Material Culture

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Material Culture
Culture is roughly anything we do and the
monkeys don't." Lord Raglan
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What is culture?

• Depends on definition
• deeply shrouded in language, politics morality
  unique to humans
• B) Lumsden Wilson - gt10,000 species incl.
  bacteria extra-genetic inheritance

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What is culture?

• Narrow definition
• E.g. cultures are systems of linguistically
  encoded conceptual phenomena that are learned
  through teaching and imitation, socially
  transmitted within populations and characteristic
  of groups of people
• barrier to understanding humans place in nature
• barrier to understanding evolutionary roots of
  culture
• barrier to integration of bio/social sciences
• Broad definition
• Benefits
• comparative framework to study evolutionary
  history of culture
• X fertilisation of bio/soc science information
  methods
• classification between different classes of
  culture

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What is culture?

• How broad?
• Consensus of opinion on essential criteria
• built on socially learned and socially
  transmitted information
• Does not apply to inherited genetic information
  or knowledge/skills individuals acquire on their
  own
• Socially transmitted info can underpin group
  behaviour patterns - may vary from one pop. to
  next
• explains continuity within diversity between
  groups
• e.g. Cultures are those group-typical behaviour
  patterns shared by members of a community that
  rely on socially learned and transmitted
  information (Laland Hoppitt 2003)

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Which animals have culture?

• Observational evidence of group-typical behaviour
  patterns/social learning?
• hundreds of vertebrates
• Experimental evidence?
• Laland Hoppitt (2003) humans, birds, whales,
  fish
• ? To show behaviour patterns underpinned by
  social learning must disprove alternative
  explanations for behaviour (genetics, ecological
  conditions)

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French grunts (Haemulon flavolineatum)

• Helfman Shultz (1984)
• Fish placed into established pops. adopted the
  same schooling sites/migrations routes as
  residents
• Control fish introduced into regions from which
  residents had been removed did not adopt
  behaviour of former residents

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Culture in Cetaceans

• Rendel and Whitehead (2001)
• Killer whales (Orcinus orca)
• Sympatric pods exhibit pod specific behaviours
  foraging specialisations, migration patterns,
  vocal dialects
• Humpback whale (Megaptera novaengliae)
• breeding season all pop. males sing nearly one
  song
• song changes over time/within breeding season
• Rapidity of change not genetic

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Culture in apes

• McGrew (Chimpanzee Material Culture, 1992)
• 8 criteria for identifying cultural acts among
  non-linguistic creatures
• innovation dissemination
• standardisation durability
• diffusion tradition
• non-subsistence naturalness
• No single chimp population satisfies all 8
  conditions, but all conditions are met by
  behaviour of some chimps in some cases
• E.g. grooming patterns
• culture if shown by humans
• denied the label because apes

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Culture in chimpanzees

• Wild qualitative data, human-2-ape experimental
  data no true evidence of cultural transmission.
• Whiten et al
• naturalistic foraging task - Pan-pipes, 2
  possible techniques
• focussed on ape-to-ape transmission ? taught a
  high ranking female, who taught other chimps.
• studied three groups a control group exposed to
  a new task with no expert present, and two
  experimental groups, with adult female trained to
  solve task in a different way.
• ? measure the extent to which two different
  techniques are copied sufficiently well to become
  traditions, with the control condition
  identifying baseline levels of individual
  discovery.

Whiten et al, 2005 Nature, 437
Lift and poke techniques for pan pipes
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Culture in chimpanzees
All but two of 32 chimpanzees mastered the new
technique under the influence of their local
expert, whereas none did so in a third population
lacking an expert.
Poke Test 1
Poke Re Test
Lift Test 1
Lift Re Test
Chimps
Chimps
Black Poke, White bars - Lift
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Neanderthals
type specimen

• Neanderthals 300kya -30kya
• Glaciations 186-128kya, 71-13kya
• Hominids biologically adapted to tropical climate
• efficient system of perspiration to prevent
  overheating in the tropics
• lacked a counterbalancing system effective
  against overcooling
• But didnt have to wait for this to occur
  biologically culture controlled fires, hide
  clothing ?, shelter in caves/ built own shelters

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World climate / vegetation at peak of last
glaciation (70kya)
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Neanderthal Distribution
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Mousterian industry

• New stone knapping techniques / variety of new
  tools
• Flake tools
• trimmed a nodule of stone around the edges to
  make a disk shaped core
• Aimed hammer blows towards the centre of the
  disk-repeatedly rapped at its edges knocking off
  flake after flake until the core was almost
  entirely used up
• Finally the unfinished flakes were trimmed so
  that they had edges for work on wood, carcasses
  or hides

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Mousterian industry

• gt60 types of cutting, scraping, piercing and
  gouging tools
• No one band of Neanderthals used all, but
  nevertheless the kit contained a number of
  specialist tools. . incl. blunt edges on side
  that user held it
• The abundance and variety of
• scrapers supports view that these
• people must have spent an
• enormous amount of time preparing
• animal hides for loose fitting clothes,
• poss. shelters

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Neanderthal language

• complete hyoid bone, identical to modern humans
• Did they share our capacity for language?

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Hunting magic

• Grotto della Basua (caves of witches)
• W Genoa (Italy) ca. 450m from entrance, hunters
  threw pellets of clay at a stalagmite (vague
  animal shape)
• inconvenient location of the stalagmite not a
  game/ target practise
• 1970 Lebanon - deer ceremony at a cave (Ralph
  Solecki)
• ca.50kya a fallow deer was dismembered and the
  meat was placed on a bed of stones and sprinkled
  with red ochre
• natural pigment intended as a symbol of blood ?
• Rite to control life and death in the deer
  kingdom?

