Land use and technology from Magdalenian to Early Mesolithic in southern Germany.

Abstract

This thesis evaluates the hypothesis that hunter-gatherers in Magdalenian, Late Paleolithic, and Early Mesolithic southern Germany adjusted to the dispersed and low-density resources of an increasingly wooded Late Glacial and Early Postglacial landscape by altering residential mobility, search behavior, and food-getting technology to minimize travel time and increase encounter rates in foraging. Evolutionary ecology and cross-cultural studies of hunter-gatherer foraging tactics and mobility provide a basis for constructing a set of theoretical expectations about the varying effectiveness of alternate responses during a period of long-term adaptation to temperate and northern forest habitats. Variables include the range and accuracy of projectiles, distance traveled in hunting and gathering forays, total area covered by foragers, frequency of residential mobility and the thoroughness with which foragers cover the landscape. I argue that greater frequency of residential mobility, declining length of resource-gathering forays from a central place, and increase in the range and accuracy of projectiles should accompany the first stages of reforestation of the Late Glacial landscape, beginning in the later Bolling (ca., 12,500 years B.P.). The hypothesis is tested by means of a study of changes in the production and maintenance of chipped stone technology in nine archaeological sites spanning the Late Glacial and Early Postglacial period in southern Germany. Change in two different classes of implements was investigated: microlithic implements argued to play a primary role in food-getting technologies, and non-microlithic maintenance and processing tools that served as flexible, portable raw material packages for producing tool edges as needed. Long-term decline in size and frequency of nonmicrolithic implements beginning in Late Magdalenian times supports a hypothesis of declining foraging radius, but also alters the behavioral context of stone tool production in such a way that lithic assemblages offer less information about long-term mobility through evidence for raw material transport. Long-term decrease in size and increase in standardization of pointed microliths supports a hypothesis of increasing range and accuracy of hunting weapons. Change in re-tooling tactics shows that the predictability, scheduling, and location of tool needs altered over the Late Glacial and Early Postglacial in ways consistent with the proposed hypothesis.