The Neanderthal Legacy: An Archaeological Perspective from Western Europe

THE

NEANDERTHAL

LEGACY

An Archaeological Perspective from Western Europe

THE

NEANDERTHAL

LEGACY

An Archaeological Perspective from Western Europe

Paul Mellars

Department of Archaeology

Cambridge University, UK

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1996 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mellars, Paul.

The Neanderthal legacy : an archaeological perspective from western Europe / Paul Mellars.

   p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-16798-5 (cloth : acid-free paper)

1. Neanderthals – Europe. 2. Paleolithic period – Europe. 3. Human evolution – Europe – Philosophy. 4. Behavior evolution – Europe. 5. Europe – Antiquities. I. Title.

GN285.M45 1995

936 – dc20

95-4300

This book has been composed in Palatino

Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

List of Tables

List of Illustrations

Preface

My colleague Chris Stringer warned me that writing a book about Neanderthals would be rather like ordering menus for College High Table dinners – there would be no way of pleasing everyone. For the past eighty years or so we seem to have been caught between two opposing camps – between those who see the Neanderthals as our immediate ancestors, only mildly different in at least their basic biological and behavioural patterns from fully ‘modern’ populations; and those who prefer to adhere to Marcellin Boule’s original vision of the Neanderthals as representing an extinct side line of human evolution, with both behavioural patterns and most probably innate capacities for behaviour which were radically different from those of later populations. The recent controversies surrounding the origins and dispersal of anatomically modern populations have put the spotlight firmly onto the Neanderthals as arguably the last surviving representatives of the original ‘archaic’ lineages which populated the world prior to the dramatic demographic and behavioural dispersal of genetically modern populations.

While there have been many studies of the biological and anatomical aspects of Neanderthals, there have been surprisingly few systematic attempts to review their behavioural patterns. There has of course been no shortage of excavations of Middle Palaeolithic sites, combined with a deluge of analyses of the associated stone-tool industries and (to a lesser extent) faunal assemblages. My central belief in embarking on this book was that it was only by taking a very broad-ranging look at all aspects of the behaviour and organization of Neanderthal communities – their technology, subsistence patterns, spatial and demographic organization and patterns of communication and cognition – that we could hope to form any overall impression of their true behavioural capacities and, in particular, how far these may have differed from those of the ensuing anatomically modern populations. As far as I am aware, this is the first book which has attempted to bring all these issues together in a single study, focussed on a specific and exceptionally rich and well documented body of archaeological evidence.

The extent to which this book depends on the research of my French colleagues will be immediately apparent from dipping into any of the individual chapters. Following the pioneering research of François Bordes, André Leroi-Gourhan and others shortly after the Second World War, there has been an extraordinary upsurge in studies of the Middle Palaeolithic over the past twenty years, extending far beyond the traditional obsession with typological and taxonomic issues which dominated the field for so long. In southwestern France the work pioneered by Jean-Philippe Rigaud on the spatial distribution and organization of Mousterian sites has been systematically extended by a number of younger colleagues – most notably by Jean-Michel Geneste, Allain Turq and Christine Duchadeau-Kervazo in the Perigord region, and further south by Jacques Jaubert, Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, Liliane Meignen and others. Over the same period the research of Françoise Delpech, Jean-Luc Guadelli, Guy Laquay, Stephane Madelaine, Philip Chase and others has taken the analysis of Middle Palaeolithic faunal assemblages far beyond the traditional concern with the purely climatic and chronological aspects of the faunas, into a determined attempt to reconstruct the economic and carcase-processing strategies which lay behind the archaelogical bone assemblages. Above all, perhaps, the study of lithic technology has been revolutionized by the application of the ‘chaîne opératoire’ approach to technological analysis (involving the use of extensive refitting studies, experimental replication techniques and microscopic use-wear analyses), as well as by systematic studies of the sources and distribution patterns of the raw materials employed for tool production.

