Cultural taxonomies in the Paleolithic - old questions, novel perspectives

Abstract

Time and time again, the systematics of Paleolithic archeology have been discussed, albeit most often in relation to specific periods or phenomena,1, 2 or in difficult‐to‐access publications.3, 4, 5 Despite these recurring debates, however, the practice of classification and of building cultural taxonomies has changed little over the last many decades. Today, the cultural taxonomies of the Paleolithic are in crisis.6 Still, a robust definition of the analytical taxonomic units—cultures, industries, facies, groups—used for charting cultural and behavioral change in space and time is critical. Operational taxonomic units hinge on consistent criteria for their definition and delimitation, a clear taxonomic system into which such archeological entities are placed, agreement on the meaning of the relative ranks within such taxonomic system, and their prehistoric reality vis‐à‐vis anthropological, ethnic or linguistic notions of culture. Arguably, these four requirements are essential for conducting comparative and cumulative research at a supra‐regional and diachronic scale, and for articulating sequences of culture change in the Paleolithic with paleogenomic, paleoecological or paleoclimatic data. Most commonly, different forms of the typological method have been used to construct such archeological cultures. Taxonomic issues are by no means restricted to the Paleolithic but take on a specific quality there as our temporal scales stretch from the near‐paleontological of the Middle Pleistocene to the more intuitively appreciable timescales of the Final Paleolithic. The recurring debates about Paleolithic systematics together with recent research in many parts of the world and across many of its subperiods—from the Early Stone Age to the Epipaleolithic—have shown, however, that a substantial number of traditional archeological types are no longer doing their diagnostic work and that many formally named archeological units based on such types contribute more to confusion rather than solution in regard to our core questions.7, 8, 9, 10, 11 These issues are at the core of the European Research Foundation‐funded project entitled CLIOdynamic ARCHaeology: Computational approaches to Final Paleolithic/earliest Mesolithic archaeology and climate change (CLIOARCH: http://cas.au.dk/en/ERC-clioarch/) and the workshop on which we report here sought to catalyze joint thinking on Paleolithic systematics in a diachronic and global perspective.