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The Mousterian of European Russia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Richard G. Klein
Richard G. Klein
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
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Extract

Prehistorians concerned with the Pleistocene have traditionally defined their cultural units (‘industries’) mainly by the types of stone artefacts they contain. One of the best known of these units is the Mousterian, authoritatively defined by Francois Bordes (1953, 458) as ‘… an industry of flakes, comprising a variable proportion of side-scrapers, points, denticulate tools, and also bifaces. Technically, the flakes may or may not be of Levallois débitage and may or may not have faceted butts, Levallois débitage and butt-faceting having no necessary relation to one another’. The Mousterian is generally assumed to have its roots in an earlier group of industries known as the Acheulean. It is difficult to determine when the Mousterian emerged as a distinct entity both because differentiation from the Acheulean occurred only gradually and because our geochronological controls are imperfect. Certainly, however, the Mousterian was in existence by the beginning of the Last ( = ‘Würm’) Glacial Period, that is, no later than 65,000–70,000 years ago (Table I). In the earlier part of this Glacial, it was distributed from the Iberian Peninsula on the west to Uzbekistan (and perhaps beyond) on the east, and from the British Isles on the north to the Mediterranean littoral of Africa on the south. Sometime between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago (the exact time perhaps depending upon the place), the Mousterian was rather abruptly replaced over most, if not all of this range. The demise of the Mousterian is of especial interest because there is considerable evidence to suggest that it was intimately connected with the disappearance of Neandertal Man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and the subsequent spread of modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 35 , February 1970 , pp. 77 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1970

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References

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