Hunter gatherer

            
             The Upper Palaeolithic man was a hunter-gatherer whose primary aim was to find shelter and food in a harsh environment at a time where glaciers covered much of northern Europe and dangerous carnivores roamed the landscape. The region I will be looking closely at to establish whether prehistoric hunter-gatherers were collectors or foragers is Moravia in the Czech Republic and in particular the well known site of Dolni Vestonice.
             Establishing whether upper Palaeolithic man was a foragers or collector is a contentious issue. Binford (1980) uses a classification system to establish the differences between these methods of searching for food where hunter-gatherers were put into two groups with different strategies, "map on" and "logistically". "Map on" hunting involved moving consumers to resources where as the logistical method took resources to consumers. The latter of these was much more advanced. One example of this might be that logistical hunting could have been aided by the use of observation points to seek out potential prey that would result in increased efficiency as time would not be wasted looking randomly far and wide, Binford (1980). As Soffer (1989) identifies foraging methods should be looked at in terms of the cost of calories to the gain in meat.
             Foraging systems involved seasonal residential moves in order to take the consumers to the resources as described in Binford's forager model (1980) this would assume that little or no storage of food occurred and foraging groups left their home each morning to hunt while returning in the afternoon on a daily basis. This is a primitive method when compared to a collector system, which is much more organised. One example of this more advanced technique can be seen at Pavlov 1 in Moravia, Czech Republic (Soffer 1989). At this site there is evidence for pits being dug in which food would be stored hence foraging would not have to occur daily therefore conserving hunter-gatherer's energy.