A Lithic-Behavioral Investigation of Cultural Transmission Across the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition in Western Europe

Abstract

Neanderthals are one of our closest evolutionary relatives. Molecular anthropology has shown that our species intermixed genetically, but the extent to which we interacted socially and exchanged technological information is still hotly debated, especially in the period approximately 40,000 years ago in Western Europe just prior to the Neanderthals’ extinction. This dissertation addresses elements of this question through a mixture of methodologies. This work is presented in the form of three papers. Paper 1 presents an inexpensive photography rig designed to create 3D artifact models using photogrammetry, also known as structure from motion. The second paper uses 3D models of cores generated with the system described in Paper 1 to compare Châtelperronian and Protoaurignacian lithic technology, which are associated with Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans respectively. The final paper presents an attribute-based analysis of artifacts from five assemblages from four sites linked to three technocomplexes spanning the so-called Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. This analysis applies the middle range theory of the Behavioral Approach to Cultural Transmission to both test the hypothesis that there was cultural transmission between Neanderthal and anatomically modern human groups and infer the degree of social intimacy that is most likely to have existed between them.