Artistic apogees and biological nadirs : Upper Palaeolithic cultural complexity reconsidered

Our traditional views of the European Upper Paleolithic emphasize the cultural complexity achieved by these late Pleistocene groups, which found its expression in the elaboration of material culture: in sumptuous burials as well as in the production of personal adornments and of portable and parietal art. Such a view sets up the European Upper Paleolithic cultural achievements as the measure against which coeval data from the rest of the occupied world is measured and found wanting.

The interpretation of this period as one of ostensible cultural apogee is subverted by multiple biological data which indicate that many of the same populations elaborating their material culture were also under physical stress.

Using paleoanthropological and archaeological data from Upper Paleolithic Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, this paper argues that the two phenomena – cultural elaboration and stress – are interrelated. Such an interrelationship, in turn, suggests that we can gain new insights into Upper Paleolithic behavior by reviewing cultural elaboration not as an achievement but as a symptom of social pathology.