Mobility of Paleolithic Populations: Biomechanical Considerations and Spatiotemporal Modelling

Questions relating to territories and mobility patterns during the Paleolithic are crucial to understanding the social geography of earlier populations. Despite significant progress in the analysis of mobility clues (faunal remains, raw material uses), there have been few advances in their representative models during the last 40 years. Use of GIS and cost distance modelling in this sense has proven to be of great value as they shed light on the impact of the environment on hunter-gatherer mobility patterns. The aim of this study is to present a protocol for cost distance modelling based on the data available from biomechanics on the metabolic cost of mobility and their applicability to the archaeological context. We apply this method to a Mousterian site in the French Massif Central to propose an alternative vision of the techno-economic zonation for lithic raw material acquisition and use. Our results show the impact of walking speed, body mass, terrain, topography, and load on human mobility and allow us to include 3D (highlighting potential paths) and even 4D (suggesting a travel time for covering these paths) models to socio-economic organization of space by human groups. We highlight a completely different perception of time / space relationships within a given territory compared to classical Euclidean representation and establish in a quantified manner the investment (in time and in energy) needed by the group to visit defined points of interest. We discuss the efficiency of GIS cost distance modelling to emphasize socio-economic patterns and choices for past human groups. The usefulness of models in highlighting potential factors behind behavioral variations in the management of space in prehistoric times is also addressed.