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Hunting magic

• Cave at Drachenloch (swiss Alps) 1917-1923,
  2,400m up in swiss alps lair of dragons
• front of cave occasional dwelling place
• back 1m3 stone chest, covered by a massive slab
  of stone
• inside 7 bear skulls, muzzles facing cave
  entrance
• deeper in cave 6 bear skulls, set in niches
  along walls
• Regourdou (S France) rectangular
• pit covered by a 1 ton flat stone, held
• bones of gt20 bears
• Overall evidence tantalizing, but
• not conclusive

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Beginnings of art and music?

• Red/ yellow ochre, black manganese,
• powder form pencil shaped pieces - rubbed onto
  human skins/animal hides
• No representational engravings/statuary, only 1
  or 2 perforated teeth
• Cave (Tata, Hungary) oval shaped piece
• of ivory - polished and coated with ochre
• Cave (Pech de l aze, S. France) hole bored
• into animal bone- amulet?
• Other caves in france (ca. 34kya) pierced
• animal teeth, 2 fossils of marine animals
• Overall Neanderthal material art scanty

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Beginnings of art and music?

• 1995 cave (NW Slovenia) fragmentary bear bone
  4 perforated round holes aligned on one side
• 82-43kya
• Comparison with Upper Palaeolithic objects flute?
  
• Carnivore tooth punctures?
• Similarly aged H. heidelbergensis bone
  whistle/flute fragment from Libya

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Death and Burial

• Some concept in animal populations
• Neanderthals
• Spy (Belgium)1886
• buried, fire lit over bodies counteract chill
  of death?
• La Chapelle-aux-Saints (France) 1908
• Ancient hunter laid out carefully in a shallow
  trench
• Bison leg placed on chest, trench filled with
  broken animal bones and flint tools
• provisions for the world beyond the grave?
• Afterlife!

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Death and Burial

• Rock shelter - La Ferrassie, France (1909)
• 50kya
• 1 man, 1 woman, 3 kids 5-6yrs, 1 infant.
• Skeleton skull of a child interred 1m apart
• Skull covered by a triangular limestone slab
  whose underside shaped impressions

Why buried separately? Jean Bouyssonie child
beheaded by a wild animal. Buried with head
further up slope so that in afterlife it would
slip down the slope and rejoin the trunk!
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Death and Burial Middle eastern Asian
Burials

• Shanidar cave (Iraq)
• 9 burials
• back of the cave 50kya layer grave of a hunter
  with a badly crushed skull
• Clusters of pollen in grave in abundance
  (hyacinth, groundsel, hollyhock)
• plants used in poultices and herbal remedies by
  modern Iraqi people
• medicinal properties to heal hunter in afterlife?
  or in same way that people put flowers on graves
  now?
• All buried E-W sun rising and setting?

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Were the Neanderthals the 1st to practise ritual
disposal of dead?

• Some modern tribal societies dispose of the dead
  through exposure, no evidence in archaeological
  record
• ?
• how frequently burials were performed by archaic
  humans?
• how elaborate they were?
• what do they tell us about their belief systems?
• Burials show evidence of Neanderthals believing
  in a spirit or soul that cont. to exist after
  death
• beginnings of religion?
• Or
• purely corpse disposal, tell little about
  spirituality
• great opportunity to over modernise their
  cultural capacity

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The old and the handicapped

• Shanidar
• Ca. 40yr old man, killed by a rock fall?
• Before death right arm and shoulder poorly
  developed
• accident in childhood?
• birth defect?
• Front teeth unusually worn
• chewing hides?
• used his teeth instead of his arm for gripping
  things?

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Old Man of La-Chapelle

• ca. 50kya
• severe arthritis in his neck, deformed left hip,
  crushed toe, broken rib, damaged patella, only 2
  teeth remained
• Passed economic usefulness
• cared for by other members of his clan

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Evidence of Violence

• Increased evidence of violence
• Why?
• Pop. increase inadequate technology to obtain
  enough resources?
• Lots of skulls with injuries, pelvic wounds from
  spears, some wounds to arms which have healed
• All wounds found men, left hand side on body
• - left hand most easily injured in combat between
  2 right handers

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Cannibalism

• Krapina (Slovenia) 20 men, women and children,
  50-10kya
• Skulls in fragments/ long bones split
• cannibalistic feast on brain and marrow?
• cut marks part of a burial practise, and
  fragmentation result of roof falls, crushing
  during fossilisation, use of dynamite in opening
  caves?
• Hortus (France) 1965
• Broken/scattered Nean remains in assoc. with
  other animal bones and food refuse
• did inhabitants make no distinction between
  hominin meat and bison/reindeer?
• But, no stone cut marks found on the remains, nor
  can deliberate splitting of long bones be proved.
  so no real evidence of cannibalism at this site

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Cannibalism

• Monto Circeo (Italy). 52kya. 1939
• Skull jaw of man
• Foramen magnum greatly enlarged
• Skull placed in a ring of stones
• cannibalism, brain extracted through FM and
  ritually eaten?
• reanalysis using modern techniques a hyena den,
  hyena gnaw marks on skull, incl. the enlarged
  basal opening. No stone cut marks. Ring of stone
  landslide
• Overall evidence of intraspecific violence, but
  no clear evidence of dietary/ritual cannibalism

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Summary

• Quantification of culture depends on definition
• Present in many animal societies
• Hn clearly advanced over He in lithic
  technology and cultural complexity
• Cultural accomplishments combined with key
  biological adaptations allowed them to exploit
  periglacial regions

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Additional further reading

• Evolutionary Anthropology 2003 Vol. 12
• in particular
• Laland, KN and Hoppitt, W (2003) Evolutionary
  Anthropology 12150-159