Aims & Methodology
Research Goals
The proximal goal of the project is to assess whether the targeted cultural material from the sites of Kastritsa and Grava should be attributed to the Gravettian, as has been tentatively proposed in the past (Adam, 2007). GRAVETTIAN aims to test this hypothesis and provide for the first time a full account on the cultural attribution of this material, based on a re-evaluation of both lithic and organic artefact assemblages.
The project will also pursue to frame these analyses within a refined chronological framework, by acquiring new radiocarbon dates.
Located at the southernmost end of the Balkan Peninsula and close to the Adriatic, Greece –and particularly its northwestern part, Epirus– is well placed to have served as a refugium for Gravettian populations; yet, the Greek record has so far remained outside the debate about the spread of the Gravettian, the response of the Gravettian populations to the harsh conditions of the Last Glacial, and the role of the southern refugia. The ultimate goal of the project is to address those questions from the perspective of the Greek archaeological record, which so far constitutes a blind spot in the investigation of the Mediterranean Gravettian phase.
Research Methodology
The project applies interdisciplinary methods to the study of both lithic and organic assemblages in order to assess the presence and the nature of the Gravettian phase in Greece by focusing on material from the sites of Kastritsa and Grava. The study of the cultural remains is complemented with a dating campaign, which will employ Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of selected samples from carefully targeted layers.
The methodology in the typological and technological analysis of the lithic assemblages involves an approach that evaluates lithic production within a broader ecological and economic context of technological behavior, subsistence and raw material procurement. The study of the collections from Kastritsa and Grava will target assemblages from selected contexts and will focus on particular typological and technological traits, which will be assessed for comparative purposes. Investigations of the lithic raw materials include geochemical and petrographic analyses, with the application of appropriate techniques, such as portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF), standard and macro-XRF, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectometry (ICP-MS), as well as the study of thin sections.
The study of the organic artefacts employs a chaîne opératoire approach to assess the biography of the specimens, namely the sequences of actions involved in the shaping, use, and repairing or recycling of the artefacts. The study of wear and tear marks allows assessing the state of the bone/antler when it is chosen to make artefacts, and that of the materials that abrade it during their production and use. Surface state and preservation is assessed for each artefact with naked eye, and with low and high magnifications (typically 200x) provided by optical and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM).
In the end, the typo-technological data from the organic artefact study will be juxtaposed to the typo-technological data from the lithic analysis, in order to evaluate potential matchings or differences in the identification of activities and economic choices. By studying the dynamics involved in technological decisions and morphological configurations, the combined study of lithic and organic artefacts will allow us to explore the broader behavioral, socio-economic and ecological contexts, in which the identified choices and activities took place.
