Plant use and local vegetation patterns during the second half of the Late Pleistocene in southwestern Germany
- PDF / 6,219,652 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 25 Downloads / 169 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Plant use and local vegetation patterns during the second half of the Late Pleistocene in southwestern Germany Simone Riehl & Elena Marinova & Katleen Deckers & Maria Malina & Nicholas J. Conard
Received: 12 September 2013 / Accepted: 18 February 2014 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract In light of recent discoveries of early figurative art in Paleolithic sites of southwestern Germany, gaining an improved understanding of biological, cultural, and social development of these hunter-gatherer populations under past environmental conditions is essential. The analysis of botanical micro- and macrofossils from the Hohle Fels Cave contributes to the limited floral record from this region. These data suggest generally open vegetation, with the presence of wood near Hohle Fels, as indicated by pollen, phytoliths, and evidence from wood charcoal throughout the whole sequence of occupation. The Aurignacian horizons (early Upper Paleolithic, starting around 44,200 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP) correlate with prevailing shrub tundra. Few arboreal pollen in the transitional section from the Aurignacian to the Gravettian horizons (middle Upper Paleolithic, until ca. 32 cal yr BP) supports the model of S. Riehl (*) : N. J. Conard Senckenberg Center of Human Evolution and Palaeoecology, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] E. Marinova Center for Archaeological Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E, 3001 Leuven, Belgium S. Riehl : K. Deckers Institut für Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany M. Malina Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany N. J. Conard Institut für ältere Urgeschichte, University of Tübingen, Schloss Hohentübingen, 72070 Tübingen, Germany E. Marinova Department Palaeontology, Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, Rue Vautier 29, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
an interglacial tundra with a mosaic of cold steppe elements and some patches of woody species. In the Gravettian, the macrobotanical and the palynological records indicate colder climatic conditions and a generally reduced presence of wood patches. Few seed remains, mostly of the Asteraceae and Poaceae families suggesting the use of these plants. The collection of bearberry (Arctostaphylos sp.) for specific purposes is indicated by large amounts of bark fragments. Keywords Upper Paleolithic . Central Europe . Pollen . Plant macrofossils . Phytoliths
Introduction Information on vegetation development and the landscape potential for early hunter-gatherers in southwestern Germany in the last third of marine isotope stage (MIS)-3 (60–26/ 24 kiloyear calibrated years before present (ka cal yr BP) is relatively limited, not least, because this sequence is generally underrepresented in the geological record of the region (Habbe et al. 2007). Climate fluctuations occurred frequently, though they sh
Data Loading...
