Gravettian

Subdivisions of the Quaternary System
System	Series	Stage	Age (Ma)
Quaternary	Holocene		0–0.0117
	Pleistocene	Tarantian (Upper)	0.0117–0.126
		Ionian (Middle)	0.126–0.781
		Calabrian (Lower)	0.781–1.806
		Gelasian (Lower)	1.806–2.588
Neogene	Pliocene	Piacenzian	older
In Europe and North America, the Holocene is subdivided into Preboreal, Boreal, Atlantic, Subboreal, and Subatlantic stages of the Blytt-Sernander time scale. There are many regional subdivisions for the Upper or Late Pleistocene, usually these represent locally recognized cold (glacial) and warm (interglacial) periods. The last glacial period ends with the cold Younger Dryas substage.

Venus of Lespugue
These venus figurines are typical of the Gravettian culture.

Burins to the Gravettian culture.

The Gravettian toolmaking culture was a specific archaeological industry of the European Upper Palaeolithic era prevalent before the last glacial epoch. It is named after the type site of La Gravette in the Dordogne region of France where its characteristic tools were first found and studied. The earliest signs of the culture date to 32,000 ya in the Crimean mountains. It lasted until 22,000 years ago. Where found, it succeeded the artifacts datable to the Aurignacian culture.

The diagnostic characteristic artifacts of the industry are small pointed restruck blade with a blunt but straight back, a carving tool known as a Noailles burin. (See to compare with similar purposed modern tool: burin)

Artistic achievements of the Gravettian cultural stage include the hundreds of Venus figurines, which are widely distributed in Europe. The predecessor culture was linked to similar figurines and carvings.

Gravettian culture

Gravettian culture is a phase (c.28,000–23,000 ya) of the European Upper Paleolithic that is characterized by a stone-tool industry with small pointed blades used for big-game hunting (bison, horse, reindeer and mammoth). People in the Gravettian period also used nets to hunt small game. For more information on hunting see Animal Usage in the Gravettian. It is divided into two regional groups: the western Gravettian, mostly known from cave sites in France, and the eastern Gravettian, with open sites of specialized mammoth hunters on the plains of central Europe and Russia. The earliest evidence of Gravettian culture comes from the Buran-Kaya caves in the Crimean Mountains (southern Ukraine), dating to 32,000 years ago.

In literature

Artifacts and technologies of this and the preceding Aurignacian culture figure centrally in the romanticized adaptation of the culture in the popular fictional pre-history depicted in the Earth's Children novel series which leans heavily on archeological finds and theories from this era. In the series, the Venus figurines are central to a fertility rite and worship of "The Great Earth Mother", a nature spirit from which all life flows.

See also

• Aurignacian culture
• Animal Usage in the Gravettian
• Earth's Children series
• Last Glacial Maximum
• Upper Paleolithic
• Perigordian
• Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures
• Solutrean
• Venus figurines

Preceded by Aurignacian

Gravettian 28,000–22,000 BP

Succeeded by Solutrean

External links

• Cave sites in France
• Picture Gallery of the Paleolithic (reconstructional palaeoethnology), Libor Balák at the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Archaeology in Brno, The Center for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research