This volume contains papers from twelve authors who were invited to speak at the Prehistoric Society's conference on Palaeolithic Art held at the Oxford University Department for External Studies in November 1989. Such conferences are a regular feature of the Society's activities and are organized to review and debate important themes in prehistory. In this instance interest in Palaeolithic art had already been heightened through the Society's study tours to the Dordogne (in 1980) and Northern Spain (in 1987). Despite this interest, no major conference on the theme had been organized in Britain since the Society's London Conference of April 1967 on ‘Prehistoric Art in the Western Mediterranean to the Second Millennium BC’. Unfortunately, the papers of that conference were not published and it is difficult now to assess their contribution to the subject. By contrast, some of the Society's subsequent conferences have been published by commercial houses (for example, Mellars 1978; Chapman, Kinnes and Randsborg 1981; Champion and Megaw 1985; Coles and Lawson 1987). This volume marks a different approach, namely for the Society to publish the proceedings of its own conference. Hopefully, this will enable members who were unable to participate in the conference to benefit from the expertise of the authors, and encourage others with an interest in prehistory to join the Society.

Knowing the source of the red deer in the Mesolithic shell middens on Oronsay is necessary for a reconstruction of the early post-glacial settlement patterns in the southern Hebrides. If they came from Colonsay, then it is conceivable that the combined resources of Colonsay and Oronsay could have supported a population on these small islands for extended periods of time — as the seasonally data from the middens suggests when taken at face value. If there were no red deer on Colonsay, it is more likely that the Oronsay middens result from many short intermittent visits to the island. Since early post-glacial faunal assemblages are unknown from Colonsay, and unlikely to be found, this paper discusses the relevance of lithic assemblages for inferring the hunting of red deer. It describes recent fieldwork on Colonsay and the discovery of the first Mesolithic sites, notably that of Staosnaig. It concludes that the microlithic elements within the assemblages are too small to indicate red deer hunting. If Mesolithic foragers went to Colonsay to hunt red deer, they probably left rather quickly and empty-handed.

In a recent discussion of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, Julian Thomas decribed the Mesolithic as a ‘cybernetic wasteland’ (1988, 64). By this he was presumably referring to the picture we gain of Mesolithic society when ‘human behaviour [is seen] in terms of adaptive responses to environmental pressures’ (ibid., 59), which Thomas states as the basis of Mesolithic research. Is he justified in the use of this damning phrase? When archaeologists see human behaviour in an ecological framework do they deny people their humanity by turning them into robots, helpless ‘victims of externally-imposed circumstances’ (ibid., 61).

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.

This article constitutes a reply to a piece by Steven Mithen, in which an earlier contribution in this journal (Thomas 1988) is criticized as misrepresenting the character of Mesolithic archaeology. Mithen contends that the ‘processual’ archaeology which dominates that period can be humanized by introducing a consideration of emotion into the adaptive process. In this contribution it is suggested that the emphasis on emotion and rationality betrays a misunderstanding of the character of ‘post-processual’ archaeology, while the attempt to encompass emotion in an evolutionary ecological framework does no more than extend the remit of an inherently reductionist perspective. Emphasis is laid upon the notions of history and contextualized social action, and it is recognized that these concepts cannot be accommodated unless we allow that the fundamental characteristics of humanity are not fixed, but are themselves contingent and historically situated.

The ‘art’ of the early Upper Palaeolithic refers to the images and symbols of the hunters of horse, bison and mammoth during the last European Ice Age that began more than 32,000 years ago. It is therefore interesting that it is not the image of the animal that develops in complexity and variability across Ice Age Europe for the next 20,000 or so years, but the image of the female. The image and the concept of the Ice Age female has perhaps been the subject of more intense emotional debate in the last century than the image of the animal (Ucko 1962; 1969; Clottes and Cerou 1970; LeroiGourhan 1965; Ucko and Rosenfeld 1972; Stoliar 1977–78). The debate continues, both with new finds and new ideas (Rosenfeld 1977; Delporte 1979; Rice 1981; Gamble 1982; Cerda 1983; Guthrie 1984; Praslov 1985; Sonneville-Bordes 1986; Lorblanchet and Welte 1987; Gvozdover 1989; Duhard 1989).

