Martin Oliva (ed.). Sidliste mamutiho lidu, u Miloiic pod Palavou: otazka struktur s mamutimi kostmi / Milovice, site of the mammoth people below the Pavlov hills: the question of mammoth bone structures.

Bahn, Paul G.

MARTIN OLIVA (ed.). Sidliste mamutiho lidu, u Miloiic pod Palavou: otazka struktur s mamutimi kostmi / Milovice, site of the mammoth people below the Pavlov hills: the question of mammoth bone structures (Studies in Anthropology, Palaeoethnology and Quaternary Geology 27, ns 19). 338 pages, numerous illustrations & tables, 49 colour plates. 2009. Brno: Moravske Zemske Muzeum; 978-80-7028-333-2 hardback (in Czech/English).

Anyone interested in the possible relationships between humans and mammoths during the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic will find this book a treasure trove of important, well-excavated new data. It provides a great deal of food for thought, and will certainly 'break the vicious circle of mammoth studies', as the editor purs it.

The utterly extraordinary concentration of open-air Upper Palaeolithic sites in and around the Pavlov Hills of Moravia has been explored since the 1920s, the most famous being Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov. Milovice is located only 3km from the latter site, on sandy loess at an altitude of 230m asl. It was discovered in 1949 when road construction revealed some mammoth bones, but excavations really began in the late 1980s after another bone layer was found, and for the first time in this region the position of every artefact and ecofact in the site was carefully noted, allowing for some very detailed analyses on all aspects of Milovice's geology, environment and archaeology. The principal occupation here occurred in the Gravettian, dated to between 24 and 22 000 years ago. The most important sector of the site is 'G', which contained evidence of one structure made of mammoth bones.

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One can sense the editor's frustration when he reports (p. 41) that not only have some pollen samples not yet been evaluated, but also that the completed report on the macrofauna from sector G was not submitted for publication in this volume 'probably due to controversial interpretation'. It becomes clear in later chapters that the editor does indeed disagree markedly with the opinions of the faunal analyst in question; but alas this means that we are given only a summary of the faunal remains from site G.

On the other hand, the book contains a very extensive study of the macrofauna from the site's other sectors and those analyses, along with Oliva's own discussions of the data, constitute the crucial core of this volume. Mammoth dominates throughout the site, representing up to 98 per cent of the bone material. About 64 000 bones have been unearthed from the 700[m.sup.2] excavated (about 80 per cent of the site), which sounds a lot, but in fact Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov, though less carefully excavated, produced more than twice as many from half that area.

The picture built up in recent decades is that some sites of this kind contained sturdy huts built of mammoth bones (most famously at Mezin and Mezhirich in Ukraine); many have believed, on the basis of little evidence, that their builders were mammoth hunters, but the influential work of Olga Soffer argued strongly that the vast majority of mammoth bones were in fact scavenged and collected from skeletons in the landscape resulting from natural deaths, and brought back to camp as building materials or fuel. One of her major arguments in support was the widely differing state of preservation of the bones used in the Ukrainian huts.

For a long time there was no direct evidence of mammoth hunting in Palaeolithic Eurasia, but we now have a couple of ribs from Kostenki I (Russia) and Gontsy (Ukraine) each containing a flint, and especially a vertebra from Lugovskoye (western Siberia) with an embedded flint. So hunting certainly did occur at times. But how important was it? Milovice contributes important data to this debate.

The site is not in a valley that formed a passage or a natural trap, and it is far from the river, so the bone accumulation here cannot be natural. Only one bone out of the tens of thousands bears any traces of butchering, but it is known that the defleshing of elephant bones often leaves no traces, so that is no guide to the cause of the accumulation. On the other hand, the site contains no recognisable spears, just tiny flint points. Another puzzle is that numerous heavy, non-meaty bones such as scapulae, jaws and pelvises are present, as well as isolated molars, tusks and skulls. Their state of preservation is generally good and uniform, with minimal weathering, and the different parts of the site seem to represent discrete episodes of bone accumulation. Are they a palimpsest of hunting activities?

Sector G also contains a circular structure of bones, including 15 scapulae and 13 pelvic parts, with a fireplace in front of its entrance. This is, however, very different from the famous Ukrainian huts, and it is suggested that the bones here merely provided support for wooden struts and hide walls. This 'hut' contains no special features, storage pits or exceptional artefacts.

Oliva's important concluding discussion points out that the Ukrainian huts, 10 millennia younger than Milovice, are atypical; at most sites in central and eastern Europe the structures are much simpler and less complete, and may hot even have been roofed at all--perhaps they were simply 'social spaces'. In assessing the origin and significance of the Milovice bone accumulation he shows clearly the limitations of inferences that can be made from age/sex profiles of the remains and from the artefactual evidence. He proposes therefore, quite persuasively, that one should see a wide range of motivations behind sites of this kind--not just hunting and the collecting/scavenging of raw material, fuel and structural elements, but also more symbolic and social aspects such as prestige and trophies and even territorial markers.

The book, whose full text extremely helpfully appears in both Czech and English, is well illustrated throughout and includes a section of colour plates in which one is pleased to recognise the late Jan Jellnek and Alex Marshack among the visitors to the site.

PAUL G. BAHN

Hull, UK (Email: pgbahn@anlabyrd.karoo.co.uk)