2009_M. Persani_The Range of Caching Behaviour Among the Past Hunter-gatherers of Europe

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Du matériel au spirituel. réalités archéologiques et historiques Des « Dépôts » De la préhistoire à nos jours

XXIXe rencontres internationales d’archéologie et d’histoire d’AntibesSous la direction de S. Bonnardin, C. Hamon, M. Lauwers et B. QuilliecÉditions APDCA, Antibes, 2009

AbstractCaches are an important component of archaeological record, providing useful informa-tion about mobility and logistic organisation, but also cultural and even spiritual prac-tises of the hunter-gatherers of the past. These extremely rare structures usually contain selected and unexploited flint cobbles collected either elsewhere or nearby the cache itself. As far as the information available is concerned it reveals that flint caches were already present in Europe in the Middle Palaeolithic and that their number increased during the late-glacial and post-glacial, a time in which global climatic improvement ultimately caused significant changes in human behaviour and in economic strategies. Colonisation of virgin territories, broadening of the range of prey species, modifications in hunting practices, may be related to mobility, planning and organisational skills and caching may therefore be one of the consequences of this increased mobility and there-fore deserves a closer look when studying the human societies of the past.

RésuméLes réserves sont une composante importante des contextes archéologiques et peuvent fournir d’utiles informations sur la mobilité, l’organisation logistique et les activités des chasseurs-cueilleurs du passé, même sur le plan spirituel. Très rarement observées, ces structures contiennent en général des silex sélectionnés et non taillés, prélevés autant dans des lieux lointains qu’à proximité des réserves. Il ressort des données disponibles que les réserves de silex étaient déjà utilisées en Europe au Paléolithique moyen, mais que leur fréquence augmente durant la période tardi- et post-glaciaire, au moment où l’adoucissement global du climat permet des changements radicaux dans les stratégies économiques. La colonisation de territoires vierges, l’élargissement de l’éventail des animaux chassés, la modification des pratiques de chasse, peuvent être liés à la mobilité et à la capacité de programmer et d’organiser. C’est pourquoi le stockage peut repré-senter une des pratiques liées au développement de la mobilité et, pour cette raison, réclamer davantage d’attention dans l’étude des sociétés humaines du passé.

The range of caching behavior among the past hunter-gatherers of EuropeMarco Peresani

* Università di Ferrara, Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione, Sezione di Paleobiologia, Preistoria e Antropologia, Corso Ercole I d’Este 32, I-44100 Ferrara. <[email protected]>

NPO : cOmPléter les NumérOs de Pages eN bibliO

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Resources in the landscapes of Western Eurasia during the Pleistocene and early Holocene were patchy, forcing prehistoric people to move over large areas to access food and raw materials for tools. One way of solving the obvious problems caused by significant distances between the lithic sources and subsist-ence needs was through caching, a curational behaviour considered as a mean of lessening inequalities among raw material availability, time stress and loca-tion of specific resources.

The first use of this term by L. Binford (1979) for the interpreting of Palaeolithic record, caches are typically regarded as an accumulation of goods placed in storage or hiding for future recovery and utilization. Being excluded some ambiguous applications of this definition to the archaeological record, authors consider that caches can include food reserves, raw materials, partially reduced preforms, finished tools or containers. For example, the long-term storage of specialized tool-kits or generalized tool chests constitutes a part of the site contents fundamentally different from the logistical reserves of raw or partially reduced resources (Lintz, Dockall, 2002).

Accumulation of goods may also legitimately reflect ritual behaviour in buri-als or at places used for ceremonies like caves or specific landmarks (i.e. Chiotti et al., this volume). However, mortuary objects and burial articles are not herein regarded as caches, since their contexts clearly indicate that the objects were removed from other places, were hoarded and not stored for future retrieval and use. Caching, in fact, has been identified as a key strategy among logisti-cally oriented (or collector-oriented) hunter-gatherer groups aiming to reduce time stress in critical situations. From this perspective, caches have also been interpreted as evidence of anticipatory behaviour, indicating a certain degree of depth in tactical planning and operating within the strategic framework of the settlement/subsistence system (Binford, 1979).

