Making art, making society: the social significance of small-scale innovations and experimentation in Palaeolithic portable art

Abstract

This paper discusses how the making of art – the materials, techniques, and gestures used during production – was culturally meaningful and socially variable during the European Upper Palaeolithic. Although much previous research has focused on persistent and functional innovations, studying small-scale and ephemeral innovations reveals the extent to which technological experimentation had an impact on artistic expression. Comparing the record of several archaeological sites purported to be in the same technocomplex helps to differentiate the presence of ‘social boundaries’ (sensu Dietler and Herbich 1998) and discern the extent to which groups shared knowledge and cultural, technical, and artistic traditions. In this paper, ceramic art from two distinct contexts (Czech Republic at c. 30,000 BP and Croatia at c. 17,500 BP) will be discussed to explore the role of small-scale innovation in shaping and transforming Upper Palaeolithic art and society.

Keywords:

• Upper Palaeolithic
• art
• ceramic
• innovation

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Elizabeth DeMarrais and John Robb for their invitation to participate in their symposium at the 2012 conference of the Society for American Archaeology, Memphis, Tennessee, which was an opportunity for me to begin to consider these issues, and for their helpful feedback on this paper. Feedback from two anonymous reviewers helped improve the text of this paper. I am grateful to Dinko Radić (Centre for Culture, Vela Luka, Croatia), for allowing me to study the ceramics from Vela Spila, and to Preston Miracle (University of Cambridge) and Dejana Brajković (Institute for Quaternary Paleontology and Geology, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts), for facilitating my research on those assemblages. I am additionally grateful to Jiri Svoboda (Institute of Archaeology, Dolni Vestonice) and Martin Oliva (Moravian National Museum, Brno) for allowing me to study and photograph the Pavlovian ceramics discussed in this paper.