Finding Home: A predictive model for Late Pleistocene shelters

Built structures (or shelters) are an important cultural feature of human societies. Elements of shelter construction are also documented among our closest living relatives, the great apes, highlighting a potential phylogenetic trend of these behaviours. However, examining our species' deep past, posited archaeological evidence for shelters is scarce and mostly confined to the later phases of the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 Ma-12 ka). This may result from a poor understanding of what past shelters looked like, but a major issue is where to look for prehistoric structures. In this contribution, we aim to build a GIS-based predictive model to help future archaeological research identify potential sites likely to have hosted shelters in prehistory. We use diverse ethnographic accounts to create a database of shelters built by forager societies. Emerging patterns in how foragers situate, design, and use shelters are used to develop a predictive spatial model for locating archaeological sites that may bear traces of shelters left by Late Pleistocene (ca. 120–12 ka) hominins. The model indicates where to look for shelters and what to expect archaeologically. We will test it with systematic, large-scale geomagnetic surveys in East-Central Europe. Identifying and describing prehistoric shelters has important consequences for understanding how past hominins lived and spread during the unpredictable climate fluctuations of the Late Pleistocene. Clarifying shelter use will offer a better understanding of how hominins coped with vast, non-karstic landscapes. This will provide insights into the role of shelters within the social and cultural dynamics of past societies.