Tracing group identity in early upper paleolithic stone and organic tools – some thoughts and many questions

Abstract

While discussions about identity in the Upper Paleolithic usually focus on art, decorated objects, and personal ornaments, regarding style as one crucial topic, organic tools and especially stone artifacts have been considered to a much lesser degree. This paper tries to assess the significance of stone and organic tools, representing the most common archaeological record beyond art and ornaments, for establishing group identity in the early Upper Paleolithic. It starts providing a short overview of some major contributions addressing style with regard to stone artifacts and then screens the archaeological record. Problems result from the lack of an unambiguous definition of ‘style’ and from the lack of applicable parameters to decide whether differences between tools have to be interpreted in terms of different styles or rather in terms of different types. In both cases it is not clear if and in which way identity is conveyed. Both stone and organic tools appear to be weak indicators for group identity and even with data added by other artifact categories such as personal ornaments, decorated objects and art objects the chance of getting positive results is rated to be rather low for the early Upper Paleolithic.