Contacts et déplacements des groupes humains dans le Paléolithique supérieur européen : les adaptations aux variations climatiques des stratégies de gestion des ressources dans le territoire et dans le cycle annuel

The accumulation of data on the activity of Palaeolithic human groups networks (source of raw materials, location of sites, Hunt seasonal, etc.) allows gradually to highlight strategies for the territory occupation of which the main parameters are the mobility, the territory area, the food resource management and the seasonality of activities in the annual cycle. 

Local Opportunistic strategy. The area of the territory is limited (less than 1000 km²). Mobility is low. Hunting is opportunistic. The settlement is permanent in a rockshelter. If there is exhaustion of the food resources, the group must abandon its settlement and emigrated in another region. Contacts between human groups are limited. Such a strategy is adopted by the Mousterian groups during the OIS 4 and begins to change with groups of transition MP/UP industries. It is taken up during the maximum ice age from 21 000 BP at the time of the abandonment of the occupation of the middle Europe by Gravettian groups and their refuge to the Mediterranean regions (see below the seasonal mobility strategy).

Extended planned strategy. The area of the territory is large (30 000 to 100 000 km²). Mobility is high. There is a specialization of the travels and of the site locations : distant sources of raw materials, specialized hunting, seasonal sites, bivouac, art caves, within a recognized territory where movements are common. Contacts between human groups of the same network are numerous (meeting points) promoting exchanges and standardization of material culture. Camp-sites are seasonal. The food resource management is specializing in hunting the herds of large migrant mammals (reindeer, bison) or horses. This strategy marks the success of the network organization of the human groups during the upper Palaeolithic period (Aurignacian, Gravettian, Magdalenian).

Semi-sedentary strategy. The residential camp-sites are occupied about ten months in the year. The territory is large (30 000 to 100 000 km²). There is a mammoth based food resource through accumulations of animals, of natural or hunted origins, which are found systematically nearby sites, as a food supply, fuels, building materials for the dwellings and raw material for the manufacture of tools and weapons. Technical inventions without future are noted : terracotta figurines, polishing. Art is developed. Food is stored in pits dug in permafrost near the dwellings. This strategy is known in only three short and specific episodes in the history of the European upper Palaeolithic : Pavlovian (around 27 000 BP in Moravia), Eastern Gravettian (24 000 – 21 000 BP in Central and Eastern Europe), Mezinian (Upper and middle Dnepr basin around 15 000 to 14 000 BP).

Seasonal mobility strategy. The territory is open to an uninhabited North where the human groups organize summer raids. The residential camps are located in the southern regions during half part of the year. Movements are carried out on several hundred kilometers during summer for specialized hunting (reindeer) and for the supply of good quality flint. The territories of refuge are less extended and partitioned (Solutrean in sub-Cantabrian and sub-Pyrenean regions, Adriatic Epigravettian, Epigravettian of the Black Sea). This strategy corresponds to the short time of the maximum ice age climate amelioration (Late Solutrean and Late Badegoulian in Western Europe, Sagvarian in Central Europe and Molodovian in Eastern Europe).

Restricted Planned strategy. The territories are limited (1.000 to 10.000 km2). The human groups are located in specialized camp-sites. The diversification of food is pushed to its maximum (opportunistic hunting, specialized hunting of altitude with the conquest of the altitude, fishing, shellfish collecting). The supply of raw material is local in the territory and depends on the quality of outcrops that are found. Art is little developed. This strategy concerns the Epipaleolithic groups and is continuing during the Holocene.