Cambridge Archaeological Journal

http://journals.cambridge.org/CAJ

Additional services for Cambridge Archaeological Journal:

Email alerts: Click here

Subscriptions: Click here
Commercial reprints: Click here
Terms of use : Click here

The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial, by Paul Pettitt, 2010. London:

Routledge; ISBN 978-0-415-35489-9 hardback £70.00 & US\$115; ISBN
978-0-415-35490-5 paperback £22.99 & US\$35.95; xi + 307 pp., 77 gs., 9
tables

April Nowell

Cambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 22 / Issue 02 / June 2012, pp 298 - 299

DOI: 10.1017/S0959774312000327, Published online: 23 May 2012

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0959774312000327

How to cite this article:

April Nowell (2012). Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 22, pp 298-299 doi:10.1017/S0959774312000327

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAJ, IP address: 128.6.218.72 on 08 Jun 2015

 Reviews
relation to flow and I have found since reading this book
that ‘flow’ appears to have potential in myriad further
circumstances in archaeology — and to think through an
archaeology of flow as one way of approaching the material
is probably not a bad thing.
Paul Rainbird
Honorary Fellow, Exeter University
Murtwell Barn
Diptford
Devon
TQ9 7NQ
UK
Email: Paul.Rainbird@bristol.ac.uk
The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial, by Paul Pettitt,
2010. London: Routledge; ISBN 978-0-415-35489-9
hardback £70.00 &US$115; ISBN 978-0-415-35490-5
paperback £22.99 & US$35.95;
xi + 307 pp., 77 figs., 9 tables
April Nowell
‘At what point in human behavioural evolution did
responses to death become culturally meaningful?’ asks
Pettitt (p. 2) in his recent book The Palaeolithic Origins of
Human Burial. In it, he traces the origins and development of
human mortuary practices throughout the Pleistocene. This
is an absorbing and intriguing read that I found difficult to
put down. At 307 pages, it is densely packed with data and
includes an extensive bibliography as well as detailed inven-
tories of the hominin skeletal remains whose preservation is
likely the result of some kind of mortuary behaviour. In the
short time it took me to read this volume I had the occasion
to recommend it to a colleague who was looking for a recent
review of Palaeolithic burials, draw on it to update a guest
lecture I give on Gravettian burials for a class in mortuary
archaeology, suggest it to a graduate student as background
reading for her MA thesis and refer to it in a book chapter I
was writing on Neanderthal symbol use. It is clear that this
volume fills a true void in the literature and will remain an
important resource for students and professionals in the
field for years to come.
The book is divided into eight chapters. The first is
an introduction which outlines the volume and defines the
terms and concepts that will be used throughout the book.
The second chapter traces the roots of hominin funerary
behaviour in the behavioural repertoire of non-human
primates. Pettitt focuses on behaviours associated primarily
with chimpanzees and while it is largely anecdotal evidence
it is clear that there is a larger variety of behaviours associ-
ated with the treatment of dead conspecifics than is gener-
ally acknowledged. These behaviours, including ‘curation’
(the carrying around of a corpse in its entirety or in pieces),
morbidity (a keen interest in the injured or deceased) and
CAJ 22:2, 298–9 © 2012 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
doi:10.1017/S0959774312000327
298
what Pettitt terms the ‘Cronos Compulsion’ (‘the urge … to
dismember, injure or consume parts of the bodies of one’s
conspecifics’, p. 9) are clearly meaningful and vary according
to situation, audience and individual idiosyncrasies. This
is an important chapter because it lays the foundation for
interpreting the hominin finds in subsequent chapters of
this book. I find Pettitt persuasive when he argues that the
complexity of behaviours exhibited by non-human primates
could, over time, among our ancestors, have become codi-
fied, ritualized and taken on symbolic meaning that they
lacked in the non-human primate context.
In Chapter 3 Pettitt explores the transition from
morbidity to actual mortuary behaviour in Pliocene aus-
tralopithecines and in hominins of the Lower and Middle
Pleistocene. At 15 pages this is one of the shortest chapters
and with good reason as the evidence is more fragmentary.
For many researchers, it may be a stretch to describe the
well-known Australopithecus afarensis site AL-333 as an early
example of ‘structured abandonment’. Pettitt may be on
surer ground when he interprets the evidence for soft tissue
processing at the pre-Neanderthal site of Gran Dolina within
the framework of an elaborated Cronos compulsion. Seen
in this way, the distinction between nutritional and ritual
cannibalism becomes less important.
In Chapter 3 and more fully in Chapter 4 Pettitt traces
the development of funerary caching and the emergence
of the earliest burials amongst early Homo sapiens. Funer-
ary caching is described as the deliberate deposition of
a corpse or parts of corpse in a specific location without
any modification of that location. Examples can include
the back of a cave, a pit dug for another purpose but then
reappropriated or any natural depression or fissure. Pettit
distinguishes this from structured abandonment because
the ‘place is given meaning beyond prosaic concerns such as
corpse protection (p. 9)’. Funerary caching is an important
concept because it can be seen as the basis for a symbolic
transition of landscape — over time there can be ‘places for
the dead’ and ‘places for the living’. Sites such as Atapuerca
are discussed within this context.
The fifth chapter is devoted to Neanderthals. While he
rejects Robert Gargett’s (1989; 1999) extreme thesis that there
are no Neanderthal burials, he emphasizes that it is an over-
generalization to say that Neanderthals ‘bury their dead’.
It is more correct, he argues, to say that some Neanderthals
in some places and at some times bury their dead. He also
describes other aspects of mortuary behaviour engaged in
by Neanderthals.
The sixth and longest chapter of the book focuses
primarily on Gravettian burials. Like Riel-Salvatore and
Clark (2001), Pettitt characterizes the Gravettian as a true
break with what came before. While other mortuary beha­
viours continue to be elaborated upon Pettitt describes the
