Definition: One very early type of housing used by hunter gatherers in central Europe during the Late Pleistocene was mammoth bone dwellings. A mammoth (Mammuthus primogenus, and also known as Woolly Mammoth) was a type of enormous ancient now-extinct elephant, a hairy large tusked mammal that stood ten feet tall as an adult. Mammoths roamed most of the world, including the continents of Europe and North America, until they died out at the end of the Pleistocene. During the late Pleistocene, mammoths provided meat and skin for human hunter-gatherers, and, in some cases, building materials for houses.
Mammoth Bone Hut Dates
Mammoth bone huts, structures built primarily from the bones and tusks from mammoths, are known from sites throughout eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Poland) between about 27,000 and 12,000 years ago, with a concentration found in the Dneiper River valley of Russia and Ukraine dated about 15,000 years ago. The Dneiper River sites are located on promontories with good vistas, and the sites generally consist of a single circular or oval structure surrounded by pits filled with bone and stone tools, fragments, and ashes. The huts are constructed of mammoth bones and tusks, and were probably covered with hide and sometimes with rough stone foundation rings. Many of them contain exotic tools or decorated mammoth skulls and scapulae, and although it is tempting to attribute some sort of ceremonial importance to such objects, I'll resist.
Mammoth bone dwellings are not the only or first type of house: Upper Paleolithic open air houses are found as pitlike depressions excavated into the subsoil or based with stone rings or postholes, like that seen at Pushkari or Kostenki. Some UP houses are partly built of bone and partly of stone and wood, such as Grotte du Reine, France.
Sources
See specific site data below.
, all located in what is now Ukraine.
No comments:
Post a Comment