and drier, and hunting methods were probably changing, but this happened in many other places where biface technology was not developed. Additionally, the biface technology seems to precede the climate change. There are also examples of biface technology in almost every known climatic situation, from the Arctic to the full Tropics. In what way is bifacial technology superior and in what situations?

  FIGURE 5.12.

  British laurel leaf bifaces: (a–b) Soldier’s Hole; (c) Kents’ Cavern; (d) Inklingham; (e) Bury St. Edmunds; (f) Constantine Road.

  It will take a lot of work, with modern excavation methods, to sort out the origin of the Solutrean. Considering how long this archaeological culture has been studied, it is amazing how little we know about i
t, even in relation to earlier cultures in the same areas.

  What happened to the Solutrean is equally puzzling. It was a well-established tradition with a reasonable spatial distribution. Its propensity for innovation would seem to have made it supremely adaptable to changing environmental situations. Yet the Solutrean was replaced relatively quickly throughout its territory by the Magdalenian, which appears to be a descendant of the earlier Gravettian tradition adjusted to take greater advantage of local and maritime resources in coastal areas. During the Magdalenian we see the most complex development of representational and portable art in southwestern France and northern Spain, seemingly a continuation of a long-lived tradition. Curiously, with the exception of painted pebbles, the entire Upper Paleolithic rock art form vanished by about 12,000 years ago.

  Perhaps the Solutrean did not disappear when we think it did. What might be found in the huge areas that now lie beneath the Bay of Biscay and the vast sand mantle of the Landes? We suggest that it is productive to consider the possibility that Solutrean people became more and more efficient in exploiting the rich sea margin resources until eventually their range expansion led them to a whole new world in the west.

  PART 2

  THE SOLUTREAN HYPOTHESIS

  6

  QUANTITATIVE CULTURE COMPARISON

  A critical but particularly difficult aspect of identifying the origin of a specific population is establishing the existence of historical relationships between it and other archaeological cultures. It is one thing to look at a group of artifacts and say they are alike, another to conclude that the likeness indicates that they are related. In Stone Age archaeology we get only minuscule glimpses of the human record, and we seldom have solid information about the more abstract, nonphysical characteristics—such as language, religious beliefs, mythology, music, philosophy, and symbolism—that we tend to use to define culture and ethnicity. Archaeologists are obliged to focus on tool forms, settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, and other features that exist within the natural world, and therefore some come to think that the natural environment is the major determining force in culture. We see both natural and social environments as having strong influences on the choices people make.

  To understand and reconstruct broad historical connections between archaeological cultures, we have to clarify our assumptions. At what scale is it probable that two assemblages originated from a common base? When is it more likely that they are similar because there are a limited number of ways to make and use tools? In flaked stone technology (and elsewhere), the more generalized the level of similarity, the greater the chance of independent invention. Bifacial flaking is a basic approach to making usable tools and therefore very likely to have been independently developed by unrelated peoples. By contrast, the more complex the process and the greater the number of choices it entails, the less likely that it and even similar techniques would have been devised independently in different places. For example, the fluting of projectile points seems to be limited in time and space. The technical and conceptual complexities are such that most researchers would agree that fluted projectile points are probably historically related.

  It is appropriate at this point to ponder the meaning of independent invention. With only a few known exceptions, all people around the world at one time made stone tools. Archaeologists have established that stone flaking in Africa can be traced back at least 2.5 million years, and most of us presume that its invention was a single event from which all subsequent Stone Age technologies descended.1 Only if it were shown that an ancient group had been isolated from sources of flakable stone for a long time and then started flaking when its members moved to an area with suitable raw material where there weren’t already people to learn from would we consider the possibility that they reinvented the process.

  When Upper Paleolithic blade-making people abandoned blades and produced flakes instead, was this an invention? Weren’t their ancestors making flakes during the Middle Paleolithic? Was this then reinvention? What influence might mythology and history have had on the reintroduction of an ancient technology? Can the same questions be asked of specific specialized flaking techniques and methods?

