LEAF POINTS, LANDSCAPE USE STRATEGIES AND ENVIRONMENT CHANGE IN THE EUROPEAN LATE MIDDLE PALAEOLITHIC

The replacement of European Neanderthals by anatomically-modern Upper Palaeolithic peoples in the period after 45ka suggests strongly that competition from the latter was a critical factor in Neanderthal extinction. However, the particular domains of behaviour in which Neanderthals were at a relative competitive disadvantage remain poorly understood. This paper presents an analysis of late Middle Palaeolithic (ca 60-40ka) landscape use and sensitivity to environmental change in central and southeastern Europe, and therefore provides a basis for comparison between late Middle and early Upper Palaeolithic behaviour in these domains and their possible implication in the Neanderthals’ disappearance.

Lithic assemblages with leaf points are a key element of the Middle Palaeolithic in the study region and period, although there are also many assemblages in which leaf points are rare or absent. It is shown that the latter occur in archaeological contexts indicating relatively intensive occupation, while leaf point assemblages occur in contexts consistent with the occasional use of peripheral locations for specific purposes. This pattern implies land-use strategies founded on a complementary relationship between occupation centres and satellite task-specific sites. Leaf points were associated with the latter. Pollen evidence is also advanced which shows that leaf points occur only in those regions of Europe that experienced alternations between forested and open landscapes on wavelengths of two or three millennia in the late Middle Palaeolithic. These patterns are supported by a specific focus on the Altmühl Valley, Bavaria.

It is therefore proposed that late Middle Palaeolithic land use strategies were based upon the logistically-organized integration of action in social centres and in the landscape periphery, and that the association of leaf points with landscape change on sub-glacial wavelengths argues against Neanderthal incapacity to respond behaviourally to short-cycle environmental instability. In both of these domains, this analysis suggests that late Neanderthal behaviour was not very different from that of early modern humans and that we should seek elsewhere for answers to the problem of Neanderthal extinction.