Art is unique amongst the categories of evidence which survive from the Palaeolithic period in that it was originally structured to communicate. It is true that style is an aspect of tool-making, and the particular forms adopted in the manufacture of tools may be intended as practical innovations or as recognizable types that define distinct social groups (Wiessner 1983) but art is only communication; it has no practical use. Its purpose is to convey a message, simple perhaps, as with ornamentation, or more complex as is suggested by the repertoire of painting and engraving in caves. In a culture without a literate tradition music, mime, recital and art are the vehicles of information. Only one of these remains from the Palaeolithic and, in isolation, the visual evidence is to a certain degree illuminating and to a certain degree frustrating in that certain deductions can be made from its intrinsic features, but not an explanation of its meaning.

A shelter in the Tassili shows many rock-pictures which are all executed in the same style, the style of the Iheren-Tahilahi group. It is therefore possible to confirm the characteristic features of this very distinct and lively group, which is mainly distributed throughout the central and the northern Tassili. The physical type of the figures it represents is exclusively europoid. The distribution area, the age of the group and its position on the general climatic oscillation curve are specified.

Explaining the evolution of prehistoric trade systems dominates archaeological research in the Papuan Lowlands of New Guinea. However, important evidence in the form of ground stone axes, which had to be imported into this region, is largely ignored. This paper provides a summary of relevant ethnographic accounts of axe exchange systems, describes the archaeological finds from a restricted area near Kikori Station using sourcing and morphological analyses and interprets the meaning and significance of results. As this is a radical departure from traditional studies, we take this opportunity to sketch some major research questions which may aid future investigations.

The Magdalenian sites of Andernach and Gönnersdorf are located in the central Rhineland at the northwestern end of the Neuwied Basin (fig. 1). The first investigation of the Andernach-Martinsberg site was carried out in 1883 by H. Schaaffhausen (1888); between 1979 and 1983 a new campaign of excavations took place at the same site (Veil 1982a). The site of Gönnersdorf was investigated between 1968 and 1976 (Bosinski 1979). The two sites are located directly facing each other above the Rhine, which at the time of the occupation was much wider than at the present day; Andernach is sited on a Middle Pleistocene lava flow, while Gönnersdorf is on the Middle Terrace of the Rhine. Both sites are assigned by pollen analysis to the end of the Bølling interstadial; the great similarities in their archaeological material, down to individual details, suggest that the two sites were contemporary.

The complex system of subterranean passages at Montesquieu-Avantès in the foothills of the central French Pyrenees through which the River Volp flows is conventionally divided into three caves, Le Tuc d'Audoubert to the west, Les Trois-Frères in the centre and Enlène to the east. While the east two are connected by a narrow corridor, no usable passage connects Tuc d'Audoubert with Trois-Frères and the only current means of access is by boat. At Tuc d'Audoubert the galleries lie on three levels, the lowest carrying the River Volp, the ‘median’ with decorated galleries (La Salle Nuptiale, La Galerie des Gravures) and the upper with further decoration (La Chatière, Salle des Talons) terminating in the Salle des Bisons containing the celebrated modelled clay bison (Bégouën and Clottes 1984b). The position of Trois-Frères and Enlène approximates to the upper level of Tuc d'Audoubert. Trois-Frères has numerous galleries with several possible original entrances, although the only certain Magdalenian access was through Enlène. Whereas Trois-Frères contains one of the most prolific arrays of wall art (Galerie des Mains, Chapelle de la Lionne, Galerie des Points, Salle du Grand-Eboulis, Sanctuaire, Galerie des Chouettes, Galerie de l'Hémione), Enlène has none. However excavations at Enlène have revealed a considerable range of engraved bones and stone plaquettes from occupation deposits (Bégouën and Clottes 1984a).

The site of Le Pinacle, Jersey, is an important multi-phase site with horizons dating to the Early Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Gallo-Roman periods. Recent reassessment of the material from the site suggests the existence of a stone axe production centre at Le Pinacle during the Early Neolithic period. Petrological studies have resulted in the identification of a group of dolerite axes, for which Le Pinacle is the probable source. Axes belonging to this group have been identified in assemblages from Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark.