  Complex biface thinning appeared around 25,000 years ago in a small part of southwestern Europe and lasted for a relatively short time. How are we to determine whether this was a local invention, an import, or the resurgence of an ancestral technology? In the first instance we would have to identify a developmental sequence in the area. In the second we would have to find an earlier example that could have been brought there. In the third we would have to trace the history of the culture back through time and space. All of these approaches are extremely difficult to accomplish.

  We presume that most needs for basic stone tools were the same worldwide and that they were met through intentional tool manufacture. To butcher an animal, people needed sharp, durable cutting edges. To turn an animal hide into usable leather, a scraping tool was required. We also presume that Stone Age peoples operated within established flaked stone technological traditions and that when the need arose for a new tool, their first avenue of experimentation would have been within the tradition they knew. Since different technologies can be used to produce equally functional tools, we see a plethora of different tool forms developed and used to accomplish the same tasks.

  An excellent example of this is provided by comparing the projectile points at the sites of Amvrosievka, Ukraine, and Horner, Wyoming.2 In both places many large bison were killed with stone projectile points and subsequently butchered with stone tools. At Amvrosievka the flaked stone projectile point tradition was inset blade: segments of small blades were glued into grooves cut along the sides of sharpened bone points. At Horner single points made in a bifacial tradition were hafted to a spear or dart. Even though they represented very different technological traditions, both weapon systems were effective.

  MIND OVER MATTER

  Just how strongly do people hang onto their traditional technology? One extreme case saw a new, unfit raw material bent to technology instead of the converse. During the Middle Paleolithic, between approximately 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, Europe, western Asia, and North Africa had a highly formalized and complex flake production technology now called Levallois. A core was created so that a single large flake, the same shape as the core, could be produced. These flakes were used as and modified into tools. The cores were then shaped into disks, with one face having a low, evenly convex face. After careful platform preparation, a flake was struck from this face that was also basically disk-shaped and had sharp edges all around, except for the platform. Once developed, this technology survived for millennia with a tenacity seldom seen elsewhere in the archaeological record.

  At some point, people who used the Levallois technique occupied an area along the Middle Nile River. The only flakable stone there was small pebbles, less than 10 centimeters long, of fine-grained flint, with hard exterior surfaces and rounded sides and ends. It is extremely difficult to flake these pebbles within the Levallois tradition. To archaeologists and modern knappers, who expect the form and size of stone to influence technology, this would have been an ideal situation for a change in technique. Nevertheless, the Levallois tradition was so strong that the Middle Paleolithic knappers found a way to stick to it. First they knocked off both ends of the intractable pebbles, producing sharp opposing angles. Then they removed small bladelets from both ends, overlapping in the middle of the core. One end was used to prepare a typical Levallois faceted platform, from which was struck a Levallois flake.

  In my experience this technique is a real challenge, and there is no indication that the bladelets were used. This is an absolutely amazing example of imposing a traditional technology on a difficult stone form. Once a Levallois knapper, always and only a Levallois knapper. Bruce

  Once traditions have become established, how they changed and what contributed to the changes are important archaeological issues. One of the new theoretical o
rientations, called processual archaeology, bases many of its assumptions on adaptation as an explanation for change in the archaeological record.3 This approach sees independent invention of the same technologies as a possible adaptive response to similar conditions. In flaked stone technology, adaptation could be expressed by the appearance of new tool types to exploit a changing or new environment or the adjustment of a technology to allow for exploitation of new stone sources. But although we recognize the influence of changing stone sources on flaked stone technologies, we presume that people would have imposed their traditional technology on new situations before trying something altogether different. We also disagree with processual archaeology’s underlying assumption that early people would have experimented to find the most effective and efficient way to make the tools they needed and accomplish necessary tasks. The archaeological record does not always support this “evolutionary technology” concept. Earlier technology may have been about achieving not perfection but simple adequacy.

  How does all of this relate to our goal of identifying the origins of Clovis? We see Clovis flaked stone technology as distinctive, highly developed, and complex. This implies an antecedent with significant history; that is, Clovis is a “deep technology,” the result of long-term development. It is unlikely that this complicated and effective approach to making stone tools was a rapid adaptation to particular local conditions. Its extraordinary utility is implied by its success in virtually every known ecological setting from the subarctic to the subtropics. This technology was imposed on diverse local environments and conditions rather than created by them.