Earliest Evidence
The earliest fully credible personal ornaments in Europe are the pierced animal teeth recovered by Kozlowski (1982) from Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, from an Aurignacian level dated to >43,000 by the traditional radiocarbon method. Recent thermoluminescence dates from El Castillo in Spain have now pushed back the basal Aurignacian, with bone/antler implements, to the vicinity of 40,000 B.P. (Cabrera Valdès 1984; Cabrera Valdès and Bischoff 1989; Bernaldo de Quiros and Cabrera Valdés 1993). From a similar Aurignacian assemblage at nearby El Pendo (Gonzalez Echegaray 1980) were recovered pierced animal teeth and a steatite facsimile of a vestigial red deer canine, in an Aurignacian level underlying two Castelperronian levels (Bernaldo de Quiros 1982). At Mladec in Czechoslovakia a group of pierced moose telemetacarpals and numerous pierced animal teeth were found in what is thought to be a very early Aurignacian assemblage (perhaps 40,000 years) associated with early modern human skeletal material (Oliva 1987, 1993). It remains to be seen whether similar assemblages in France and Italy (Blanc 1953; Blanc and Segre 1953), almost all of which contain at least some personal ornaments, will be found to be equally old once the traditional limits imposed by radiocarbon dating have been overcome by TL applications.
Marshack (1991) expresses the view that symbolic behavior characterized Neandertals and evolved gradually into its prominent role in the Upper Paleolithic (presumably as part of the process that saw Neandertals evolve gradually into anatomically modern humans!). In doing so, he gives the impression that the personal ornaments from Castelperronian levels at Arcy-sur-Cure pre-date Aurignacian materials in France and elsewhere. Remarkably, this argument ignores the fact that in Western Europe the Castelperronian developed several thousand years after the first appearance of the Aurignacian (Mercier et al 1991), and overlies Aurignacian levels at El Pendo (Bernaldo de Quiros and Cabrera Valdés 1993), Roc de Combe, and Le Piage (Bordes and Labrot 1967; Laville et al 1980). Indeed, the famous Castelperronian body ornaments, bone/antler implements and decorated objects from the Grotte de Renne at Arcy-sur-Cure (Leroi-Gourhan 1961; Leroyer and Leroi-Gourhan 1983; Movius 1969; Taborin 1988, 1990; White 1992a) are radiocarbon dated to no older than 33,000 B.P. In other words, Aurignacian personal ornaments had been well-established for as much as 10,000 years by the time there is evidence that the Castelperronians (apparently Neandertals) began producing them.
Interesting questions arise at Arcy, one of only two Castelperronian sites (Harrold 1988) to have yielded personal ornaments. I have recently observed (White 1992a) that the personal ornaments and incised objects from the Castelperronian at Arcy are typically "Aurignacian" in technology, raw material and form. Either Castelperronians were working on an Aurignacian model, were scavenging objects from contemporaneous Aurignacian sites or the Arcy objects are the product of stratigraphic mixture with the overlying Aurignacian levels.
In sum, personal ornaments first appear in Europe in Aurignacian levels dated to around 40,000 B.P.. There is no indisputable evidence for such objects in Mousterian/ Castelperronian contexts that pre-date or are contemporaneous with the initial Aurignacian presence in Europe.
