Abstract
This paper reports on several years of research on Aurignacian personal ornaments, a large proportion of which were manufactured of mammoth-ivory. The technology of ivory bead production is shown to have been extraordinarily labor consumptive and to have varied from one European region to the next. The research techniques applied to this impressive body of material include 1) conventional microscopic and macroscopic analysis of archaeological materials, 2) Scanning electron microscopy, 3) structural comparison of mammoth- and elephant-ivory, and 4) experimental replication of Aurignacian beads. The author proposes that the burst of Aurignacian ornaments, the labor and knowledge invested in them, and their potential for constructing and communicating social identity indicate significant social changes at the beginning of the Aurignacian.