What is remarkable about this recent work is not merely its scientific quality, but the extent to which much of the critical data and analysis still remains embedded in a range of specialist site reports, conference volumes and (above all perhaps) privately circulated and only partially published doctoral dissertations, which are largely inaccessible to the majority of non-French workers. One of the primary aims of this book has been simply to bring together this extraordinary store of recently acquired information and to make it more readily available to a wider audience. Beyond this I have of course added my own material and analyses, gleaned in over thirty years of research into Middle Palaeolithic problems, and extending back to the PhD thesis I originally wrote at Cambridge (under the supervision of Charles McBurney) in the early 1960s. In one sense, this book is a personal odyssey to discover exactly what I believe has been learnt about Neanderthal behavioural patterns in the three decades or so since I wrote the original thesis.

It is hard to exaggerate the debt I owe to my French colleagues in sharing their ideas with me, providing information on the latest results of their fieldwork and laboratory analyses and allowing me to reproduce data and illustrations from their own publications. Jean-Philippe Rigaud in particular has been a tower of support, as he has been to many other British and American workers involved in the study of French prehistory. For similar help and cooperation in a variety of ways I am equally indebted to Eric Boëda, Jean-Pierre Chadelle, Jean-Jacques Cleyet-Merle, André Debénath, Françoise Delpech, Pierre-Yves Demars, Christine Duchadeau-Kervazo, Catherine Farizy, Jean-Michel Geneste, Jean-Luc Guadelli, Jacques Jaubert, Guy Laquay, Henri Laville, Michel Lenoir, François Lévêque, Stephane Madelaine, Liliane Meignen, Jacques Pelegrin, Denise de Sonneville-Bordes, Allain Tuffreau, Allain Turq and Bernard Vandermeersch. Without the cooperation of these and other French colleagues the book could never have been written. The same applies, from a slightly different perspective, to the help I have received from a number of north American colleagues involved in closely related studies of the European Middle Palaeolithic – above all to Harold Dibble, Nicholas Rolland, Philip Chase, Art Jelinek and Lewis Binford. Some of them may feel that their interpretations have received rather rough justice in some sections of the book, but I hope they will see the close attention I have paid to their work above all as a genuine mark of respect for their contributions. Lewis Binford in particular, I believe, has been the most positive and inspiring influence on European Palaeolithic studies over the past 30 years, and I am greatly indebted for his generosity not only in discussing his ideas with me at length (most notably during a memorable visit to Albuquerque in the summer of 1992) but also in allowing me to quote from his extremely important unpublished research at Combe Grenal.

The preparation of the book has benefited greatly from the encouragement and guidance of Bill Woodcock and Emily Wilkinson of Princeton University Press, and the artistic skills of John Rodford, who drew or redrew well over half the illustrations in the book. My colleagues in the Archaeology Department at Cambridge have provided various forms of intellectual stimulation – and restraint – over the past 15 years, while a succession of exceptionally bright and enthusiastic undergraduate and graduate students have done even more to stimulate and channel my thinking along new lines. The contributions of Nathan Schlanger, Paul Pettitt and Gilliane Monnier in particular will be apparent from the discussions in Chapters 3 and 4. The great inspiration throughout my own studies at Cambridge was provided by Professor (now Sir) Grahame Clark, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge the debt I owe to him. Two other colleagues at Cambridge – Nick Shackleton and Tjeerd Van Andel – were particularly helpful in reading through drafts of the environmental chapter and offering valuable comments.

Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife. Anyone who embarks on writing a lengthy book knows that this demands endless tolerance for lost weekends, late nights, bouts of exasperation and no doubt other strains – backed up by endless promises that the end is just around the corner. As ever, she bore this with tolerance and good humour, and contributed greatly and in many ways to the final product.

Financial support towards the preparation of the book was provided mainly by the British Academy. In addition to travel grants for visits to France in 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993, the Academy provided the initial stimulus and support for the work which lay behind the book, through the award of a two-year Research Readership from 1989 to 1991. For similar support – and for providing the ideal geographical and intellectual environment in which to write a book – I am indebted to the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College.

