Hunters between East and West

The Paleolithic of Moravia

INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHAEOLOGY

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Hunters between East and West

The Paleolithic of Moravia

]IIh SVOBODA Academy of Sciences

Brno-Dolni VCstonice, Czech Republic v

VO]ENLOZEK Academy of Sciences

Prague, Czech Republic

and v

EMANUEL VLCEK National Museum

Prague, Czech Republic

SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC

Llbrary of Congress Cataloglng-in-Publication Data

Svoboda, Jir i. Hunters between East and West , the Paleolithic of Moravia 1 Jiri

Svoboda, Vojen Lozek, and Emanuel Vlcek. p. cm. -- <Interdisciplinary contributions ta archaeologyl

Includes bibliographical references <p. l and index. ISBN 978-1-4899-0294-8 ISBN 978-1-4899-0292-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0292-4 1. Paleolithic period--Czech Republic--Moravia. 2. Moravia <Czech

Republicl--Antiquities. I. Lozek, Vojen. II. Vlcek, Emanuel. III. Title. IV. Series. GN772.22.C94S96 1996 943.7'02--dc20

ISBN 978-1-4899-0294-8

© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1996

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996

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IN MEMORIAM

The Paleolithic People of Moravia

Foreword

At first glance, the archaeological record of Moravia has been quite visible in the Anglophone world. Bits and pieces of this record have repeatedly made headlines in both the general and the specialized press for close to a century. First, it was the discovery of a mass grave of some 21 individuals found at the Upper Paleolithic site of Pfedmosti, then the oldest evidence for ceramic technology reported in the first quarter of this century in the Illustrated London News. Later on, the site of Petfkovice, dating some 23,000 B.P., produced evidence for the oldest burning of coal for fuel, while more recently the New York Times informed us that imprints in clay at Pavlov I attest to the oldest evidence for the making and use of textiles. This list of cultural innovations documented from Moravia can be expanded to include the use of ground stone technology to make stone pendants (e.g., at Pfedmosti), oflarge ground-stone rings whose use remains enigmatic (e.g., at Bmo II, Predmosti, and Pavlov I)-but which if found in more recent contexts would pass as querns-as well as of possible needles (again at Predmosti). These exciting finds came from equally spectacular contexts: sites with numerous complex features including kilns (Dolni \lestonice I), boiling pits (Dolni \lestonice II), dwellings curbed with mammoth bones (Dolni \lestonice I and Milovice), bone dumps containing remains of up to 1000 mammoths (Predmosti, smaller numbers found at Dolni \lestonice I), and singular as well as multiple internments, some of which were accompanied by the richest of burial inventories (Brno II, for example).

This spectacular record has inspired artists and writers to offer us their versions of life in Paleolithic Moravia (e.g., the paintings of Burian or Auel's Plains of Passage). Furthermore, especially in the last 20 years or so, the Moravian Paleolithic record has also been incorporated into our introductory textbooks on prehistory. These inclu­sions have, however, been very patchy and opportunistic-incorporating some Moravian data to compare and contrast to evidence from other parts of the Paleolithic world. Nor has this database fared better in the archaeological literature. When acknowledged, it has generally been used highly selectively and anecdotally: bits of data have been cited when supportive, and the data have been ignored when they

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viii FOREWORD

undermine the arguments being made. Such episodic and often acontextual use of the

Moravian record, a use designed to titillate rather than explain, came about for a variety of reasons, and the result is that the sum total of this record and its significance are poorly known to scholars outside Moravia. Yet this is a record, coming as it does from the very center of Europe, which clearly needs to be known if we are to document

fully the range of variability in Pleistocene adaptations and to explain satisfactorily the

culture change during the Paleolithic. There are a number of reasons why we know so little about the Moravian record.

