Before Farming: the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers

ref: 2002/1 (3)

Hunter-gatherer archaeology in southern Africa:
recent research, future trends

Peter Mitchell
School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG
peter.mitchell@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk

Key words: Hunter-gatherers, Southern Africa, Middle Stone Age, Later Stone Age

Abstract

Southern Africa has become a major focus for international hunter-gatherer research, partly because of the prominence accorded surviving Bushmen peoples in the anthropological literature, partly because of recent advances in understanding the origins of anatomically modern humans and the meaning of Bushman rock art. This paper surveys the principal developments in hunter-gatherer archaeology within the region over the past decade and identifies the key themes that have been pursued. It then attempts to indicate the main directions along which research may grow over the next several years.

Paper

References

ref: 2002/1 (4)

The Neanderthal dead:
exploring mortuary variability in Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia

PB Pettitt
Department of Archaeology, University of Bristol, 43 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UU, & Keble College, Oxford
paul.pettitt@bristol.ac.uk

Key words: Neanderthals, burial, Middle Palaeolithic, Eurasia

Abstract

Recent discussions about Neanderthal mortuary behaviour have tended to polarise around opinions that they did, or did not, bury their dead. Gargett, in particular, has forwarded a largely unconvincing critique of Neanderthal burial, but most scholars agree that at least some Neanderthals, at some times, treated the dead body. This article demonstrates that Neanderthal mortuary activity was a real phenomenon that requires exploration and interpretation and examines the nature and extent of variability in mortuary behaviour. In the later Middle Pleistocene Neanderthals may have been caching the dead in unmodified natural surroundings. After 70 ka BP some Neanderthal groups buried infants, or parts of them, in pits, infants and adults in shallow grave cuttings and indulged in primary corpse modification and subsequent burial. It may have been on occasion too that certain enclosed sites served as mortuary centres, and that their function as such was perpetuated in the memory of Neanderthal groups either through physical grave markers or social tradition. In all it would seem that at least in some Neanderthal groups the dead body was explored and treated in socially meaningful ways.

Paper

References