Paul Mellars

Cambridge

July 1995

To my wife and parents

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Neanderthals have always been something of an enigma. Since their initial discovery in the middle of the last century opinions have tended to polarize between two extremes: between those who saw the Neanderthals as standing directly astride the main course of human evolution, only slightly different in either their physical or mental capabilities from modern populations; and those who saw them, by contrast, as much more primitive figures, with behavioural and physical capacities radically different from those of later populations and almost certainly representing an extinct side branch of human evolution. According to one viewpoint the Neanderthals were our direct ancestors, while according to the other they were rather distant, and not very respectable, cousins. A spate of characterizations in media cartoons, as well as more thoughtful presentations in popular novels (such as William Golding’s The Inheritors, and Jean Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear) have served to enhance the mystique and uncertainty surrounding the true role of the Neanderthals in our own evolution.

Research and discoveries over the past ten years have tended to heighten rather than reduce these long-standing controversies over the place of the Neanderthals in human evolution. Recent research in molecular genetics has been interpreted to suggest that the Neanderthals may have made no direct contribution to the genetic ancestry of biologically modern populations in Eurasia, and indeed that the Neanderthals as a whole might well represent a separate biological species (Cann et al. 1987, 1994; Stoneking & Cann 1989; Stoneking et al. 1992; Stringer & Gamble 1993 etc.). Similarly, recent dating of a range of essentially modern anatomical remains at the sites of Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel, and at a number of sites in southern Africa, has shown that forms closely similar to ourselves had already emerged in several parts of the world long before their appearance, in a remarkably sudden and abrupt form, in the more western zones of Eurasia (Stringer & Andrews 1988; Stringer 1990, 1992, 1994; Stringer & Gamble 1993; Bräuer 1989; Vandermeersch 1989). These conclusions have been contested by proponents of the ‘regional continuity’ or ‘multi-regional evolution’ school, who argue that the entire framework of both genetic and anatomical evidence which has been used to support the demographic extinction of the Neanderthals is based on rank misrepresentations of the biological evidence, or at best on serious ambiguities in the interpretation of this evidence (Wolpoff 1989, 1992; Wolpoff et al. 1994; Thorne & Wolpoff 1992; Smith 1991, 1994). According to them European readers of this book are far more likely to have a strong component of Neanderthal genes in their direct ancestry than genes of a hypothetical intrusive modern population, from some exotic African or Asian source.

Similar debates have plagued recent interpretations of the archaeological records of Neanderthal behaviour. To many prehistorians the archaeological records of the Neanderthals suggest a pattern of behaviour which is not only radically and fundamentally different from that of the ensuing biologically modern populations but which indicates a fundamentally different structure of mind. Recent characterizations in this vein have suggested that the Neanderthals may have been incapable of hunting most of the larger species of animals; that they formed social groupings which were more akin to the sexually segregated foraging units of most primate communities than the family-based structure of modern human populations; that they lacked the capacity for long-range planning or organization of their economic and social activities; and that they almost certainly lacked complex, highly structured language (Binford 1989; Lieberman 1989; Chase & Dibble 1987; Soffer 1994; Stringer & Gamble 1993). Opposing this view are those who see the general behaviour and cultural capacities of the Neanderthals as only marginally different from those of later populations, with the exception of a few post-Neanderthal embellishments in the form of representational art, more complex forms of bone and antler technology and a general predilection for manufacturing stone tools from more elongated and economical blade forms in preference to larger and heavier flakes (Clark & Lindly 1989; Lindly & Clark 1990; Clark 1992; Hayden 1993). The latter developments, it is argued, are more likely to represent a gradual, cumulative increase in the overall complexity of behavioural patterns over the course of later human evolution than a radical transformation in the underlying intellectual and cultural capabilities of the populations involved.