First, in contrast to the coverage of both Western and Eastern Europe, until recently

there has never been a synthetic work-either in Czech or in any other language­

presenting the sumtotal of the archaeological and paleontological evidence available. This book represents the first such monograph in English, an earlier version, Paleolit Moravy a Slezska, having come out in the Czech Republic in Czech in 1994. Second, although scholars working in Moravia (where, asjifi Svoboda documents, Paleolithic research has a tradition that is more than 100 years old) did regularly publish their

research findings, these publications were usually in languages poorly known by a large number of specialists, especially Anglophone ones: Czech and German. In

addition, these findings were often published in regional journals and almanacs which were, and continue to be, very difficult to obtain. Furthermore, scholars working in

Moravia, a region lying "betwixt and between" the west and the east of Europe, were affected not only by prehistoric research traditions, but also by the political turbu­lences of the day. These realities led to viewing (presenting) the Moravian record first in the light of that from France and then, a short time later, in the light of data from points further east.

Happily, in the appropriately and poignantly titled Hunters between East and West: The Paleolithic of Moravia, this unfortunate tendency has now been brought to a halt and English-language readers are offered a firsthand look at this important record "as is." This book goes a long way toward reducing our extant information gap. It is a rich and a multifaceted contribution to the literature written by three preeminent Czech specialists: an archaeologist (Svoboda), a geologist (Lozek), and a paleoanthropologist (Vlcek). Their combined expertise is skillfully blended to produce an authoritative

synthesis of the pertinent Moravian data. The book begins with a thorough review of the history of Paleolithic research in Moravia, an exposition which contextualizes both

the questions asked and what is known within specific research traditions and historical times. The Pleistocene environments extant in Moravia at various points in

time are next examined by Lozek, with an eye both to delimiting their different

characteristics during glacial versus interglacial times and to outlining the challenges they posed for successful human occupation. In Chapter 3, Vlcek discusses the fossil record of Moravia and its neighbors and offers his interpretations of the significance of population replacements versus in situ developments there. The following four chap­ters present the Moravian archaeological record for the different periods of Pleistocene time, offering quantified data not only on traditional technotypologies but on the use of raw materials and their procurement. In the concluding chapter, Svoboda notes that regional surveys have had a long history in Moravia and concludes that the record on

FOREWORD ix

hand today probably faithfully mirrors what has been preserved. He then goes on to discuss the regional pattern in the distribution of the sites and the changes in their location through time.

These eight chapters rightfully contain many provocative hypotheses about human evolution, adaptations, and behavior during the Pleistocene. Some of these will find easy acceptance among Anglophone specialists, while others will undoubt­edly generate debate. What is equally significant and most laudable is that all of the chapters also present a myriad of quantified primary data in narrative, tabular, and figurative form on such things as the hominid fossil remains, lithic inventories, and radiocarbon dates. This emphasis on presenting as much of the database as possible is further augmented by two extremely useful appendixes, one of which catalogs all of the important Pleistocene sites in Moravia and the other of which lists the sites and pertinent references to the published literature on them. The exemplary format of this volume thus not only informs but also encourages interested readers either to use these data in their own research or to verify the interpretations offered by the authors of this book.

Hunters between East and West: The Paleolithic of Moravia is a most important addition to our literature about Paleolithic Europe. Our current literature on Paleo­lithic adaptations in Europe makes many claims. These, too often, are based on data gathered in one part of the world-usually Western Europe-extended and writ large to blanket the rest. By closing the extant "information gap," Svoboda, Lozek, and Vlcek challenge scholars working in the field to include these data in their continent­wide constructs. Testing such constructs against this "new" database will eliminate some ideas, strengthen others, and permit us a richer and more catholic understand­ing of our distant past.

OLGA SOFFER

University of Illinois Urbana. Illinois

Preface

In 186 7 Dr.]. Wankel, from the small town of Blansko in the Moravian Karst, opened the first Paleolithic excavation in the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire: the Byci skala Cave. Since that time, a number of other excavated caves, such as Pekama, Sipka, Mladec, and Kulna, together with open-air loess sites like Pfedmosti, Dolni Yestonice, and Pavlov have completed the Paleolithic record of Moravia. The past was rich in fieldwork and splendid discoveries, but today more emphasis should be placed on resuming and interpreting the record. Even if part of this material-namely, some human fossils-was destroyed at the end of World War II, institutions like the Anthropos Department of the Moravian Museum (Bmo), the Paleolithic and Paleo­ethnology Department of the Institute of Archaeology, the Academy of Sciences (Dolni Yestonice), other large museums (Olomouc, Opava), a network of regional museums, and, outside Moravia, the Natural History Museum (Vienna) have been able to concentrate important Paleolithic collections.

