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Although archaeologists are learning more about the lives of Upper Paleolithic children, the significant contributions they made to the welfare of their communities, including their role in craft production, remain understudied. In the present study, we use high resolution photographs of 489 ceramic artifacts from Dolní Věstonice I and II, Pavlov I and VI, and Předmostí, five archaeological sites in Czechia (ca. 30,000 BP) to address two questions: 1. Can the ceramic products of novices be distinguished from those made by experts? 2. If so, can we tell if these novices were children? To address these questions, we documented variables known ethnographically and archaeologically to be associated with learners in a sample from these five sites. The sample is composed of fired ("ceramic") and unfired ("sedimentary") anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, non-diagnostic figurine fragments and a sample of the so-called "pellets" from one site, Pavlov I. Our results support the hypothesis that ceramic objects are the products of novices, and in many cases, these novices are children. Our findings have implications for inter-generational knowledge transmission, the role of children in craft production and the importance of learning through play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two new examples of decorative art have turned up at the Gravettian site of Predmosti, dating to the twenty-sixth to twenty-fifth millennium BP: rectilinear grid patterns are executed on one side of flat bones, probably of reindeer. The authors speculate that the two pieces may have come from a single larger decorated object. The grids themselves join a growing repertoire of patterns known from Upper Palaeolithic society, but their role remains enigmatic: counting, calendars or ornament? Art or science? Keywords: Upper Palaeolithic, Gravettian, Czech Republic, mammoth, reindeer, decorative art, art, grid pattern, Introduction A team of archaeologists led by Jiri Svoboda, of the Institute of Archaeology, Dolni Vestonice, and Martin Jones, of the University of Cambridge, has been excavating selected portions of [...]