So what exactly are the central issues in current studies of the Neanderthals? The question which lies at the heart of the present debate centres on the precise relationships of the Neanderthal populations of Europe with the ensuing populations of anatomically and behaviourally modern humans, a transition which seems to have taken place in most regions of Europe between ca 40,000 and 35,000 years ago. Specifically, the major issues in this context can be reduced to three critical questions:

1.  To what extent, if at all, did the Neanderthals contribute to the genetic ancestry of later populations in Europe?

2.  How far, and in what ways, did the behaviour of Neanderthal populations contrast with that of the ensuing anatomically and behaviourally modern populations?

3.  If we can document major contrasts between the behavioural patterns of Neanderthal and modern populations, how should these contrasts be explained? Do they reflect simply a gradual, progressive increase in the overall complexity of different behavioural systems over the course of time? Or do they represent a much more sudden and radical shift in behavioural patterns, which reflects an equally profound shift in the associated mental and cognitive capacities for behaviour of the populations involved?

These questions, addressed primarily to the archaeological records from western Europe, form the central focus and subject matter of the present book.

Who were the Neanderthals?

I shall make no attempt to discuss in any detail here the biological and anatomical features of the Neanderthals since this has already been dealt with comprehensively in two recent books – In Search of the Neanderthals by Chris Stringer and Clive Gamble (1993), and The Neanderthals: Changing the Image of Mankind by Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman (1993). Both studies seem to agree that, in at least their major anatomical features, the Neanderthals form a reasonably distinctive and fairly well defined taxonomic grouping, even if the precise geographical and chronological limits of the grouping are more difficult to define. As in other fossil hominids, the most distinctive features of Neanderthal morphology are reflected in the skull and facial regions. In the case of the Neanderthals these include heavily enlarged supraorbital brow ridges, a generally low and flattened cranial vault with a strongly developed occipital ‘bun’, the heavily built structure of the jaws and teeth, with little trace of a chin, and a surprisingly large cranial capacity of around 1400–1600 cc implying an overall brain volume at least as large as that of modern populations. There seems to be equal agreement that at least some of these distinctive features of Neanderthal morphology can be seen as an adaptation to the specific environmental conditions of the more northern zones of Eurasia during the colder, glacial and sub-glacial episodes of the later Pleistocene. Thus the large noses and the generally inflated form of the facial region as a whole are often seen as an adaptation to accommodate the very large nasal channels that were essential to warm the cold, dry air of these exceptionally harsh climates (Howell 1957; Coon 1962; Wolpoff 1980 but see Trinkaus 1989b for a different view). Similarly, the generally short, heavy body structure typical of the Neanderthals is usually seen not only as an adaptation to a very active and strenuous life style which demanded considerable physical strength, but also as an adaptation to conserve body heat in severe, seasonally fluctuating climates (Trinkaus 1983, 1989b; Trinkaus & Shipman 1993; Smith 1991). Whether all the distinctive features of Neanderthal morphology can be explained in these terms is more controversial. Smith and others, for example, have suggested that the large and heavily built form of the Neanderthal face may have been related more to the stresses involved in the habitual use of jaws and teeth for various ‘paramasticatory’ activities (i.e. using the jaws as tools) than to any cold-climatic adaptation (Smith & Paquette 1989).

To put exact limits on the Neanderthals in a time and space framework is more difficult. However, there seems to be reasonable agreement that most of the distinctive features of Neanderthal anatomy can be traced across a broad arc of Europe and western Asia, extending from the Atlantic coasts of France and the Iberian peninsula to the western parts of the Middle East and central Asia – for example at Tabun, Amud and Kebara in Israel, at Shanidar in Iraq, and as far eastwards as Teshik Tash in Uzbekistan (Smith 1991; Stringer & Gamble 1993; Trinkaus & Shipman 1993). Whether anything distinctively Neanderthal can be identified to the south of this zone (for example, some of the North African fossils such as those from Jebel Irhoud and Dar-es-Soltan in Morocco) remains more controversial. The main geographical range corresponds, in other words, to the more western zones of Eurasia, and predominantly to those areas which experienced recurrent episodes of sharply colder climate during the middle and later stages of the Pleistocene.

