Responses of Upper Palaeolithic humans to spatio-temporal variations in resources: inequality, storage and mobility

Predictability and abundance of resources is key to the spatio-temporal and social organisation of hunter-gatherer groups. In this paper I test the hypothesis that socio-economic inequalities were difficult to sustain in the European Upper Palaeolithic (~45.0-11.5 thousand years ago), with its often unreliable food resource availability. The general lack of modern analogues for Upper Palaeolithic environments forces exploration of alternative explanations for any apparent inequalities. Upper Palaeolithic palaeo-demographic estimates and technological strategies are evaluated in the light of environmental fluctuations, and the creation and control of knowledge is tested as the “resource” that might best explain evidence of inequalities