The range of caching behavior among the past hunther-gatherers of Europe.

Caches are an important component of archaeological records, providing useful information about mobility and logistic organisation, but also cultual practises of the hunter-gatherers of the past. These extremely rare structures usually contain selected and unexploited flint cobbles collected either elsewhere or nearby the cache itself. A brief look at literature reveals that flint caches were already present in Europe in the Middle Paleolithic and that their number increased during the late-glacial and post-glacial, a time in which global climatic amelioration ultimately caused significant changes in human behaviour and in economic strategies. Colonisation of virgin territories, widening of the range of prey species, modifications in hunting practices, may be related to mobility, planning and organisational skills and caching may therefore be one of the consequences of this increased mobility and deserve more attention when studying the human societies of the past.