In a chronological sense, most of the well dated and ‘classic’ Neanderthal forms belong to the earlier stages of the last glacial period, between ca 110,000 and 35,000 BP. Both Trinkaus & Shipman (1993) and Stringer & Gamble (1993), however, have argued that many distinctive Neanderthal traits can be traced back into the period of the penultimate glacial and perhaps, as for example in the remains from Biache-Saint-Vaast in northern France, to the period of isotope stage 7, around 200–250,000 BP. Earlier forms such as the hominids from Swanscombe in England, Steinheim in Germany, Petralona in Greece and Tautavel in France tend to be regarded as ‘pre’ or ‘proto’ Neanderthal forms, anatomically transitional between the late Homo erectus/Homo heidelbergensis populations of Europe and the succeeding Neanderthal forms (Stringer et al. 1984; Stringer & Andrews 1988; Stringer & Gamble 1993). Clearly, if one accepts that the Neanderthals are indeed the direct descendants of the earlier erectus populations in Europe it would be unrealistic to expect to recognize a sharp line of demarcation between these taxa in anatomical or evolutionary terms.

Similar problems are encountered in attempts to define the precise chronological limits of what conventionally has been defined as the ‘Middle Palaeolithic’ phase of technological development. It should be stressed that it is not the aim of this book to look at the problem of the technological origins or emergence of Middle Palaeolithic technology from the earlier patterns of Lower Palaeolithic technology. Any serious study of this question would not only require a book in its own right but would be seriously handicapped by the extremely patchy, coarse-grained and above all very poorly dated records of human technological development prior to the last 250,000 years. As a working definition I am happy to conform to what has now become the conventional practice of regarding the prime hallmark of Middle Palaeolithic technology as being the emergence of more complex and sophisticated patterns of prepared-core flaking, classically illustrated by the various Levallois and allied techniques discussed in Chapter 2. As several workers have recently stressed, the emergence of these techniques could be seen as a major turning point not only in a purely technological sense but also as a potential watershed in the whole conceptual and cognitive basis of lithic technology, implying a much greater degree of forward planning, time depth, and capacity for strategic problem-solving in the working of stone resources (Roebroeks et al. 1988; Rolland 1990; Mellars 1991; Klein 1989a). Whether or not this viewpoint is accepted, it is now clear that remarkably complex and varied forms of prepared-core techniques were being practised in several parts of the Old World by the time of the penultimate interglacial period between ca 200,000 and 250,000 BP (for example at Biache-Saint-Vaast and the Grotte Vaufrey in France and Maastricht-Belvédère in Holland) and probably at roughly the same time at a range of sites in western Asia and Africa (see Chapter 4, and Klein 1989a; Bar-Yosef 1992). Whether it is entirely coincidental that these complex stone-working techniques appeared in Europe at roughly the same time as the rapid increase in cranial capacities which is one of the most distinctive features of the Neanderthals, is an interesting point for speculation.

The chronological scope of this book therefore coincides essentially with the period from the final disappearance of the Neanderthals in western Europe around 30–35,000 years ago to the period of oxygen-isotope stage 7 around 250,000 BP. The surviving archaeological records of human behaviour within this time range are very unevenly distributed and are far more abundant, more fully documented and more chronologically fine-grained during the later stages of the Middle Palaeolithic than during its earlier stages. The book should therefore be seen primarily as a study of the archaeological evidence of human behaviour during the earlier stages of the last glacial period, between ca 115,0000 and 35,000 years ago. It is this period for which I will reserve the term ‘Mousterian’ throughout the book. In my view it is only for this period that we have a sufficient quantity of well documented evidence, and sufficient control over the quality and resolution of this evidence, to present any really secure and convincing reconstructions of human behavioural patterns within the Neanderthal time range.

