Diorama of a bone hut at Mezhirich
Photo: Wally Gobetz, from a diorama display at the American Museum of Natural History, online at http://archaeology.about.com
The early prehistorians of the last century were understandably concerned with establishing the order and sequence of their materials, since no means of exact dating existed to help them. They often sank narrow pits down through the deposit with the sole object of establishing which tools came from which layer, thereby forming a picture of technical changes from one age to the next. These studies are still important but leave unanswered many questions about the kind of society to which the toolmakers belonged. Much broader information is obtained today, not just by digging downward, but by digging outward, or horizontally, at the same time. If the conditions of preservation are favorable, the archaeologist traces and follows the original floor on which the prehistoric inhabitants walked, hoping to expose the remains of hearths and wooden structures. Each layer is successively peeled off over as wide an area as possible. The patterns of flint and bone debris scattered across each floor can give important clues to the particular types of activities that were once carried on there.
The change from narrow pits to broad exposures was an innovation not of the French but of the Russians. In the early years of this century, Russian archaeologists first began encountering thick concentrations of animal bones on the terraces of such great Ukrainian rivers as the Dniester and the Don. Pits sunk here and there could make no sense of the dense bone heaps, but as soon as the remains were opened up horizontally over a broad area, the picture came clear. The bones once formed the foundations and frameworks.of houses built when wood was scarce and the shelter of caves unavailable. Since the late 1920s, such bone houses have been found in considerable numbers, often clustered together in little "villages" of four or five houses in the fertile valleys of the Ukraine- The same method of construction has appeared as far west as Kracow, in Poland, where recent excavations in the city center revealed three rings of mammoth bones exactly similar to those in Russia and dating to about 20 000 years ago.
Some of these bone buildings were remarkable structures in their time. One of the most intricate was discovered in 1965 at a place called Mezherich, near Kiev in the Ukraine. A farmer, digging his cellar, almost two meters below ground level, struck the massive lower jaw of a mammoth with his spade. The jawbone was upside down, and had been inserted into the bottom of another jaw like a child's building brick. In fact, as subsequent excavation showed, a complete ring of these inverted interlocking jaws formed the solid base of a roughly circular hut four or five meters across. About three dozen huge, curving mammoth tusks had been used as arching supports for the roof and for the porch, some of them still left in their sockets in the skulls. Separate lengths of tusks were even linked in laces by a hollow sleeve of ivory that fitted over the join. It has been stimated that the total of bones incorporated in the structure must have belonged to a minimum of ninety-five mammoths. This need ,not be a measure of some prodigious hunting feat, since gnawing marks of carnivores suggest that many of them were scavenged. However, the task of dragging the enormous skulls across country should not be underestimated since a-small one weighed about one hundred kilograms. It is likely that this extremely solid framework, when completed, was covered with hides just like the skin and whalebone huts built by Siberian coastal hunters during the nineteenth century.
Inside the Mezherich building, there were some remarkable finds: amber ornaments and fossil shells, transported an estimated 350 to 500 kilometres from their source, and the remains of one of the earliest percussion instruments ever found. The "drum" consisted of a mammoth skull set at the entrance porch and painted with a pattern of red ocher dots and lines. The top of this skull bears depressions where it seems to have been beaten by "drumsticks," the animal long bones that were found to bear corresponding damage on their ends. It is possible that the building may have served some ritual or communal function at which the mammoth bone rhythms were beaten out, although many Ukrainian huts of a similar size seem to have been ordinary living places.
In the far west, there was simply no need for such solid structures because shelter was provided by limestone overhangs and cave mouths. Nevertheless, the same principles of excavation pioneered in Russia have revealed traces of "interior design" at a number of cave sites, such as the remains of wooden partitions and lean-to structures that would have helped to exclude cold and damp. In addition, temporary open-air camps are being discovered in increasing numbers in western Europe. Several of these appear to be summertime halts occupied by small groups of hunters who may have joined up with larger groups to live in the shelter of caves during the winter. At the most thoroughly investigated of all these camps, situated at Pincevent in the Seine valley, a meticulous attention to detail allowed the excavator to reconstruct the outlines of three light skin tents occupied by a small summer band of reindeer hunters. Although no wooden or bone foundations had survived, the shape of the structures was revealed partly by the pattern of flint flakes struck off by toolmakers inside the tents. The paths traced by some of the flakes had clearly been interrupted by the hide walls.
Text above: 'Secrets of the Ice Age' by E. Hadingham
Vegetation Zones of the Ukraine at the height of the last glacial
Photo: After Klein, R.G. Mousterian cultures in European Russia.
Science, 165, pp. 257-65
Reconstruction of a hut built of mammoth bones and hides in the Ukraine near Kiev. Painting by M. Wilson
Photo: Man before history by John Waechter
Door to a mammoth bone hut at the National Science Museum in Tokyo. This reconstruction appears based on the Mezhirich discoveries.
Photo: Jerrers
Mammoth bone hut at the National Science Museum in Tokyo. This reconstruction appears based on the Mezhirich discoveries.
Photo: Jerrers
