Catherine Perlès, Professor (Emeritus), University of Paris-Nanterre, will give the next Palaeolithic Seminar, titled “Our ornaments and those of the others: ornaments and cultural traditions at Franchthi.”
The Franchthi cave, and its associated Neolithic open-air settlement, present an
exceptionally long sequence — from the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic to the Final
Neolithic— that witnesses dramatic climatic, environmental and economic changes. It
was therefore logical to expect concomitant transformations in the conception,
production and use of ornaments. However, prehistoric groups did not always follow
our logic: for several dozens of millennia, Palaeolithic and Mesolithic inhabitants of
Franchthi consistently chose to use the same restricted range of shell species,
disregarding many ornament types used by other hunter-gatherers from Greece. This
unexpected continuity suggests the persistence of ornamental traditions over much
longer periods of time than we dare imagine. It also challenges the cultural breaks
suggested by the flaked stone toolkits and raises the question of the cultural proxies
prehistorians use to define chrono-cultural complexes. A brief comparison with the
Neolithic is also relevant: whereas the economic basis and way of life remained stable,
significant changes are observed in the conception of ornaments. In both cases, I argue
that we have so far disregarded the significant insights that ornaments, too often merely
considered as “small finds”, can give us on cultural traditions and cultural entities.
The Palaeolithic Seminar is organised by the University of Crete and Prof. Nena Galanidou, the Ministry of Culture, the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology and Dr Andreas Darlas.