Sigh! Cave Girls Not Really Cave Girls

More like ancient women who used caves occasionally: The Caveman’s Home Was Not a Cave

It was the 18th-century scientist Carolus Linnaeus that laid the foundations for modern biological taxonomy. It was also Linnaeus who argued for the existence of Homo troglodytes, a primitive people said to inhabit the caves of an Indonesian archipelago. Although troglodyte has since been proven to be an invalid taxon, archaeological doctrine continued to describe our ancestors as cavemen. The idea fits with a particular narrative of human evolution, one that describes a steady march from the primitive to the complex: Humans descended from the trees, stumbled about the land, made homes in caves, and finally found glory in high-rises. In this narrative, progress includes living inside confined physical spaces. This thinking was especially prevalent in Western Europe, where caves yielded so much in the way of art and artifacts that archaeologists became convinced that a cave was also a home, in the modern sense of the word.

By the 1980s, archaeologists understood that this picture was incomplete: The cave was far from being the primary residence. But archaeologists continued focusing on excavating caves, both because it was habitual and the techniques involved were well understood.

So we've known for a long time that primitive people occupied a lot of territory without using caves, but we study cave sites because preservation is better, and it's better for dating. Got it! So this article is sort of a nothing burger?

Then along came the American anthropological archaeologist, Margaret Conkey. Today a professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, she had asked a simple question: What did cave people do all day? What if she looked at the archaeological record from the perspective of a mobile culture, like the Inuit? She decided to look outside of caves.

 Wow; now there's an inspiration.

One big clue is seasonal occupation evidence, something archaeologists infer based on things like animal bones. For example, by looking at found animal teeth, we can tell you at what season of the year the animals were killed. Also, certain animals are only available at certain times—fish that spawn at certain seasons of the year, for example. Almost all caves are described by archaeologists as seasonal, namely as autumn or winter occupations. It’s clear that people were in caves for maybe a couple of months a year at the most.

Caves were a convenient way to get out of inconvenient weather, to hole up, as it were, for a few months, until it was safe to get out on the road again.

Then we discovered what we think is an open-air habitation site in Peyre Blanque, also in the Ariège region, on a ridge that’s never been plowed. We found artifacts eroding out of a muddy horseback-riding trail in the woods. The horses had stirred up the mud, and exposed some stone tools; now the site has yielded hundreds of them. We started excavating and found stone slabs, which we believe is a habitation structure in the open-air, probably from the Upper Paleolithic, about 17,000 years ago. We also found yellow, black, and red pigments, meaning ochre—powdered hydrated iron oxide—that early humans used for art and body art.

Mobile caves, or caves-on-the-fly?

This all makes pretty good sense. I think we all knew that primitive people were hunter-gatherers, and if they stayed in any one place too long, the pickins got a little thin. There are just not enough good caves to support a substantial population of hunter-gatherers, even if they only occupy them part time.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup." Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Insert Clever Title Here" up at The Other McCain.