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The successive archaeological excavation campaigns at Veldwezelt-Hezerwater provided us with important lithic and faunal remains of at least five separate Middle Palaeolithic valley settlements. It is indeed remarkable to imagine that Middle Palaeolithic humans were extracting flint, were hunting animals, were collecting wood, were lighting fires, were reducing cores and were producing tools at this spot in the Hezerwater valley at different times during the Late Saalian (late MIS 6), the late Last Interglacial s.l. (MIS 5a) and the Middle Weichselian (MIS 3).
Middle Palaeolithic humans, who wanted to make a living at Veldwezelt-Hezerwater in a particular climatic setting, had to respond to that setting. This fact of course led to adaptation in terms of migrational, technological and "cultural" behaviour, which in turn affected their clothing, shelter, mobility, meat procurement and butchery methods and thus their lithic technology. We and others (e.g., Lévêque 1993; Bar-Yosef & Kuhn 1999; Clark 2002a,b; Jehs 2003, 2004) believe that human evolution is a relatively unimportant constraint on the character of core and tool reduction, being overridden in most contexts by mechanical constraints and economic and ecological processes. Furthermore, equifinality and formal convergence almost certainly overrides any hypothetical "cultural" component. Palaeolithic technology constituted a whole range of options, which were invoked differently according to context. These contextual factors and not "culture" constrained choice amongst these options (e.g., availability, size and quality of raw materials, mobility, anticipated tasks, etc.).
The cyclic appearance of parallel, centripetal (Levallois) core reduction, the presence of "typical", notched, denticulated, Quina or very small tools in the lithic assemblages at Middle Palaeolithic open-air sites in Northwest Europe should not be seen as extraordinary events, but simply as the natural outcome of the dynamics of flint knapping. Nor the cyclic "reinvention" of for instance laminar debitage, but the recognition of blades (etc.) as being more useful for certain kinds of activity in specific climatic settings, is a crucial element in the fluctuating technological process. Technological change is thus not the result of a linear evolution, but the outcome of isolated creative human actions. Many different elements must come together before triggering a technological shift: the element of resource availability and climate, the element of mobility and the element of culture innovation. We thus could put forward the hypothesis that, at least in temperate climatic conditions, Middle Palaeolithic humans could react instrumental in creating their own adequate life-sustaining technologies and this through interactions with the environment, changes in behaviour and modifications in their lithic technology. This approach considers Middle Palaeolithic humans as active agents, rather than passive recipients of optimised environmental conditions.
The "Veldwezelt-Hezerwater Project" has been made possible thanks to the generous support of all the scientific institutions involved. We especially would like to thank the Institute for the Archaeological Heritage (I.A.P.) of the Flemish Community, the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders (F.W.O.) and the Provincial Gallo-Roman Museum Tongeren (Dir. Mrs. Carmen Willems, Con. Mr. Guido Creemers, Mr. Patrick Matheï & Mr. Bart Demarsin). We would also like to thank the Province of Limburg (Belgium), the Province of Limburg (The Netherlands), the Communities of Lanaken and Riemst and the City of Maastricht.
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PATRICK M.M.A. BRINGMANS
PIERRE M. VERMEERSCH
FRANS GULLENTOPS
ERIK P.M. MEIJS,
ALBERT J. GROENENDIJK
JEAN-PIERRE DE WARRIMONT
Laboratorium voor Prehistorie
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Redingenstraat 16
3000 Leuven
Belgium
JEAN-MARIE CORDY
Ethologie et Psychologie Animales
Bât. L1 Inst. Physiologie L. Frédéricq
Université de Liège
Place Delcour 17
4020 Liège
Belgium