Carsac-Aillac – Pech de l'Aze IV

Date de l'opération : 2009 (FP) Au cours de l’hiver 2009 s’est produit un effondrement de la coupe Nord du gisement du Pech de l’Aze dont les fouilles archéologiques les plus récentes, placées sous la responsabilité d’Harold Dibble remontent aux années 2000-2003. À la fin de ces opérations programmées les coupes ont été bâchées (2003) puis, plus récemment en 2007, une toiture de protection installée. Néanmoins, le développement de la végétation au-dessus des coupes, avant l’installation de ce..

Carsac-Aillac – Pech de l'Aze IV

Date de l'opération : 2009 (FP) Au cours de l’hiver 2009 s’est produit un effondrement de la coupe Nord du gisement du Pech de l’Aze dont les fouilles archéologiques les plus récentes, placées sous la responsabilité d’Harold Dibble remontent aux années 2000-2003. À la fin de ces opérations programmées les coupes ont été bâchées (2003) puis, plus récemment en 2007, une toiture de protection installée. Néanmoins, le développement de la végétation au-dessus des coupes, avant l’installation de ce..

Site formation histories and context of human occupations at the paleolithic site of La Ferrassie (Dordogne, France)

The Paleolithic site of La Ferrassie (Dordogne, France) has contributed significantly to the understanding of Middle and Upper Paleolithic technocomplexes, as well as Neanderthal skeletal morphology. Excavations at the site have spanned more than a century and uncovered rich archaeological assemblages associated with the Mousterian, Chatelperronian, Aurignacian and Gravettian technocomplexes. Renewed excavations exposed a sequence spanning both Middle and Upper Paleolithic occupations in the Western Sector and low-density Mousterian deposits and Chatelperronian in the Northern Sector. Here, we report on an extensive geoarchaeological study of deposits at the western end of the site to reconstruct and interpret both the depositional history of the sediments and associated human occupations in this poorly documented part of La Ferrassie. Our results point to the nature of the site as originally a karstic cave, with the Western Sector located in what would have been the cave's mouth. The stratigraphic sequence comprises first fluvial deposition (Phase I) followed by soliflucted deposits and accretion cones that emanate from an elevated platform situated several meters above the modern road next to the site (Phase II) and, finally, spatially restricted channeling (Phase III). Most archaeological assemblages are associated with Phase II and reflect an interplay between occupations directly in this area and bones and artifacts sliding down the slope from the upper platform. Unlike in the Western Sector, in the Northern Sector - situated along the north wall and several meters inside the footprint of the cave - cold features dominate the entirety of the sequence; we interpret these as being linked to microenvironments specific to this location of the karst rather than to general (external) climatic conditions. Relevant is the identification of patterned ground formation in this area, which can be clearly linked to the "monticule" features first reported by Capitan and Peyrony and erroneously interpreted as anthropogenic in origin. Our geoarchaeological results point to a large and complex karst system, with distinct depositional sources and often locally independent sedimentary histories throughout its extent. These formation pathways have differently impacted the main occupation areas and resulted in distinct degrees of preservation of the archaeological assemblages throughout the different areas of the site.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How did hominins adapt to Ice Age Europe without fire?

Analyses of archaeological material recovered from several Middle Paleolithic sites in southwest France have provided strong corroborating data on Neanderthal use of fire. Both direct and indirect data show that Neanderthals in this region were frequently and/or intensively using fire during warmer periods, but such evidence declines significantly in occupations that took place during colder periods. One possible explanation for this pattern is that it reflects the inability of Western European Neanderthals to make fire, simply because natural sources of fire occur much more frequently during warmer climatic periods. Regardless of the explanation, the long periods of diminished evidence of fire shows that, unlike modern humans, these hominins were not obligate fire users, and this fact in itself raises important questions of how they adapted, physiologically and/or technologically, to the generally harsh glacial conditions of the middle latitude of Europe and to reduced energy returns typical of raw food. As a corollary, it also raises questions regarding their need for and use of fire during the warmer periods.National Science FoundationLeakey FoundationConseil General de la DordogneMax Planck SocietyService Regional de l'Archeologie (Agquitaine)University of Pennsylvania Research FoundationUniversity of Pennsylvania MuseumWenner-Gren Foundationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Aggregates, Formational Emergence, and the Focus on Practice in Stone Artifact Archaeology

The stone artifact record has been one of the major grounds for investigating our evolution. With the predominant focus on their morphological attributes and technological aspects of manufacture, stone artifacts and their assemblages have been analyzed as explicit measures of past behaviors, adaptations, and population histories. This analytical focus on technological andmorphological appearance is one of the characteristics of the conventional approach for constructing inferences from this record. An equally persistent routine involves ascribing the emerged patterns and variability within the archaeological deposits directly to long-term central tendencies in human actions and cultural transmission. Here we re-evaluate this conventional approach. By invoking some of the known concerns and concepts about the formation of archaeological record, we introduce notions of aggregates and formational emergence to expand on the understanding of how artifacts accumulate, what these accumulations represent, and how the patterns and variability among them emerge. To infer behavior that could inform on past lifeways, we further promote a shift in the focus of analysis from the technological and morphological appearance of artifacts and assemblages to the practice of stone use. We argue for a more rigorous and multi-level inferential procedure in modeling behavioral adaptation and evolution

