The Materiality of Perforated Human Teeth and Ivory Skeuomorphs in the European Upper Palaeolithic

Hundreds of grooved and/or perforated natural objects (e.g., talons, faunal teeth, marine shells) have been recovered from diverse archaeological contexts across the global late Middle to mid Upper Palaeolithic. These objects continue to provoke questions about their significative meanings, and about how material engagement with these things brought about transformations in the world. Perforated human teeth and ivory skeuomorphs (that mimic the shape of other things, e.g., shell) are two intriguing but under-explored Upper Palaeolithic phenomena which this paper examines through the intersections of Peircean semiotics, Material Engagement Theory, and material perspectivism. Beyond their significative powers of iconicity, it is argued that perforated human teeth wielded powerful indexical properties that engendered certain semiotic conflations and co-habitations through matter. These processes could give rise to new material lexicons, such as figurative representation in non-standard media (i.e., skeuomorphy). The act of skeuomorphy provides the semiotic ground for the negotiation of material-form relationships, of signification through matter, and of human and non-human relationships with their environment on multiple spatial and temporal scales. In sum, placing these often-separated artefact ‘classes’ in dialogue beseeches us to consider a material-semiotic meshwork that is more relational and rhizomic than individualistic and demarcated. The acquisition, manufacture, embodied display, and active engagement of and with these material signs enabled the continuous negotiation and realisation of ontological tenets such as the relationality of human and non-human beings (including things) and the ability of situated activity to instantiate new materialities and realities.