Examining Gravettian and Magdalenian mobility and technological organization with IR spectroscopy

Archaeologists can use the provenance of lithic raw materials to examine the movements, territories, and settlement dynamics of hunter-gatherers. Several studies have used macroscopic analyses to propose the long-distance transport of raw material during the Gravettian and the Magdalenian of the Swabian Jura in Central Europe. Until now hypotheses about raw material transport in this region were not based on reproducible analyses. This study aims to test some of the hypotheses about the origins of lithic raw materials during the Gravettian and Magdalenian, using infrared spectroscopic measurements. These analyses are based on differences and similarities in the mineralogy and crystallography of rocks. Using this method, we test for long-distance raw-material transport between the sites of the Swabian Jura and the Freiburg basin, 200 km to the south-west, and the region of the Altmühl Valley, 150 km to the north-east. For this, we created a reference database of 114 lithic raw material outcrops from Southern Germany and compared these specimens with artifacts from eleven archeological sites. Our study reconstructs the raw-material procurement and transport during the Gravettian and Magdalenian and reveals settlement patterns and territories that span over more than 300 km in Central Germany.