Encyclopedia of Prehistory, Volume 4, Europe
.pdfhealth status than many populations that preceded and followed them.
Economy
The subsistence economy of the Perigordian Vc was based primarily on the hunting of mediumto largesized game and may have been supplemented in some areas by the occasional collection of plants, birds, fish, and small game. Evidence for the use of such supplemental resources is very scarce. The major exception is the well-documented use of marine mollusks and marine birds at the Spanish site of El Castillo, less than a day's journey to the Cantabrian seacoast (Cabrera Valdes 1984).
In France and Belgium, reindeer were the most frequently taken prey, followed by horse, bovines, red deer, saiga antelope (only in Belgium at this time), occasional cliff-dwelling chamois and ibex, and, during warmer periods, roe deer and wild boar (Cordy 1984; Delpech 1983, 1993). The extremely high percentage of reindeer bones relative to bones of other animals recovered at French and Belgian Perigordian sites has often been interpreted as evidence for specialized hunting of this species, but there is no evidence for large-scale mass kills, drives, or surrounds consistent with such a subsistence strategy (Enloe 1993; Pike-Tay 1993; Spiess 1979). Rather, it is more likely that reindeer were the object of short-term seasonal specialization. Studies assessing season of death of prey animals in levels at Abri Pataud (Spiess 1979), Le Flageolet I (Pike-Tay 1991), and Roc de Combe (Pike-Tay 1991) in southwestern France show fairly exclusive cold-season kills of reindeer and red deer in Perigordian Vc/Noaillian levels. In Cantabrian Spain, evidence for specialized hunting of ibex and chamois in the high mountains appears for the first time in the region during the Perigordian (Straus 1992).
Lithic assemblages containing high frequencies of specialized burin forms such as Noailles and Raysse burins have been called Noaillian (David 1966, 1985; David and Bricker 1987) as well as Perigordian Vc (or V3) (de Sonneville-Bordes 1960: 195). Use of the term "Perigordian" is favored by scholars (for example, Rigaud 1988) who emphasize the continuities (e.g., the presence of Gravette points) with earlier assemblages of southwestern France, whereas "Noaillian" tends to be used by those working in a broader geographic and temporal context in the European Gravettian (for example, Otte and Keeley 1990). Importantly, Rigaud's (1976) work at the site of Le Flageolet I in southwestern France has demonstrated that Font Robert points,
Perigordian 251
truncated elements, and Noailles burins-tools Peyrony (1936) considered to be chronologically segregated diagnostic types--can coexist within the same archaeological unit.
Although specialized burins are the primary diagnostic lithic tools of Perigordian Vc (Noaillian) assemblages, Gravette and micro-Gravette points are also important components of these assemblages, but they are much less frequent than in Perigordian IV and Val Vb assemblages. Font-Robert points and truncated elements occur sporadically in Noaillian assemblages, but in even lower frequencies than those of Gravettes and micro-Gravettes. Antler, bone, and ivory sagaies appear to be in substantially higher numbers in the Noaillian than in the Perigordian IV and Va/Vb assemblages. The Isturitz sagaie, a long, sturdy projectile point, usually of antler, with a roughened and sometimes notched conical base, is the most characteristic of these (Delporte et al. 1988).
Long-distance trade and/or travel, sometimes as far as 300 km, was undertaken for the procurement of highquality lithic raw material for tools, as well as of seashells and possibly mammoth ivory for the production of ornaments. For example, at the sites of Abri Pataud, Roc de Gavaudun, and Abri du Poisson in southern France, shell use is greater in the Perigordian Vc (Noaillian) and VI than previously, and Mediterranean as well as Atlantic shells were acquired (Taborin 1993: 225).
Sociopolitical Organization
People associated with the Perigordian tradition were hunter gatherers who probably lived in modestsized multifamily groups (bands) that came together one or more times per year to form larger social groups and participate in heightened social and economic interactions (e.g., the acquisition of exogamous mates, the trade and exchange of exotic materials, and ritual and ceremonial activities). Ethnographic research demonstrates that not all hunter-gatherer groups are egalitarian communities. However, the Perigordian lacks the kind of evidence that allows assessment of measures of social control such as differential access to resources among community members. Such evidence can often be assessed from both skeletal remains (health status) and material culture (grave goods) in a large cemetery population from a more recent prehistoric community. However, Upper Paleolithic burials are rare, and rarer still are multiple burials from this period (Harrold 1980). It is likely that status distinction and leadership positions in Perigordian communities were limited in
252Perigordian
nature and awarded according to an individual's abilities in particular economic or cultural arenas.
