US-France Joint Workshop: From Spatial Constraint to Socio-Economic Organization: The Settlement and Technology of Magdalenian Hunters at Verberie, Marcoux, France, February 2004

0338401 Zubrow This one-year award will support U.S. participation in a U.S.-France joint workshop on the behavioral and social organization of hunter-gatherer camps at Verberie, France and other similar Paleolithic sites. The workshop, co-organized by Ezra Zubrow of the State University of New York in Buffalo and Francoise Audouze of the Universite de Paris X, will take place in Marcoux, France, February 2004. Verberie is a late Magdalenian open-air site located at the bottom of the Oise river valley, just north of Paris. The site was occupied between 12,900 and 12,400 years ago. A GIS research program, initiated in 2002, has utilized new techniques to clarify the "patterns of domesticity." Verberie and other similar sites represent the best data available on Upper Paleolithic behavioral and social organization. The workshop will address: (1) theoretical issues regarding the interpretation of Paleolithic behavior and social organization from archaeological data; (2) social divisions relating to age, gender and kinship based on the spatial distribution of activities and (3) the larger social context of the Verberie in the European Upper Paleolithic. A web site and a small museum display describing the results of the workshop will be developed. The workshop will advance understanding of how people organized their communities and domestic patterns in the Upper Paleolithic of Europe. The workshop also provides an opportunity for graduate students to present their research and develop international connections early in their careers. This project is jointly supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique(CNRS). NSF will support the travel of U.S. participants to France and the CNRS will support the participation of the French investigators.