"Nothing happens until something moves": settlement patterns in the Balkan Peninsula during MIS 3-1

Abstract

As repeatedly demonstrated by archaeological and ethnoarchaeological data, hunter-gatherers’ settlement patterns are known to differ between different groups and periods. How groups organized their movements and settlements in the landscape was to a large extent influenced by the important events in climate history and more intermediate environmental conditions. The goal of this study is to examine if and how hominin groups changed their settlement patterns as a response to fluctuating climatic and environmental conditions during the rather unstable Marine Isotope stages 3-1 on the Balkan peninsula. Based on the published data two analysis have been conducted: bivariate WABI (Whole assemblage behavior index) and multivariate PCA (Principal component analysis) analyses for the following variables: lithic density, retouched frequency, core, blanks and chips frequency as well as tool diversity, which are frequently used to access settlement patterns of prehistoric human populations. Both Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites are included in the study, which allowed us to detect changes in settlement in different time periods, different hominin populations and in different microregions of the Balkan Peninsula.