The archaeological perspective

It soon became clear in planning this book that to attempt a general survey of the archaeological evidence for Neanderthal behaviour across the whole geographical range discussed above – i.e. extending from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the Middle East – would not only be a daunting task in terms of the amount of material and data to be considered, but could become a rather questionable exercise. There are two principal reasons for this. First, there is the problem of knowing exactly where in the archaeological records of western Eurasia we see the products of Neanderthal populations. One of the most significant facts to emerge during the last decade is that we can no longer assume that all archaeological assemblages conventionally classified as ‘Middle Palaeolithic’ in a purely technological sense were indeed the products of Neanderthals, or indeed other archaic forms of hominids. The discoveries at both Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel and possibly at Staroselje in the Crimea have demonstrated that in certain contexts technologically Middle Palaeolithic industries were produced by hominids who in most anatomical respects were much closer to biologically modern populations than to Neanderthals – and at the remarkably early date of around 100,000 BP (Vandermeersch 1989; Bar-Yosef 1992; Stringer & Gamble 1993). Even in parts of central and eastern Europe there is still debate as to whether some of the skeletal remains recovered from Middle Palaeolithic contexts (such as Krapina in Croatia, or Kulna in Moravia) can be confidently attributed to Neanderthals as opposed to anatomically modern populations (Smith 1984, 1991). These observations raise critical questions concerning the ultimate relationships between Neanderthal and anatomically modern populations in these areas, which will be pursued further in the final chapter of this book. The fact remains, however, that it is only in the extreme western zones of Europe that we have a sufficiently large, well documented and consistent association between technologically ‘Middle Palaeolithic’ industries and taxonomically ‘Neanderthal’ remains to make any reasonably confident correlations between the archaeological and skeletal records. While we can never be sure that every Middle Palaeolithic industry in western Europe was produced by a Neanderthal, we can be far more confident in making this correlation in this region than in any other part of Eurasia.

My second reason for choosing a more restricted geographical focus for this book is more pragmatic and relates to the way in which we approach the analysis and interpretation of the archaeological evidence. The importance of adopting a specifically regional approach in this context is now widely recognized (e.g. Gamble 1984, 1986). It would make little sense, for example, to make direct comparisons between the patterns of animal exploitation or the relative frequencies of different species of animals exploited, even in two areas as geographically close as southwestern France and northern Spain, where the overall patterns of climate, vegetation, topography etc. are likely to have been significantly different. The same applies with equal force to comparisons between, say, the relative use of cave versus open-air sites in different areas, the overall patterns of settlement and mobility of the human groups, or the patterns of procurement and distribution of different raw materials (Feblot-Augustins 1993). Only by adopting a regional approach to these issues can we hope to provide a coherent reconstruction of the detailed patterns of behavioural adaptation of Neanderthal communities to the rapidly oscillating climatic and ecological conditions of the later Pleistocene. The choice in the present context was therefore fairly stark: either to focus the present study primarily on the evidence from one specific and well documented region; or to range more widely, and inevitably more superficially, over the evidence from many different regions and run the risk of failing to deal adequately with the situation in any one region.

When viewed in these terms the rationale for focusing primarily on the evidence from western Europe, and largely on the evidence from the so-called ‘classic’ region of southwestern France, is self-evident. This is not merely the classic region for Middle Palaeolithic studies in a purely historical sense (e.g. Lartet & Christy 1864; de Mortillet 1869, 1883) but it has also produced a wealth and concentration of hard archaeological evidence for Middle Palaeolithic behavioural patterns which, by any criteria, is much richer, more detailed and better documented than that from any other area of comparable size in either Europe or Asia. From southwestern France alone we now have a total of over fifty cave and rock shelter sites with relatively substantial and well documented evidence for Middle Palaeolithic occupation, in many cases in the form of long and detailed occupation sequences. The majority of these sites have produced rich and well preserved faunal assemblages, and from many of them we now have detailed information not only on the technological features of the stone-tool assemblages but also on the character and geological sources of the raw materials from which they were made (Geneste 1985, 1989a; Turq 1989a; 1992b). All this research has been combined with a meticulous concern with the geological and climatic associations of the human occupations, reflected in a wealth of published data on the sedimentological, palaeobotanical and faunal associations of the different sites.

