Prehistoric Society

Prehistoric Society
Name	Prehistoric cultures
Period	Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age
Region	Global
Notable sites	Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, Lascaux, Altamira, Stonehenge
Major finders	Heinrich Schliemann, Howard Carter, Arthur Evans

Contents

Prehistoric Society

Prehistoric society encompasses human communities before the advent of written records, spanning the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age periods across regions such as Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Research on prehistoric peoples integrates evidence from sites like Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, Lascaux, Altamira, and Stonehenge and draws on work by figures including Heinrich Schliemann, Howard Carter, Arthur Evans, Marija Gimbutas, Lewis Binford, and Gordon Childe. Methods and debates engage institutions such as the British Museum, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, University of Cambridge, and University of Oxford.

Definition and Scope

Prehistoric society refers to human groups before extant written documentation, contrasted with periods covered by sources like the Sumerian King List, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Shujing, Rigveda, and Analects. Geographic scope includes Paleolithic hunters of Olduvai Gorge, Neolithic farmers at Jericho, Bronze Age metallurgists in Mycenae, Iron Age communities in Hallstatt, and indigenous peoples across Mesoamerica, the Andes, and Polynesia. Scholars from the Royal Society, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, École Pratique des Hautes Études, and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology frame boundaries in relation to chronologies established by research traditions exemplified by V. Gordon Childe, Mortimer Wheeler, Thomas Jefferson (excavations at Monticello), and field projects at Monte Verde and Çatalhöyük Excavations.

Chronology relies on divisions such as the Paleolithic (Lower, Middle, Upper), Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, with regional sequences tied to markers like radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, and thermoluminescence. Key chronometric advances include methods developed at UCL Institute of Archaeology, laboratories at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, and projects by Willard Libby and teams at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Periodization often references sites and cultures such as Oldowan, Acheulean, Mousterian, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Magdalenian, Natufian, Linear Pottery, Yamnaya culture, Corded Ware culture, Bell Beaker culture, and regional sequences like Jōmon, Yangshao, Harappan, Olmec, Hopewell tradition, Mississippian culture, and Lapita culture.

Material culture comprises lithics, ceramics, metallurgy, textiles, and organic artifacts recovered at stratified contexts such as Blombos Cave, Dolní Věstonice, Catalhoyuk (Çatalhöyük), Teotihuacan (later), and ship burials like Oseberg. Stone tool traditions include Oldowan, Acheulean handaxe, and microlithic industries; ceramic innovation appears in Jōmon pottery, Yangshao painted pottery, and LBK wares. Metallurgy emerges in sites like Çatalhöyük and moves through Anatolia, Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and Eurasian Steppe with artifacts associated with Bronze Age collapse contexts and individuals studied by teams from the British Museum and Hermitage Museum. Technological diffusion and innovation are traced through trade networks connecting Ugarit, Knossos, Mycenae, Mari, Ur, Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and Caral.

Social structures range from small bands and tribes evident in hunter-gatherer sites like Hadza, San, and Paleo-Inuit contexts to larger sedentary villages at Jericho, Aşıklı Höyük, Catalhoyuk, and urbanizing centers in Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Indus Valley Civilization, and Shang dynasty. Subsistence strategies include hunting and foraging with taxa recorded at Olduvai Gorge and La Brea Tar Pits, early agriculture involving domesticates such as wheat, barley, rice, millet, maize, potato, sorghum, teff, and animal husbandry with sheep, goat, cattle, pig, horse, and llama. Demographic and social complexity are modeled by researchers from Institute for Advanced Study, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, and projects like Human Genome Project analyses linking migration events such as the Neolithic expansion and steppe migrations associated with Yamnaya.

Artistic and symbolic expression appears in cave paintings of Lascaux, Altamira, and Chauvet Cave, portable art from Blombos Cave and Dolní Věstonice, megalithic monuments Stonehenge, Carnac, and ritual complexes like Göbekli Tepe and Newgrange. Interpretations draw on comparative studies involving works such as The Golden Bough (James Frazer), theories by Marija Gimbutas (Old Europe), ritual models from Émile Durkheim and Claude Lévi-Strauss, and iconographic analyses linked to mythic cycles found in Epic of Gilgamesh, Rigveda, and Maya codices. Mortuary practices documented at Çatalhöyük, Larnaca (Cyprus contexts), Sutton Hoo, and Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa inform reconstructions of belief, ancestor veneration, and social hierarchy.

Prehistoric research integrates excavation strategies developed by Mortimer Wheeler, survey methods from Gertrude Bell and Flinders Petrie, laboratory analysis such as isotopic studies at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, ancient DNA work from teams at Harvard Medical School and Wellcome Sanger Institute, and dating techniques including radiocarbon dating (Libby), uranium–thorium dating, optically stimulated luminescence, and dendrochronology pioneered by A.E. Douglass. Interdisciplinary collaboration involves paleoenvironmental proxies from Greenland ice cores, Lake Baikal cores, palynology linked to Forensic Botany labs, zooarchaeology at institutions like the Natural History Museum, London, and experimental archaeology practiced by groups at Butser Ancient Farm and The Experimental Archaeology Centre. Debates over cultural transmission, migration, and diffusion are informed by genomic studies, climate reconstructions of events such as the Younger Dryas, and theoretical frameworks from Processual archaeology and Post-processual archaeology proponents including Lewis Binford and Ian Hodder.

Category:Prehistory