Among nomadic hunter-gatherers, caching decisions within their primary and peripheral use-area depend on several economically-based factors (Close, 1996; Testart, 1982): degree of mobility/rate of site abandonment; anticipated return to the vicinity; distance from the next campsite; anticipated activities to be performed at the next camp; resource bulk of artefact size and weight; time and labour investment involved with material replacement costs; remnant use-life of the implements. Furthermore, if inter-group exchange occurs, then the preparation and movement of goods beyond the primary territory may reflect investment decisions involving long-distance transport costs. Therefore, the final composition of these caches is the outcome of a number of deci-sions made in determining what was to be left in the cache. Through his eth-nographic work with the Nunamiut hunter and gatherer groups in the 70s, Lewis Binford (1979) observed caches consisting of passive and insurance gear. Employed seasonally and hidden for the rest of the year, passive gear is used on specific resources that are temporally and spatially predictable. Caches of this type are more likely to occur at residential or repeatedly used camping locali-ties. Caching passive gear insures that tools are available for processing par-

The range of caching behavior among The PasT hunTer-gaTherers of euroPe

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ticular resources in the future. In contrast, insurance gear is made for a variety of anticipated and unknown needs. Caches composed of insurance gear serve to limit the risk of unknown future procurement difficulties. Insurance gear caches are left as furniture at site locations, well-known landscape markers, or deliberately built facilities. Differences between passive and insurance gear are measured in terms of diversity, versatility and flexibility.

Thus, a crucial series of decisions occurs after transporting, for instance, procured chipped stone material to distant potential cache areas. One motive for placing a cache in a certain area is the limited and scattered distribution of lithic resources. To optimise travel costs between resource locations, a drop-off point is established close to the half way point between the lithic sources (fig. 1). This occurs if a group’s mobility pattern intersects multiple chipped stone resource areas (A). However, drop-off points between raw material resource areas are unlikely if a prehistoric group’s territory crosses only one source. In this case, the caching of higher utility items occurs with increasing distance from the resource area (B). Another scenario is a sedentary group residing in a stone-poor area that sends logistic groups to a quarry location to procure chipped-stone (C). In this situation caches discovered at more perma-nent residential camps may correspond to stock-piles of raw material of logisti-cal groups that were procured resources far from the residential site. Transport constraints from the quarry location to the residential site thus still play a part in the composition of residential site caches (Hurst, 2006).

Recovering a cache is another factor to consider when selecting a suitable location. Changes in topography or identifiable landforms are usable as mark-ers for cache locations. The fact that archaeologists discover caches indicates that some were not recovered, and this may reflect a failure of prominent land-marks for relocating caches, among other reasons. A different explication may be to consider that these structures were deliberately left/abandoned because of a given ceremony or cultural practice. Being excluded the most striking cases

Max distancedrop off line

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Fig. 1. Hypothetical effect of the distribution of resource and mobility patterns on cache location (after Hurst, 2006).

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where the recovered items for instance the Palaeolithic Venus or the Mesolithic engraved pebbles clearly appear as examples of a non-economic artefacts, lost caches with customary cobbles or tools destined to subsistence may suggest localities (and territories) changed their meaning within the late-glacial and/or into the Holocene. Advanced studies, such as the one carried out by Angevin and Langlais (this volume) may however reverse former interpretations.

Caching in palaeolithic Europe

Evidence of caching unexploited flint or other raw materials in the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic of Europe is very rare, if not exceptional.

Leaving aside the raw blocks, pebbles and nodules of flint or other exploit-able stones scattered on the ground and integrated in lithic worksites of several Early and Middle Paleolithic sites, the very little evidence worth mentioning refers to Soucy 1, settled on a fluvial bank of the Yonne River and attributed to one of the Interglacial periods of the Middle Pleistocene (Lhomme et al., 1998) and to Grotte Vaufrey, a large cave in Dordogne occupied during the Middle Palaeolithic (Rigaud, 1988; Geneste, 1985).

The Early Upper Palaeolithic records the first appearance of variability in cached items among the Aurignacians, consisting of molluscan shells that have not been perforated, found concentrated at the Fumane Cave in Northern Italy (Broglio et al., 2005) and at Wiesbaden-Igstadt, Germany (Terberger, 1998). Some millennia after, the sole evidence of passive gear is provided by the 15 Solutrean leaf-points discovered at the end of the xixth century at Volgu (Aubry et al., this volume).

Caching in Late-glacial and post-glacial times

Caching behaviour increases at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, even if it may be interpreted as a result of population growth and of archaeological record visibility (fig. 2).

Five Magdalenian large pre-forms made of local and exogenous flint for long blades were found stacked at the base of the Montgaudier cave wall (Charente) (Bouvier, Duport, 1968). Again in France, La Goulaine, H. Breuil reports the discovery of more than 400 artefacts cached under a large slab, re-exam-ined and framed in the wide socio-economic context of Middle Magdalenian by Angevin and Langlais (this volume). Other pre-forms made of local flint slabs collected 5 km from the site were found at Sesselfelsgrotte in Southern Germany (Naber, 1981) and in central Rhineland at the Federmesser site of Niederbieber, two large chalcedony flakes were cached after being taken from sources 40km away (Baales, 2006). Again, unprocessed flints were discovered in the 20s and 40s inside holes or other man-made structures at the Swiderian sites Swidry Wielke I, Grzybowa Gora and Swidry Mate in Central-Southern Poland (Krukowski, 1939; 1976; Sawicki Ludwik, 1963). At Swidry Wielke I a pit


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was filled with scores of artefacts, among which there were partially corticated nodules, thick flakes and pre-cores made of chocolate coloured flint collected some 150 km away. The cache from Swidry Mate contained one crested pre-form, a handful of incompletely exploited blade cores and several thick blades. At Grzybowa Gora four caches compute pre-forms and cores used to produce blades.

