AURIGNACIAN encyclopedia topics

Main characteristics

Worked bone points with grooves cut in the bottom and some of the earliest cave art were produced by the Aurignacian culture bearers. Their flint tools were more varied than those of earlier industries, employing finer blades struck from prepared cores rather than using crude flakes, and they made pendants, bracelets and ivory beads, they also made three-dimensional figurines to ornament themselves. The Aurignacian tool industry is characterized by complex art, which includes figurines depicting faunal representations of the time period associated with extinct mammals, including mammoths, rhinos, and the European horse along with anthropomorphized depictions that could be inferred as some of the earliest evidence of religion.

Bâtons de commandement are also found at their sites. This sophistication and self-awareness leads some archaeologists to consider the makers of Aurignacian artefacts the first modern humans in Europe. Human remains and Aurignacian artifacts originally found at Cro-Magnon in France indicate that the culture was modern human rather than Neanderthal. That was not true and was discovered by directly dating human remains. The AMHuman bones are quite recent 3.9–5.0 kya.

In June 2007, a 35,000 year old figurine of a mammoth was discovered in the Vogelherd cave in south-western Germany. Currently being studied by the University of Tübingen, the figurine details the once intricate and complex artistic qualities by the inhabitants of Aurignacian culture.

Tools

Stone tools from the Aurignacian culture are known as Mode 4, characterised by blades (rather than flakes, typical of mode 2 Acheulean and mode 3 Mousterian) from prepared cores. Also seen throughout the upper paleolithic is a greater degree of tool standardisation and the use of bone and antler for tools such as needles and harpoons.