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Upper Paleolithic Adaptations in Central and Eastern Europe and Man-Mammoth Interactions

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From Kostenki to Clovis

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology ((IDCA))

Abstract

The Eastern Gravettian technocomplex is a widespread entity that dominated Central and Eastern Europe between some 28,000 and 10,000 B.P. (Kozlowski 1986, 1990; Otte 1982). This poorly understood entity contains within it a number of archaeological cultures that show affinities to each other and are classified into the Willendorf, Pavlov, Kostenki, and Avdeevo cultures and grouped into various larger-sized cultural entities. The reasons for the similarities between them are poorly understood and generally involve postulations about some sort of a west-to-east population movement (Grigor’ev 1968; Kozlowski 1986, 1990; Tarasov 1979). Here I argue that a new understanding of these archaeological entities can be gained by embedding them into the natural world in which the hunter-gatherers who made the inventories functioned, specifically by considering the one species, mammoth, that played a significant role in their adaptations.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 61801, USA

    Olga Soffer

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  1. Olga Soffer
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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 61801, USA

    Olga Soffer

  2. Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, 192045, Russia

    Nikolai Dmitrievich Praslov

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Soffer, O. (1993). Upper Paleolithic Adaptations in Central and Eastern Europe and Man-Mammoth Interactions. In: Soffer, O., Praslov, N.D. (eds) From Kostenki to Clovis. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1112-4_4

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