The point of these observations, needless to say, is not to imply that the patterns of Neanderthal behaviour in the extreme western zones of Europe are inherently more important or more interesting than those in other regions of Eurasia, still less to suggest that any patterns or regularities observed in this region can be extrapolated automatically and uncritically to other regions. Whether such extrapolations can be made must remain one of the prime targets of future research. The point to be emphasized is that the archaeological and behavioural records from these rich and well studied regions of western Europe cover an impressive span of time and reflect the behaviour and adaptations of Neanderthal populations in sharply contrasting climatic and environmental conditions. If we can discern any general patterns or regularities in behavioural patterns over this time range, these should not be dismissed lightly. Wherever possible and appropriate in the following chapters I have attempted to make specific comparisons with the evidence from other regions of Europe, especially where these seem to hint at a pattern of behaviour significantly different from that reflected in the western European data. Overall, however, the arguments for focusing any study of this kind primarily on the evidence from one specific and well studied region are largely self evident and I make no apology for choosing the region where the available archaeological records of Neanderthal behaviour are exceptionally abundant and well documented. Given the specific theoretical orientation of this study, there is also something to be said for choosing an area where archaeological records for the behaviour of the succeeding anatomically modern populations are equally rich and clearly defined.

Theoretical perspectives

My aim in this book is not to adopt any specific a priori theoretical stance towards the analysis and interpretation of the archaeological record beyond what I would describe as a simple ‘rationalist’ one – i.e. to focus on a number of specific, clearly defined questions relating to particular aspects of Neanderthal behaviour and to evaluate a range of alternative answers to these questions from whichever aspects of the archaeological record seem most directly relevant. There are, nevertheless, a number of themes which run through many of the chapters and which should be recognized at the outset.

First, it is clear that much of the following discussion will be seen in many quarters as an explicit reaction against some of the more extreme ‘hyperfunctionalist’ approaches which have dominated much of the literature on the Middle Palaeolithic over the past two decades – as I would see it largely as an overzealous extrapolation of the more modest forms of functionalism which characterized the ‘processualist’ archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s. As a product and great admirer of many aspects of the New Archaeology of the mid-1960s, I regard myself, in many respects, as a committed processualist, in the sense that I believe that a close analysis of the potential functional interrelationships between the different aspects of behavioural patterns represents the obvious starting point for any productive analysis of human behaviour in the past. I also admire the fact that functionalist or processualist approaches place the primary emphasis on those aspects of human behaviour and adaptation which leave the most direct traces in the archaeological record – such as technology, subsistence, settlement patterns, human-environment relationships etc. In these respects I believe that a broadly ‘functionalist’ viewpoint forms a natural and logical starting point for any constructive study of human behavioural patterns and adaptations in the past.

What disturbs me is the lengths to which functionalist interpretations have been carried in some of the studies of Neanderthal behaviour over the past twenty years. I detect an indication that the pursuit of functional interpretations has become not merely a reasonable point of departure for the analysis of behavioural patterns, but something approaching an a priori credo to be pursued and defended against almost any alternative interpretation. As several authors have recently pointed out, the limitation of this approach is not merely that it largely excludes the possibility of any explicitly cultural component in the behaviour of earlier Palaeolithic communities but that it virtually ignores the entire dimension of socially constructed behaviour and learning processes which must inevitably have shaped the behavioural patterns of all communities in the past, extending back to our primate origins (e.g. Mithen 1994; Mellars 1992a, 1994; Bar-Yosef & Meignen 1992; McGrew 1993). These and related issues are discussed more fully in Chapter 10.

The second point is to some extent interrelated with the first and concerns the importance of viewing the organization and behaviour of past human communities within a demographic perspective, that is, in terms of networks of communities linked by varying degrees of social interraction. This approach assumes in other words that human populations do not form uniform, homogeneous networks extending indefinitely across the landscape, but that they are divided into smaller and more restricted social and breeding units which interact in specific and often closely prescribed ways (Wobst