Un-worked, tested or pre-formed flint cobbles compose the caches discov-ered at Val Lastari and Palughetto, two Epigravettian sites in the Italian Alps. The Val Lastari cache contains a main group of 57 blocks neatly stacked together and others isolated in the surroundings refit with the main heap (Broglio et al., 1992; Peresani, 2006; Peresani et al., at press). Many of them went through a suitability test before being cached, a few were pre-formed or initially exploited for bladelet making via removing just one natural ridge. Being the site func-tionally used for producing, consuming and exporting blades and bladelets,

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Fig. 2. Position of the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic flint caches mentioned in the text: 1. Vale of Pickering, 2. Montgaudier, 3. La Goulaine, 4. Volgu, 5. Ruffey-sur-Seille, 6.Niederbieber, 7.Sesselfelsgrotte, 8.Val Lastari, 9. Palughetto, 10. Grzybowa Gora, 11. Swidry Wielke I and Swidry Mate.

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the cache suggests that a temporary accumulation of selected cobbles was for immediate exploitation. The Palughetto cache (fig. 3) was discovered isolated in a peat-bog containing six blocks (Bertola et al., 1997; Peresani, 2006) col-lected 25 km away from the plateau and almost all tested before caching. This cache suggests long-term anticipation for further seasonal occupations.

A handful of sites suggest caching was one of the ways Mesolithic people organized lithic provisioning in a given territory. Flint nodules were found cached at the Vale of Pickering (Yorkshire), the site of an ancient lake repeat-edly visited by hunter-gatherer groups. The three caches are attributed to the Early Mesolithic and consist of respectively 12, 9 and 5 nodules collected from the till and left untouched, tested or partially worked and stacked (Conneller and Schadla-Hall , 2003). At the early Mesolithic site of Ruffey-sur-Seille the cus-tom of making quality controls before to transport exploitable flint is proved by a cache containing 22 blocks collected 20km away from the site (Séara et al., 2002). Blocks and slabs stacked together suggest the existence of the use of a bag for transporting them, which has been proved by the discovery of a birch bark container filled with 29 prepared flint blocks at the Russian site of Nizhneye Veretye I (cited by Séara et al., 2002). Finally in Poland, again at Grzybowa Gora, five caches with pre-forms and cores have been attributed to the Early and Late Mesolithic (Schild et al., 1975; Królik, personal communication).

European Late-Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic caches in most cases thus provide evidence of insurance gear in the frame of repeated visits to the camp-site, the number of which at almost all cases still remains undetermined.

10 cm0

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Fig. 3. The Palughetto cache (after Bertola et al., 1997).


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Conclusions and implications

The more or less customary stocking of tools or raw materials in case of future needs may have had relevant implications on the way humans moved within a given territory. It certainly implies that they expected to return to the cache location as a result of a relatively regular pattern of habitual movement from place to place. The complexity of the concept of mobility among hunter-gatherers has often forced archaeologists to oversimplify the significance of the behavioural indexes. High mobility is seen as a factor affecting lithic economy due to the raw material transport cost (Kelly, 1992). As regards to provisioning, Kuhn (1994) states that in the case of high residential mobility, provisioning of individuals becomes more common, while when the sites are occupied for longer periods or repeatedly used, a provisioning of places strategy seems to be the most suitable. At the same time, he admits that the relation between mobil-ity and provisioning is not exclusively mutual. Other aspects may influence the degree with which each one of these strategies predominates, as for example territory size, tool durability, raw material distribution and time spent in pro-ducing and repairing implements.

Comparing caching behaviour among the European Late-Glacial hunter-gatherers with that of the Northern Americans, we find archaeological evi-dence is still largely unrepresented for such a complex activity considered as an expression of small and mobile units (“task groups”) crossing territories with their ecothones, landmarks and inequalities in the raw material available. The social and geographical implications on cultural and economic entities stable for hundreds of generations requires a more integrated approach to explore the way these populations organized their biological success.

Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to the organizers for the invitation to attend the meeting and to many colleagues for the information provided and the stimulat-ing discussion about the argument treated in my communication. The English text has been revised by Anita Gubbiotti, the french abstract has been trans-lated from italian by Laurence Mercuri.

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