Specialization and the Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition [and Comments and Reply]

• Published in: Current anthropology Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 73 - 98
• Main Authors: Orquera, Luis Abel, Ackerly, Neal W., Bayham, Frank E., Browman, David L., Chase, Philip G., Clark, G. A., Tassone, Vicente Giancotti, Moore, Kurt R., Ohel, Milla Y., White, Randall
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press 01-02-1984
• Subjects: Animals; Bones; Cutting tools; Deer hunting; Europe; Generalities; Hunter gatherers; Hunting; Paleoanthropology; Prehistory; Prehistory and protohistory; Scrapers; Subsistence hunting
• ISSN: 0011-3204; 1537-5382
• DOI: 10.1086/203082

Discussions of the differences between the Middle and the Upper Paleolithic usually oppose them as if they differed in essence and resort to lists of features apparently disconnected among themselves. This approach may be questioned; in fact, we are dealing with successive stages of a continuous evolutionary process, and we ought to be seeking, on a broader geographical and chrono-cultural basis, a unifying principle of which the features considered diagnostic are implications. That principle may be the search for greater efficiency in the interaction with the environment that in the Paleolithic produced a tendency toward specialization. Thus the Upper Paleolithic would include archaeological manifestations that are demonstrably specialized, and the Middle Paleolithic would be viewed as a stage in which the first steps in that direction can be distinguished. The article discusses the conditions that characterize specialization, its conceptualization, and its archaeological identification. This approach also allows one to distinguish different levels of accomplishment within a given stage and to compare the degrees of evolution achieved by Paleolithic groups in different areas and continents before the steps were taken that led to food production.