Long-distance contacts and social networks of the Upper Palaeolithic humans in the North-Western Caucasus (on data from Mezmaiskaya Cave, Russia)
Introduction
Numerous studies show that important social-demographic traits found in all Upper Palaeolithic (UP) regions of Europe are increasing population density and the concomitant size of residential groups, and changes in mobility strategies of UP groups based on evidence of the transportation of raw materials over several hundred km (e.g., Gamble, 1986, Bocquet-Appel et al., 2005, Féblot-Augustins, 2009). Many researchers consider the long-distance transportation of raw materials and various non-utilitarian objects as evidence for the formation of culturally proscribed areas and organization of complex social networks that provided intergroup cultural transmission, trade, and exchange (e.g., Gamble, 1999, Mills et al., 2013, Horiuchi and Takakura, 2019). Palaeogenomic studies also reveal various patterns of genetic (mating) interactions between different UP groups in Europe and Asia (Seguin-Orlando et al., 2014, Fu et al., 2016, Sikora et al., 2017), suggesting that the social organization of UP humans resembled those of living hunter-gatherers, with limited relationships within residential groups embedded in large-scale social networks that were associated with intergroup cultural contacts and mating. Generally, advances in the study of the UP society suggest that the complex social structures that interweave marriage relations and access to natural resources via social networks, and which characterize all modern human societies, emerged after 30 ka (Foley and Gamble, 2009).
The occurrence of rare lithic artifacts made from exotic rocks, i.e. brought from distance over 100–200 km to the site, is a highly informative source concerning long-distance human mobility, exchange and other social contacts between UP human groups (Féblot-Augustins, 2009, Kuhn, 2004, Aubry et al., 2012). Also, unusual, so called 'non-utilitarian' (i.e., not related to household or life sustaining economic activities) can have significance as evidence of long-distance contacts between UP groups. Many examples of unusual lithic artifacts are known in the UP of West and Central Europe. During the earlier UP unusual materials collected mostly within local environments, but in the later UP the high value of some exceptional materials led to increasingly distant procurement, likely involving long-distance networking (Moncel et al., 2012). On the central Russian Plain, nonlocal materials including lithics, marine shells, and amber, which are found in many UP sites, were obtained likely through specialised procurement in some areas and moved through exchange via long-distance trade networks across the whole territory of Russian Plain (Soffer, 2013).
Modern palaeogenomic (Jones et al., 2015, Fu et al., 2016) and archaeological (Golovanova and Doronichev, 2020) data from the Caucasus show that the population history and cultural development of the UP humans in the region are specific and differ from those in Europe and West Asia in several respects. Comparisons of the UP assemblages from the North-western (NW) and South-western (SW) Caucasus reveal that the UP industries on both slopes of the Greater Caucasus demonstrate a substantial similarity, indicating dispersal of close UP groups over the whole western Caucasus region. At present, there is also a wide consensus among researchers working directly in the Caucasus that the UP industry of this region does not represent a variant of the Aurignacian or Gravettian industries (e.g., Meshveliani et al., 2004, Bar-Yosef et al., 2006, Bar-Yosef et al., 2011, Adler et al., 2008, Golovanova and Doronichev, 2012, Golovanova and Doronichev, 2020, Pleurdeau et al., 2016, Kandel et al., 2017).
In this paper we discuss several kinds of archaeological data derived from from previous and ongoing research at Mezmaiskaya Cave, in the NW Caucasus, that provide increased knowledge about long-distance contacts and social networks that existed before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~25–20 ka cal BP) between the UP humans in this region and neighboring regions in the North-central (NC) and SW Caucasus, and the southern Russian Plain.
Section snippets
Background data
Mezmaiskaya Cave located 1310 m asl, in the NW Caucasus, Russia, is a reference Middle Palaeolithic (MP) and UP site in the Caucasus (Fig. 1). Since 1987, when L. Golovanova started excavations at the site, about 100 m2 have been excavated (see SI; Fig. S1) to the depth of 5 m. So far, 6 Holocene and 20 Pleistocene strata have been identified over the excavation area, including seven MP levels, six UP (1A-1, 1A-1/1A-2, 1A-2, 1B-1, 1B-2, and 1C, from top to bottom) and two Epipalaeolithic levels
Artifacts made of mammoth tusk
Artifacts made from mammoth tusk that are found in Mezmaiskaya Cave are of particular interest, because no evidence of mammoth hunting is known in the UP sites in the NW Caucasus and no artifacts from mammoth tusk are found in other UP sites in the region. At Mezmaiskaya, artifacts made from mammoth tusk were found only in the UP layers 1B, 1A-2 and 1A-1/1A-2.
In layers 1B and 1A-2, there are three small (10 × 8 × 2; 7 × 10 × 2, and 9 × 7 × 2 mm) flat stripe-beads made of mammoth tusk. They have
Significance of UP obsidian transport/exchange networks
Modern research indicates distinct regional peculiarities and a specific pathway of UP development in the Caucasus, represented by the 'Caucasus Upper Palaeolithic industry' (Golovanova and Doronichev, 2020). In both the North and South Caucasus, UP assemblages are characterized by a highly developed microblade (bladelet) technology aimed at the production of numerous bladelets and microbladelets (width <12 mm), and, to a lesser degree, larger blades. In many UP sites, prismatic unipolar cores
Conclusions
In conclusion, we suggest that the evidence from Mezmaiskaya Cave indicates that long-distance contacts between the UP humans in the NW Caucasus and neighboring regions had a different character and occurred for different reasons:
- 1.
The rare presence in the cave of a high-quality lithic raw material (obsidian) from very distant sources had an utilitarian value. In addition, the transportation of obsidian to the NW Caucasus from the South Caucasus further confirms cultural similarity between the UP
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The research was made as a part of the research project “Trends of the cultural process during the Late Pleistocene in the North-Western Caucasus” supported by grant No. 20-18-00060 from the Russian Science Foundation.
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