emergence of ritualized burials — particularly the often
spectacularly furnished single, double and triple burials of
children and adolescents.
Chapter 7, titled ‘From Fragmentation to Collectivity’
looks at the circulation of human relics (isolated body parts),
and the incidence of burials and the emergence of true cem-
eteries (places of multiple burial that are dedicated primarily
 Reviews
or entirely to the dead) in the late Upper Palaeolithic and
Epipalaeolithic. Finally, Chapter 8 provides a short summary
of the arguments presented in this volume, the data used to
support them and the implications of mortuary behaviour
for the debate on hominin symbolic capacity.
Overall, Pettitt takes a pragmatic approach to inter-
preting the data presented in this book and mostly avoids
overextending himself. Even still, readers likely will not
agree with everything. I personally have difficulty with
Pettitt’s insistence in the reality of an inverse relationship
between male Gravettian burials and female Gravettian
figurines. Nonetheless, the only true shortcoming of this
book is that Pettitt often fails to contextualize the mortuary
practices that he describes in such detail. For example, for
those without a background in Palaeolithic archaeology,
the richness and unusual composition of Gravettian burial
practices seem to develop out of nowhere — Pettit, of course,
makes links to Middle and early Upper Palaeolithic funer-
ary caching and Cronos compulsions as discussed above
but without knowing that the Gravettian is often described
as the ‘Golden Age’ of the Palaeolithic these practices seem
even more unusual. It is important to contextualize these
burials practices within the broader framework of other
developments happening at this time such as textile dying
and weaving, ceramic technologies including the construc-
tion of kilns, portable art including personal adornment
(although Pettitt does discuss Gravettian figurines), increases
in population, increasing sedentism, changes in subsistence
practices, and the development of large centres especially in
Eastern Europe where many of the more spectacular burials
come from. All the evidence suggests that Gravettian people
were living in complex social worlds and it is likely that
their mortuary practices were intertwined with these other
socially construed practices and values.
Bottom line — who should read this book? Archaeolo-
gists (particularly of the Palaeolithic period) and human
palaeontologists interested in mortuary archaeology. It is
suitable for professionals, graduate students and advanced
undergraduates.
April Nowell
Department of Anthropology
University of Victoria
PO Box 3050, STN CSC
Victoria, BC
V8W 3P5
Canada
Email: anowell@uvic.ca
References
Gargett, R., 1989. Grave shortcomings: the evidence for Neandertal
burial. Current Anthropology 30, 157–90.
Gargett, R., 1999. Middle Paleolithic burial is not a dead issue:
the view from Qafseh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud and
Dederiyeh. Journal of Human Evolution 37, 27–90.
Riel-Salvatore, J. & G.A. Clark, 2001. Grave markers: middle and
early Upper Paleolithic burials and the use of chronotypol-
ogy in contemporary Paleolithic research. Current Anthropo­
logy 42(4), 449–79.
299
Archaeomalacology Revisited: Non-dietary Use of Molluscs
in Archaeological Settings, edited by Canan Çakırlar, 2011.
Oxford: Oxbow Books; ISBN 978-1-84217-436-4 paperback
£30.00 & US$60.00; xviii + 95 pp., 55 figs., 13 tables
Marcello A. Mannino
Archaeomalacology Revisited is a collection of papers on stud-
ies of marine shells recovered from archaeological sites and
used for non-dietary purposes by humans living in the past.
Archaeomalacology is the study of molluscs (terrestrial,
freshwater and marine) from archaeological sites and is
considered a sub-discipline of archaeozoology. Shells of
molluscs can inform us about a variety of aspects of our
past, including the environment, subsistence and symbolic
behaviours (Claassen 1998). In the last ten years or so, the
study of shell artefacts and, in particular, of ornaments, has
allowed us to gain information on the evolution of human
behaviour and ethno-linguistic diversity from the remotest
periods of their use for these purposes, which approximately
coincide with the transition from the Middle to the Upper
Palaeolithic (d’Errico & Stringer 2011).
The ten articles published in this small book were
presented at two sessions of the ICAZ (International Council
for Archaeozoology) meeting, which took place in Mexico
City five years ago, and cover different time periods start-
ing from prehistory. Many archaeomalacological papers
presented at the meeting are not included in this volume,
which focuses heavily on the New World and, particularly,
on pre-Columbian Mexico, a temporal and geographic bias
which would not in itself be limiting. A definite limitation
of the book, however, is that it does not offer a complete pic-
ture of the range of methods available for the study of shell
artefacts. The impression that emerges by taking the articles
at face value is that SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy)
is the main (and virtually only!) analytical tool important
for the study of shell ornaments. This is not so, as a more
careful evaluation of the relevant literature would imme-
diately demonstrate (Claassen 1998). For instance, none of
the studies makes use of geochemical methods, which are
increasingly being adopted to determine the provenance
of ornamental shells (e.g. Eerkens et al. 2005; Vanhaeren et
al. 2004). In addition, many aspects of the non-dietary use
of molluscs, such as their utilization as tools, as sources of
raw materials and dyes (Thomas & Mannino 2001), are not
covered in the book. In fact, with the exception of a single
interesting article on the use of shell waste for lime produc-
tion (Carannante), all the other studies focus on the use of
shells as ornaments.
In the introductory chapter, Çakırlar heralds the
present trend in archaeomalacology, which is witnessing
an increase in the ‘dichotomy in scholarly focus’ (p. vi)
between researchers that study molluscs to reconstruct
their role in past human subsistence and those that study
shells primarily for their use as artefacts, as a positive
development. I concur with the view that every aspect of
CAJ 22:2, 299–300 © 2012 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
doi:10.1017/S0959774312000339