Major Fallacies Surrounding Stone Artifacts and Assemblages

While lithic objects can potentially inform us about past adaptations and behaviors, it is important to develop a comprehensive understanding of all of the various processes that influence what we recover from the archaeological record. We argue here that many assumptions used by archaeologists to derive behavioral inferences through the definition, conceptualization, and interpretation of both individual stone artifact forms and groups of artifacts identified as assemblages do not fit squarely with what we have learned from both ethnographic sources and analyses of archaeological materials. We discuss this in terms of two fallacies. The first is the fallacy of the “desired end product” in stone artifact manufacture, which also includes our ability to recognize such end products. The second fallacy has to do with the notions that lithic assemblages represent simple accumulations of contemporary behaviors and the degree to which the composition of the depositional units we study reliably match the kinds of activities that took place. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a comprehensive set of new methodologies and theoretical perspectives to solve these problems, our goal here is to stress the importance of rethinking some of our most basic assumptions regarding the nature of lithic objects and how they become part of the archaeological record. Such a revision is needed if we want to be able to develop research questions that can be addressed with the data we have available to us

Late Pleistocene prey mobility in southwestern France and its implications for reconstructing Neandertal ranging behaviors

We thank Sarah Barakat for consultation. We also thank Jenni Henecke, Jen Everhart, Carol Lee, Charisse Carver, and Hope Williams for assistance with 87Sr/86Sr sample preparation. Access to the Metal Geochemistry Center at Yale University was kindly granted by Noah Planavsky, and Dan Asael assisted with 87Sr/86Sr measurement there. Jiuyuan Wang provided important advice on 87Sr/86Sr data correction, and Alice Knaf shared insights into sample elution. We would also like to thank Curtis Marean, Kim Hill, David Strait, Caley Orr, and Ben Schoville for advice and comments on the manuscript. Two anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments that improved the quality of the manuscript. Finally, we thank the late Harold Dibble for access to the Roc de Marsal collections. CRediT authorship contribution statement Jamie Hodgkins: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Alex Bertacchi: Formal analysis, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Kelly J. Knudson: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Troy Rasbury: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Julia I. Giblin: Methodology, Resources. Gwyneth Gordon: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Ariel Anbar: Resources. Alain Turq: Resources. Dennis Sandgathe: Resources, Writing – review & editing. Hannah M. Keller: Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Kate Britton: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Shannon P. McPherron: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.Peer reviewe

Reconstructing Late Pleistocene paleoclimate at the scale of human behavior: an example from the Neandertal occupation of La Ferrassie (France)

Exploring the role of changing climates in human evolution is currently impeded by a scarcity of climatic information at the same temporal scale as the human behaviors documented in archaeological sites. This is mainly caused by high uncertainties in the chronometric dates used to correlate long-term climatic records with archaeological deposits. One solution is to generate climatic data directly from archaeological materials representing human behavior. Here we use oxygen isotope measurements of Bos/Bison tooth enamel to reconstruct summer and winter temperatures in the Late Pleistocene when Neandertals were using the site of La Ferrassie. Our results indicate that, despite the generally cold conditions of the broader period and despite direct evidence for cold features in certain sediments at the site, Neandertals used the site predominantly when climatic conditions were mild, similar to conditions in modern day France. We suggest that due to millennial scale climate variability, the periods of human activity and their climatic characteristics may not be representative of average conditions inferred from chronological correlations with long-term climatic records. These results highlight the importance of using direct routes, such as the high-resolution archives in tooth enamel from anthropogenically accumulated faunal assemblages, to establish climatic conditions at a human scale.Projekt DEALinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Identifying the unidentified fauna enhances insights into hominin subsistence strategies during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition

Understanding Palaeolithic hominin subsistence strategies requires the comprehensive taxonomic identification of faunal remains. The high fragmentation of Late Pleistocene faunal assemblages often prevents proper taxonomic identification based on bone morphology. It has been assumed that the morphologically unidentifiable component of the faunal assemblage would reflect the taxonomic abundances of the morphologically identified portion. In this study, we analyse three faunal datasets covering the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition (MUPT) at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria) and Les Cottés and La Ferrassie (France) with the application of collagen type I peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS). Our results emphasise that the fragmented component of Palaeolithic bone assemblages can differ significantly from the morphologically identifiable component. We obtain contrasting identification rates between taxa resulting in an overrepresentation of morphologically identified reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and an underrepresentation of aurochs/bison (Bos/Bison) and horse/European ass (Equus) at Les Cottés and La Ferrassie. Together with an increase in the relative diversity of the faunal composition, these results have implications for the interpretation of subsistence strategies during a period of possible interaction between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in Europe. Furthermore, shifts in faunal community composition and in carnivore activity suggest a change in the interaction between humans and carnivores across the MUPT and indicate a possible difference in site use between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The combined use of traditional and biomolecular methods allows (zoo)archaeologists to tackle some of the methodological limits commonly faced during the morphological assessment of Palaeolithic bone assemblages

An analysis of the Levallois reduction strategy using a design theory framework

The Levallois reduction strategy was selected from among a number of different lithic strategies available in the Middle Palaeolithic and was employed over a wide geographic area of the Old World for well over 200,000 years. This research attempts to examine the potential advantages of this reduction strategy that led to this long history of use. This requires the development of a model of Middle Palaeolithic lifeways from which can be identified those factors that would have influenced and constrained the design of Middle Palaeolithic stone technology and tool kits. From an understanding of these constraints on stone tool production and use, several hypotheses are developed which would explain the advantages that Levallois reduction would present and under what conditions we would expect it to be employed. These hypotheses are then tested through the analysis of both the morphology of the products of different reduction strategies and of tool blank selection patterns at four Middle Palaeolithic sites in SW and SE France. This analysis indicates that Levallois reduction would present notable advantages under conditions of restricted access to raw material, which may be due to circumstances of increased group mobility or distance from raw material sources. Some functional advantages may also rest in the morphology of certain Levallois products and in the products of similar reduction approaches. It is also apparent that classic Levallois reduction cannot be defined in isolation from other single-surface core strategies, and that much of the advantage of classic Levallois reduction is inherent in all such strategies