The regional record of Moravia may contribute to a number of more general questions. Traditionally, the Pleistocene deposits of Central Europe-namely, the loess-are used to create the stratigraphic and chronological framework of the period and to reconstruct past climates. Second, the archaeological record documents com­plex social development in a zone connecting, in fact, the east and west of Paleolithic Europe; Moravia and the adjacent part of Lower Austria create the most important system of lowland passages open to mammal herd migrations, human settlement systems, and lithic raw-material imports. Third, this territory may contribute, from its regional perspective, to hotly debated topics like the dispersal of modem humans and the development of the Upper Paleolithic. It has yielded a few fragmented Neander­thal fossils, several early modem fossils from the Aurignacian context, and a popula­tion sample-the largest of its kind and age-from the Gravettian. Archaeology completes this evidence by increasingly documenting the complexity of behavioral patterns: changing attitudes toward landscape, resource exploitation, technologies, and rituals.

In the literature, the west and east of Europe have hitherto received considerably

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xii PREFACE

more attention. The present efforts in defining the role of the center and describing its prehistory may therefore change the scope with which we tend to see the past of the continent. For the last several years, our small group-centered on the newly created Department of Paleolithic and Paleoethnology in Dolni Yestonice-has aimed to evaluate the large database stored there, to promote new fieldwork using modem techniques of excavation and recording, and to publish systematically the results in a series entitled The Dolni Yestonice Studies. Naturally, this research would be unthinkable without an interdisciplinary approach. The appearance of this book in the series Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology is due to the continuous understanding and collaboration of several geologists, paleontologists, and physical anthropologists.

In reviewing the state of knowledge, this book, in fact, is an introduction. Anthropology and archaeology have become truly international sciences, and newly emerging projects may radically change the theoretical approaches and methodologi­cal insights to be used in the future. One of the significant phenomena in the present state of research is the change from descriptive to functional analysis, as reflected simultaneously in physical anthropology and archaeology: In consequence, the future research will primarily be concerned with the processes that were responsible for the emergence of various biocultural adaptations, rather than with further description of the ancestor-descendant relationships of cultural traditions and human lineages.

Contents

Chapter 1 • Central Europe, Moravia, and Past Paleolithic Research 1

Geographic Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Past Research in Moravia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Present State of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 2 • Pleistocene Paleoenvironments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Vojen Lozek

The Moravian Pleistocene in the European Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The Development of Pleistocene Sediments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The Quarternary Climatic Cycle and Its Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Warm Periods: Interglacials, or Thermomeres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Cold Periods: Glacials, or Cryomeres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Upper Pleistocene Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The Fluctuation of Pleistocene Climates and Their Characteristics . . . . . . . 33

Chapter 3 • Patterns of Human Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 7

Emanuel Vlcek

The Problem of Fossil Human Existence during the Lower Pleistocene . . . . 37 The Middle Pleistocene Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 The Upper Pleistocene Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 The Upper Paleolithic Humans of Central Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Chapter 4 • Lower and Middle Paleolithic Background . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Stratigraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Cultural Development and Variability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Early Human Adaptations in Central Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

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Chapter 5 • The Beginning of the Upper Paleolithic: The Bohunicians, Szeletians, and Aurignacians 99

The Environmental and Stratigraphic Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Cultural Patterns of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition . . . . . . . . . . 107 The Upper Paleolithic Adaptations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Chapter 6 • The Culmination and Decline of the Upper Paleolithic: The Gravettians and Epigravettians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Stratigraphic Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Techo/typological Interactions through Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 The Gravettian Adaptations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Chapter 7 • Western Invasion: The Magdalenians and Epimagdalenians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Stratigraphy and Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Cultural Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 The Late Glacial Adaptations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Chapter 8 • Creating Settlement Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Macroregional View: Central Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Microregional Focus: Moravia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Appendix A • Catalog of Principal Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Appendix B • List of Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297