Reindeer Hunters of the Ice Age in Europe Economy, Ecology, and the Annual Nomadic Cycle

About this book

This book undertakes a thorough study of reindeer in the Upper Pleniglacial and Tardiglacial societies in France. It addresses two main topics – the economy of animal resources within the societies and the exploitation of reindeer organized within the annual cycle, in terms of space and time, between 30,000 and 14,000 cal BP in France. The author proposes an analysis and hypothesis regarding the economy of animal resources and the nomadic cycle of the last Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies, in order to identify a "Reindeer system."

The author discusses the relationship between reindeer and human mobility and offers some conclusions regarding the annual cycles of nomadism. The volume scrutinizes the distinct ecosystems in three regions and its effects on the movements of both human and animal. This book is of interest to zooarchaeologists and prehistorians.

Contents

Preface
Introduction

Part 1. Contexts and object of study
Chapter 1. From the Aurignacian to the Magdalenian: Palaeolithic "cultures"?
Chapter 2. The environment of France in the Upper Pleniglacial and Tardiglacial
Chapter 3. Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)
Chapter 4. Constitution of the corpus and study areas

Part 2. The place of reindeer in economies between 30,000 and 14,000 cal BP in France
Chapter 5. The reindeer's share of the hunt
Chapter 6. Reindeer hunting strategies
Chapter 7. Reindeer antlers: sourcing strategies and raw material management
Chapter 8. Conclusion: the status of the reindeer

Part 3. Reindeer mobility and human mobility
Chapter 9. State of play and objectives
Chapter 10. Migratory and sedentary reindeer
Chapter 11. Annual cycles of nomadism: several configurations or several visibilities?

Part 4. Discussion
Chapter 12. France's environment between 30,000 and 15,000 years: ecosystems to be defined
Chapter 13. A unique system beyond distinct ecosystems

Conclusions

References
Acknowledgements
Figures and appendices
Annexes

Customer Reviews

Biography

Laure Fontana (PhD, 1998, University of Paris 1-Sorbonne) is a specialist in animal resources exploitation and she studies the societies of the Western European Upper Paleolithic, especially those that lived in the last cold environments of the Pleistocene and based their economic system on the exploitation of the Reindeer. As a CNRS Researcher, she has focused her research on the mobility of Paleolithic Reindeer and the economics of animal resources, in order to reconstruct the annual cycles of human groups and the environments of the Western end of the Mammoth steppe. She has edited two books (2009, 2012) and published various articles on these topics.