Central Europe, Moravia, and Past Paleolithic Research

Abstract

More than 10 years ago, Soffer (1985:1)—in her splendid review of the Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain—stated that “future generations of archaeologists will wonder why we, their predecessors, viewed the Upper Paleolithic prehistory of Europe, a continent over 10,000,000 km² in area, primarily as an extension of the territory of the Périgord region of France, an area that measures under 10,000 km².” Since that time, a shift toward the documentation of regional diversity, or the “Pleistocene polyphony,” is observed (e.g., Soffer and Gamble, 1990). The hunter-gatherer adaptation was dynamic in time and space, and the detailing of variability on a regional scale contributes to a more contextualized understanding of the Eurasian Paleolithic record. Actually, this general trend is supported by a series of publications in English and French focusing on the Central and Eastern European Paleolithic. This book centers on an interdisciplinary study of the Paleolithic of central Europe with a particular attention to Moravia, a region offering archaeological evidence from periods covering minimally the last half-million years, but particularly rich in evidence from the last 40,000 years.