Einige Aspekte der Besiedlungsstabilität im Paläolithikum

The stability of settlement is characterized by the link of Palaeolithic populations either to a given microregion or to one site – both within a single cultural-chronological phase and during a long period of time including various techno-typological complexes. Evidence of such behaviour can be more easily found in regions outside western Europe, whose occupation density was, in the course of the Upper Pleistocene, considerably high and where the same sites had always been repeatedly settled. Moreover, the links to a given microregion or site are much more obvious in the open countryside than in regions with frequent caves which provided natural shelters.
The Aurignacian settlement of central Moravia can be quoted as an example of the link of a technocomplex to a given microregion. There, on an area of no more than 10 × 10 kilometers, several scores of sites have been discovered, some of them qualified as huge ones with hundreds and even thousands of artifacts – despite the fact that there is no important source of raw material in this region. On the contrary, the principal material used there was flint-stone imported from a minimum of 100 kilometers.

The most interesting concentration of settlements is, however, in Kostienki on the Don river, where eight settlements have been discovered in the lower part of the small valley called Pokrovskij Log, most of them being multilayered and in some cases situated in close proximity of each other. Although they represent different technocomplexes, all of them had originated during a relatively brief period of time.

A striking phenomenon is the link of various populations during longer periods of time to certain locations, quite banal within the countryside and with no outstanding features. Willendorf on the Danube river, Moldova V on the Dniester or Mitoc on the Prut can be quoted here. Also some “abri”, located in hardly accessible or otherwise unfavourable areas, belong to this group. Let us remind here the “abri” Fumane in the Italian Dolomites or the “abri” Crvena stijena in Montenegro, settled from the interglacial till the Mesolithic.

These examples document certain stability in the links of Palaeolithic populations to settlement regions and even to individual sites. However, the motifs of such behaviour can hardly be explained.