Religion and Expressive Culture
Two major categories of cultural expression survive from the Perigordian period: the elaborate decoration of cave walls with bas-relief, engraved, and painted images; and the production of small three-dimensional statuettes of animals and humans, especially the well-known female figurines with exaggerated physical attributes. Recent radiocarbon dates taken directly from cave drawings in southern France overlap with the Perigordian period (Bahn 1995-96). In addition, it seems at present that the majority of the Perigordian statuettes pertain more specifically to the Perigordian Vc or Noaillian phase (Delporte 1993: 244).
Until recently, researchers thought that the sophisticated naturalistically painted and engraved images of animals adorning the cave walls of southern France, the Pyrenees, and northern Spain were the products of late Upper Paleolithic cultural complexity and may have come about in response to both social and ecological conditions brought on by the Last Glacial Maximum. However, new direct dates of cave drawings by the radiocarbon method show that this cultural complexity appeared much earlier, in southern France if not elsewhere. We now know that painted caves first became important parts of the social landscape with Aurignacian and Perigordian-age peoples. Paintings from the caves of Chauvet (Ardeche), Cosquer (Bouches-du Rhone), Cougnac (Lot), and Peche Merle (Lot), fall between c. 32,00O-c. 24,000 B.P. beginning with the Aurignacian and extending into Perigordian periods (other recently dated drawings from the well-known Cantabrian and Pyrenean caves fall between c. 14,330- c. 12,000 B.P. as was previously expected) (Bahn 199596; Valladas et al. 1992).
The art in these caves represents a highly conventionalized portrayal of the natural world. Yet we do not know whether all the decorated caves served the same function or whether their roles changed through time. We do not know whether they were centers of sacred ceremony or pilgrimage for whole communities or only for select individuals. Nonetheless, we do know that animals such as bison, aurochs, horse, and deer as well as cave lions and woolly rhino were depicted far more frequently and with more care than human beings were (Bahn and Vertut 1988; Clottes 1996). We also know that the interiors of painted and engraved caves were not places where people took part in daily activities of cooking, eating, or preparing animal skins and tools,
because no living debris has accumulated in these special sites.
In addition to two-dimensional visual representations, the Perigordian witnessed an 'explosion' in the three-dimensional modeling of human and animal figurines. Small female statuettes, frequently depicted with exaggerated breasts, hips, and stomachs (popularly and problematically referred to as 'Venus' or 'goddess' figurines owing to the pregnant aspect of some) appear twice during the Upper Paleolithic; first during the Perigordian (and in contemporary Gravettian assemblages all across Europe) and second, after the last Glacial Maximum, during the Magdalenian. In both periods, three-dimensional representations of animals and occasional male humans occur along with the better-known female figurines. In the latter period, animal figurines occur more often than those of female humans, but during the Perigordian (Gravettian), the female statuettes are generally more frequent and significant all across Europe (Delporte 1979, 1993). In Perigordian western Europe, the figurines were carved from mammoth ivory and a range of stone, whereas contemporary cultures in eastern Europe also sculpted in and fired clay representations of humans and animals. The figurines are found both singly and in groups (Delporte 1993).
Where female statuettes have been found in groups in western European sites, they tend to bear no resemblance to others in the grouping, but to vary in morphology, if not in raw material. Where spatial locational information is available for Perigordian sites, the figurines have been found away from the principal activity areas of the sites, e.g., near the cave or shelter walls (Delporte 1993). In addition, in the southwestern French Perigordian, female figures were sometimes sculpted in bas relief on cave walls. Researchers have suggested that the statuettes may have played a mystical or ritual role in such elements of life as insuring ease in childbirth, fertility, and success in the hunt (Bahn and Vertut 1988).
References
Altuna, Jesus (1973). "Fauna de mamiferos de la Cueva de Morin." In Cueva Morin: Excavaciones, 1966-1968, ed. J. Gonzalez Echegaray, and L. Freeman. Santander: Patronato de las Cuevas, 367-398.
Altuna, Jesus (1989). "Subsistence d'origine animale pendant Ie Mousterien dans Ie region Cantabrique (Espagne)." In L'Homme de Neander/ai, 6, ed. L. Freeman, and M. Patou. Liege: ERAUL,
31-43.
Bahn, Paul (1982). "Inter-site and Inter-regional Links during the Upper Palaeolithic: The Pyrenean Evidence." The Oxford Journal of Archaeology I: 247-268.