The Use of Clay in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe

Description

This book presents a synthetic review of the uses of one specific material, clay, in the Upper Palaeolithic period (ca 30,000 to 10,000 BP) in Europe, arguing that clay itself as a material has important potential as a medium of symbolic expression and was used as such during that period. Through technological and stylistic study of the use of clay, the author considers the context of knowledge visible through the working of the material. The study focuses on two specific cultural contexts with important traditions of using clay in the Upper Palaeolithic, in the Czech region of Moravia during the Gravettian period, and in the French Pyrénées during the Magdalenian. These regional contexts provide the framework for detailed case studies, as well as opportunities for temporal and regional comparisons, especially regarding the capacity of clay as a material to witness behavioural complexity in the archaeological record.