ABSTRACT
Red ocher is virtually ubiquitous in its associations with human activities. Red ocher has also been found at the Acheulian site of Becov in Czechoslvakia. Human use of red ocher appears incontrovertible beginning with the Upper Paleolithic, or, to put it another way, in sites produced by anatomically modern humans: H. sapiens sapiens. Moving to the discoveries of red ocher in Middle Paleolithic sites, the capacity of humans of this period to conceptualize and express abstractions is clear from the deliberate inclusion of grave goods in burials. The enigmatic plaque aside, the association of red ocher with corpses in several Mousterian sites does suggest that red color signified life, the blood of life, or vitality, to Mousterians. Red ocher has been a symbol to modern anthropologists of a human capacity for creating and using abstract symbols. Finding red ocher in an archaeological site is exciting.