Wayland's Smithy, on the north scarp of the downs above the Vale of the White Horse, is a two-phase Neolithic tomb. It has been a recognized feature of the historic landscape since at least the 10th century AD. It was recorded by Aubrey and later antiquaries, and continued to be of interest in the 19th century. It was amongst the first monuments to be protected by scheduling from 1882. The first excavations in 1919–20 were haphazardly organized and poorly recorded, but served to confirm, as suggested by Akerman and Thurnam, that the stone terminal chamber was transepted, to show that it had held burials, and to indicate the likely existence of an earlier structural phase.

Further excavations took place in 1962–63 to explore the monument more and restore it for better presentation. The excavations revealed a two-phase monument. Wayland's Smithy I is a small oval barrow, defined by flanking ditches, an oval kerb, and a low chalk and sarsen barrow. It contains a mortuary structure defined by large pits which held posts of split trunks, a pavement, and opposed linear cairns of sarsen. This has been seen as the remains of a pitched and ridged mortuary tent, in the manner proposed also for the structure under the Fussell's Lodge long barrow, but in the light of ensuing debate and of subsequent discoveries elsewhere, it can also be seen as an embanked, box-like structure, perhaps with a flat wooden roof. This structure contained the remains of at least fourteen human skeletons, in varying states of completeness. The burial rite may have included primary burial or exposure elsewhere, but some at least of the bodies could have been deposited directly into the mortuary structure, and subsequent circulation or removal of bones cannot be discounted. Little silt accumulated in the ditches of phase I before the construction of phase II, and a charcoal sample from this interval gave a date of 3700–3390 BC.

Wayland's Smithy II consists of a low sarsen-kerbed trapezoidal barrow, with flanking ditches, which follows the north–south alignment of phase I. At the south end there was a façade of larger sarsen stones, from which ran back a short passage leading to a transepted chamber, roofed with substantial capstones. This could have risen above the surrounding barrow. The excavations of 1919–20 revealed the presence of incomplete human burials in the west transept; the chamber had probably already been disturbed. The excavations of 1962–63 revealed further structural detail of the surrounds of the chamber, including a sarsen cairn piled in front and around it; deposits of calcium carbonate well up the walls of the chamber could be taken to suggest the former existence of chalk rubble blocking, in the manner of the West Kennet long barrow.

The monuments were built over a thin chalk soil which had been a little disturbed. The molluscan evidence shows open surroundings. Molluscan samples from the ditch of Wayland's Smithy II show subsequent regeneration of woodland.

Later activity on the site took the form of field ditches and lynchets, part of locally extensive field systems in the Iron Age and Romano-British period. Molluscan samples show again open country. There is evidence for disturbance of the tomb in late prehistoric and Roman times, and the denudation of the barrow had probably largely been effected by the end of the Roman era.

Wayland's Smithy provides important evidence for the sequence and development of Neolithic mortuary structures and burials. It is possible to suggest a gradual development for the structures ofWayland's Smithy I, in which opposed pits and substantial posts were incorporated into a box-like, linear mortuary structure, which in turn was incorporated into a small barrow. The subsequent construction of Wayland's Smithy II has become a classic example of the succession from small to large, and fits the late date of tombs with transepted chambers suggested by recent study of other sites. The nature of the circumstances surrounding this transformation remains unclear. The burials of phase I suggest the necessity of revising current notions about the ubiquity of secondary disposal in mortuary structures and tombs. In situ transformations suggest a very active concern with the dead, and offset the non-monumental character of the primary mortuary structure. In the relative absence of other detailed local evidence it is hard to relate the site to its local context, though comparisons can be drawn with the sequences of the neighbouring upper Thames valley and the upper Kennet valley and surrounding downland.

Discovery of the cave of Altamira in 1879 introduced a new aspect to ideas on human evolution, requiring a fresh approach to previous notions of life and customs among prehistoric groups. In the final years of the 19th century the prevailing view of prehistoric life was still coloured by the prejudice and concepts which had marked early discussion on the origin of man. From what was known of their tools and art forms, early men were presented as living in simple communities which were considered equivalent to the ‘primitive peoples’ being described, often with a Euro-centric superiority, by contemporary ethnographers. The already classical volumes of the period, such as the Reliquiae Aquitanicae recording Lartet and Christy's discoveries, were full of interesting parallels to Eskimos and Bushmen. Up to this time, known Palaeolithic art was confined to engraved bone, some of it of high technical competence as at Chaffaud and La Madeleine. Consequently when the discovery of Altamira was presented at the Lisbon Congress it was received with some degree of caution.

Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain is one of the most impressive British prehistoric (c. 3000–1500 BC) monuments. It is dominated by large upright sarsen stones, some of which are joined by lintels. While these stones are of relatively local derivation, some of the stone settings, termed bluestones, are composed of igneous and minor sedimentary rocks which are foreign to the solid geology of Salisbury Plain and must have been transported to their present location. Following the proposal of an origin in south-west Wales, debate has focused on hypotheses of natural transport by glacial processes, or transport by human agency. This paper reports the results of a programme of sampling and chemical analysis of Stonehenge bluestones and proposed source outcrops in Wales.

Analysis by X-ray-fluorescence of fifteen monolith samples and twenty-two excavated fragments from Stonehenge indicate that the dolerites originated at three sources in a small area in the eastern Preseli Hills, and that the rhyolite monoliths derive from four sources including northern Preseli and other (unidentified) locations in Pembrokeshire, perhaps on the north Pembrokeshire coast. Rhyolite fragments derive from four outcrops (including only one of the monolith sources) over a distance of at least 10 km within Preseli. The Altar Stone and a sandstone fragment (excavated at Stonehenge) are from two sources within the Palaeozoic of south-west Wales. This variety of source suggests that the monoliths were taken from a glacially-mixed deposit, not carefully selected from an in situ source. We then consider whether prehistoric man collected the bluestones from such a deposit in south Wales or whether glacial action could have transported bluestone boulders onto Salisbury Plain. Glacial erratics deposited in south Dyfed (dolerites chemically identical to Stonehenge dolerite monoliths), near Cardiff, on Flatholm and near Bristol indicate glacial action at least as far as the Avon area. There is an apparent absence of erratics east of here, with the possible exception of the Boles Barrow boulder, which may predate the Stonehenge bluestones by as much as 1000 years, and which derived from the same Preseli source as two of the Stonehenge monoliths. However, 18th-century geological accounts describe intensive agricultural clearance of glacial boulders, including igneous rocks, on Salisbury Plain, and contemporary practice was of burial of such boulders in pits. Such erratics could have been transported as ‘free boulders’ from ‘nunataks’ on the top of an extensive, perhaps Anglian or earlier, glacier some 400,000 years ago or more, leaving no trace of fine glacial material in present river gravels. Erratics may be deposited at the margins of ice-sheets in small groups at irregular intervals and with gaps of several kilometres between individual boulders.

‘Bluestone’ fragments are frequently reported on and near Salisbury Plain in archaeological literature, and include a wide range of rock types from monuments of widely differing types and dates, and pieces not directly associated with archaeological structures. Examination of prehistoric stone monuments in south Wales shows no preference for bluestones in this area. The monoliths at Stonehenge include some structurally poor rock types, now completely eroded above ground. We conclude that the builders of the bluestone structures at Stonehenge utilized a heterogeneous deposit of glacial boulders readily available on Salisbury Plain. Remaining erratics are now seen as small fragments sometimes incorporated in a variety of archaeological sites, while others were destroyed and removed in the 18th century. The bluestones were transported to Salisbury Plain from varied sources in south Wales by a glacier rather than human activity.

At first sight it may seem a pointless exercise to produce a survey of late Pleistocene ‘artistic activity’ around the world, but there are two specific aims involved here: first, to show that human beings in different parts of the world were producing ‘art’ at roughly the same time, i.e. from about 40,000 BC onward, and particularly at the end of the Pleistocene, from about 12,0000 BC, and second, to show that the well known Ice Age art of Europe is no longer unique, but part of a far more widespread phenomenon (Bahn 1987; Bahn and Vertut 1988, 26–32). The European art remains supreme in its quantity and its ‘quality’ (i.e. its realism and its wide range of techniques), but that situation may well alter in the next decade or two as new discoveries are made elsewhere and new dating methods are refined and extended.

