EU-BEADS · Early Upper Palaeolithic personal ornaments and behavioural adaptations

Early Upper Palaeolithic personal ornaments and behavioural adaptations

EU-Beads investigated symbolically mediated behaviour of Early Upper Palaeolithic modern humans through the study of personal ornaments. Specifically, EU-Beads focussed on the Levantine region between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago. The goal was a better understanding of variation and standardisation in shell bead production and use, as well as establishing new criteria for identification of anthropic modifications of marine shell beads. To achieve this, EU-Beads employed a range of state-of-the-art zooarchaeological and taphonomic methodologies in conjunction with newly learned analytical techniques namely finite element analysis, use-wear analysis and GIS. In addition, EU-Beads developed a new analytical method to improve quantification of human actions in the production of shell beadwork using geometrics morphometrics. The large shell bead collection of Ksar’ Akil (Lebanon) served as a case study. The high quality, multidisciplinary research results contributed substantially to our knowledge of Early Upper Palaeolithic behavioural adaptations and of modern human symbolically mediated behaviours in general. In particular, the EU-Beads research objectives (ROs) were: RO1: Identification and characterisation of EMH shell bead manufacture and use as well as pigment use; this includes an assessment of variability and standardisation of behaviours. RO2: Establishing new criteria for the identification of anthropic perforations on shell. RO3: Contextualization of Levantine EMH beadwork in the wider framework of modern human symbolically mediated behaviour of the earlier African MSA and later European Aurignacian. The results of this project contributed to our understanding of symbolic underpinnings of dispersal activity. Specifically, the use of personal ornamentation as a means of communication in highly-mobile migrating populations. This project offers a deep-history view to debates relevant to present-day society and the European Community.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union