Early symbolism in the Ach and the Lone valleys of southwestern Germany Ewa Dutkiewicz a, * , Sibylle Wolf a, b , Nicholas J. Conard a, b a Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Arch€ aologie des Mittelalters, Abteilung € Altere Urgeschichte und Quart€ ar€ okologie, Schloss Hohentübingen, Eberhard Karls Universit€ at Tübingen, 72070 Tübingen, Germany b Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, Sigwartstrasse 10, 72076 Tübingen, Germany article info Article history: Received 19 May 2016 Received in revised form 24 March 2017 Accepted 8 April 2017 Available online xxx abstract The two cave sites of Hohle Fels in the Ach Valley and Vogelherd in the Lone Valley in southwestern Germany have yielded hundreds of personal ornaments and graphic symbolic expressions from the Aurignacian. They are mainly made of mammoth ivory and are among the earliest symbolic expressions worldwide. In this study, we examine the differences and similarities in the symbolic expressions among personal ornaments and symbolic markings from both sites. These finds allow a detailed view of the Aurignacian society in the Swabian Jura and the beginning of modern symbolic behavior. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Aurignacian is a well-defined archaeological culture at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. Scholars established different regional groups within the pan-European Aurignacian complex. This techno-complex has a blade-based lithic industry and a rich osseous assemblage that shows differences from region to region (eg. Albrecht et al., 1972; Bolus and Conard, 2006; Conard and Bolus, 2003; Hahn, 1977; Otte, 1979, 2010; Tartar, 2015; Tartar et al., 2006). However, these categories of artifacts do not provide comprehensive information about the cultural identity of Auri- gnacian groups, as they are primarily functional. The Aurignacian is one of the first Paleolithic techno-complexes that uses symbolism on a broad scale. Artifacts with symbolic content are suitable for studying subunits within broader archaeological cultures because they likely reflect ethnic units (Vanhaeren, 2005, 2010; Vanhaeren and d'Errico, 2006) and even personal styles. One important region for the Aurignacian is the Swabian Jura, specifically the valleys of the rivers Ach and Lone. This area is well- suited for studying the regional variety of the Aurignacian, as it has a long research history, modern standards of excavations, as well as many well-studied sites with long stratigraphic sequences. It is appropriate to speak of the Swabian Aurignacian as a cohesive cultural unit because its coherence within the Aurignacian tech- nocomplex is evident. The lithic industry, bone technology (Bolus and Conard, 2006; Conard, 2006; Conard and Bolus, 2003), and especially the personal ornaments (Vanhaeren and d'Errico, 2006; Wolf, 2015a, b) document the shared cultural identity of the ancient inhabitants of the two valleys. The artistic expressions, for which the Swabian Jura is famous, count among the earliest examples of art worldwide. Excavations in both valleys have yielded a large number of small ivory figurines that depict animals, therian- thropes, and human representations. This kind of figurative art is so far limited to the Aurignacian in the Swabian Jura, and therefore demonstrates and underlines the cultural unity of these sites (Conard, 2007, 2009; Floss, 2007; Hahn, 1970, 1986, 1988; Müller- Beck and Albrecht, 1987; Riek, 1934; Schmid et al., 1989; Wehrberger, 2013). Here we use the term “Swabian Aurignacian” to refer to this archaeological culture. As the study of the material is still in progress, we will concentrate on two cave sites, Hohle Fels in the Ach Valley and Vogelherd in the Lone Valley. Our research aim is to determine if it is possible to identify smaller social-cultural units within the relatively large unit of the “Swabian Aurigna- cian”. Our main priority is to explore whether or not there were distinct groups of people who lived in the two valleys simulta- neously or the same group that moved from one valley to another. We also examine the question of whether or not we can identify * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ewa.dutkiewicz@uni-tuebingen.de (E. Dutkiewicz), sibylle. wolf@ifu.uni-tubingen.de (S. Wolf), nicholas.conard@uni-tuebingen.de (N.J. Conard). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.04.029 1040-6182/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International xxx (2017) 1e16 Please cite this article inpress as: Dutkiewicz, E., et al., Early symbolism in the Ach and the Lone valleys of southwestern Germany, Quaternary International (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.04.029