Ironically, the first clue to Pleistocene art outside Europe was found as long ago as 1870, only a few years after Edouard Lartet's and Henry Christy's discoveries in southern France were authenticated. Unfortunately, the object in question was badly published, and dis-appeared from 1895 until its rediscovery in 1956, and consequently very few works on Pleistocene art mention it. This mineralized sacrum of an extinct fossil camelid was found at Tequixquiac in the northern part of the central basin of Mexico. The bone is carved and engraved (two nostrils have been cut into the end) so as to represent the head of a pig-like or dog-like animal (pl. 18a). The circumstances of its discovery are unclear, but it is thought to be from a late Pleistocene bone bed, and to be at least 11,000 or 12,000 years old (Aveleyra 1965; Messmacher 1981,94). At present it is on exhibit in Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology.

To describe, let alone explain, the paintings, engravings and sculpture of the Upper Palaeolithic as ‘adaptations’ may sound absurd. These are products of the human mind — a world of symbols and dreams, myths and fantasies. So to suggest that this art can be understood in an ecological framework may strike one as facile. Upper Palaeolithic art is one of the great cultural achievements of human kind. It testifies not only to an immense technical skill but to the human capacity for expressing emotion through the use of line, form and colour. Although we cannot know the meaning of the art, through it we can begin to share the sensitivities of the Palaeolithic hunters to their natural world and the animals of the chase. Like all great art, it transcends the boundaries of time and space to say something fundamental about the human condition — though that ‘something’ is forever elusive. The paintings, engravings and sculpture of the Upper Palaeolithic are indeed the epitome of human creativity. So when faced with either the great bulls of Lascaux or just a scratch upon a broken pebble, surely it must be trivial to invoke notions of adaptation and ecology. After all, is not adaptation solely about the more basic features of human life — the selfish struggle to survive and reproduce — hardly the basis for the fine arts.

The results of an area-intensive surface collection survey are described and evidence for a coarse-grained response to the distribution of resources is presented. Surface collection surveys have occurred over many areas of southern England with attention focused especially on the neolithic landscape of the monument zone. The results of such surveys provide an indication of the social landscape within which monument building occurred. However, to fully appreciate human behaviour in an active and emergent landscape, the results of similar investigations from what appear passive landscapes must be available as well as evidence for human exploitation in earlier and later periods. The upper Meon valley survey represents one of only few attempts to redress that imbalance and to assess objectively the nature of occupation away from the monument zone throughout the prehistoric period. The results demonstrate an intensity of occupation equal to that in other parts of Wessex but confined, predominantly, to the mesolithic and earlier neolithic periods. The survey also provides a case-study in interpretation. The emphasis is less on places than on the space in which they occurred.

During the course of archaeological investigations in advance of a business and residential development, an unusual structure was discovered. The site is located on a silty clay-capped terrace of the River Kennet immediately to the north-west of Hungerford, Berks, (SU 334692).

The structure, initially thought to be a round house, comprised a ring of seven equally spaced pits in a 6 m diameter circle. At its centre was an area of fire-reddened clay over 1 m in extent. Two shallow scoops cut this burnt area (fig. 1). The pits were generally bowl shaped, 60–80 cm across and 15–30 cm deep. Some of the pits had clear evidence for the presence of small posts. These posts had been burnt and replaced on more than one occasion. There was no evidence for an encircling ditch or a covering mound. A single 14C date of 3360 ± 40 BP (BM–2737) was obtained on oak charcoal from pit 5008, which is consistent with the Early Bronze Age date of the pottery.

Our purpose is to examine the hypothesis that Palaeolithic parietal image sites in south-west Europe model or map a specific area of the terrain around them in so far as that terrain was useful to the people who made the images. So far as we are aware the hypothesis has not received wide attention (Eastham 1979; Kehoe 1990). Maps were made by some hunter-gatherer peoples. There are Amerindian maps (Brody 1981; Leacock 1969), and maps have been used as an explanation of some Australian parietal figures (Mountford 1956; 1961). There has been, however, little systematic application of the hypothesis to Palaeolithic images.

The images under discussion are the recognizable representations of animals painted, engraved or carved on the walls, floors and roofs of caves and rock shelters during the last glaciation. They are recognizable because the marks of which they are composed make redundant reference to known species. They may be accompanied by others which can be interpreted as representations of human beings and ambiguous configurations of animals.