Material Culture

“Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don't." Lord Raglan

What is culture?

Depends on definition

A) deeply shrouded in language, politics & morality – unique to humans

B) Lumsden & Wilson - >10,000 species incl. bacteria – extra-genetic inheritance

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 human’s 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

• 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)

What is culture?

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)

Introduced sample adopts behaviour exhibited by host pop. - learning not genetic

Pop. A Pop. B

Introduced pop. adopt behaviour exhibited by removed pop. - ecological conditionsIntroduced pop. exhibit group typical behaviour differed from former residents – culture?

Pop. A Pop. B

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

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

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

• 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

Culture in chimpanzees

Lift and poke techniques for pan pipes

Chimps Chimps

Black – Poke, White bars - Lift

Culture in chimpanzeesAll 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.

PokeTest 1

LiftTest 1

PokeRe Test

LiftRe Test

Neanderthals

• 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 didn’t have to wait for this to occur biologically –culture – controlled fires, hide clothing ?, shelter in caves/ built own shelters

type specimen

World climate / vegetation at peak of last glaciation (70kya)

Neanderthal Distribution

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 it’s 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

• >60 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

Mousterian industry

Neanderthal language

• complete hyoid bone, identical to modern humans

• Did they share our capacity for language?

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?

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 = 1m

3

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 >20 bears

• Overall evidence = tantalizing, but not conclusive

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

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

• 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!

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

Death and Burial

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!

• 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?

Death and Burial: Middle eastern & Asian Burials

Were the Neanderthals the 1

st

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

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?

“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

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

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

• 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

Cannibalism

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

Additional further reading

Evolutionary Anthropology 2003 Vol. 12

in particular

Laland, KN and Hoppitt, W (2003) Evolutionary Anthropology 12:150-159