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The Social Context for European Palaeolithic Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

Clive Gamble
Clive Gamble
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Southampton S09 5NH
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Extract

My aim in this paper is to put the question, ‘Where was the centre of the Upper Palaeolithic world?’. I promise no answers and I will confine the discussion to Europe.

The purpose behind raising such a seemingly irrelevant problem is that its investigation leads us directly into issues of palaeolithic society, the interpretation of art in such contexts and the often opposed views of how art contributed to adaptation and change.

At the outset let me declare that I am not dealing with the origins of art and its association, or not, with language. Art for me is, however, a system of communication and includes a wide range of mediums and messages. As an act of social communication it is defined by style which, as Wiessner (1984, 191) argues, has its behavioural basis in a fundamental human cognitive process; personal and social identification through comparison. Consequently style is not just a means of transmitting information about identity but is an active tool used in building social strategies (ibid. 194). It has a role in negotiation which, as I shall argue below, is the basis for defining palaeolithic society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , 1991 , pp. 3 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1991

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