Le stockage alimentaire chez les chasseurs-cueilleurs paléolithiques

• Published in: Techniques & culture
• Main Authors: Soulier, Marie-Cécile, Costamagno, Sandrine
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: French
• Published: Éditions de l’EHESS 2018
• Subjects: Paléolithique; stockage alimentaire; Néandertaliens; hommes anatomiquement modernes; abattage en masse; traces de boucherie; Palaeolithic; meat storage; Neanderthals; anatomically modern humans; mass kill events; butchering marks; envir; archeo; Arctic; Subarctic
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/tc/8810

Food preservation allows deferred consumption and enables the human populations to stand free from climate hazards and prey availability. People who do not farm are dependent upon their environment, and food storage can be fundamental to ensure the group survival. This applies especially in contrasted environments, where food resources are abundant over very short periods of time as is the case today in areas close to the Arctic Circle. It is thus not surprising that the ethnographic literature offers numerous testimonies illustrating the importance of food-storage in these contexts. During prehistoric times, the climate in Europe was sometimes quite similar to what is currently documented in subarctic areas. This paper aims at examining the importance of food storage among the populations that were present between -80 000 and -14 000 before the present. This period has been marked by a succession of widely differing environments, but also saw the disappearance of Neanderthal and the arrival of the anatomically modern humans. From a literature review focused on traditional storage techniques used by nomadic hunter-gatherers, we identified those potentially used during the Palaeolithic. We also discuss about evidences that can attest to the use of food storage among the nomadic people from the Palaeolithic, and on the socio-economic consequences of this kind of practices for these hunter-gatherer societies. La conservation autorise la consommation différée des aliments et permet aux populations humaines de s’affranchir des aléas du climat et de la disponibilité des ressources. Les populations ne pratiquant pas l’agriculture sont fortement dépendantes de leur milieu et le stockage des ressources alimentaires peut donc s’avérer indispensable à la survie du groupe. Ce constat est particulièrement vrai dans des environnements contrastés où les ressources de base sont présentes en abondance sur des laps de temps très courts comme c’est aujourd’hui le cas dans les zones proches du cercle polaire la littérature ...