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

A geometric morphometric relationship predicts stone flake shape and size variability

The archaeological record represents a window onto the complex relationship between stone artefact variance and hominin behaviour. Differences in the shapes and sizes of stone flakes-the most abundant remains of past behaviours for much of human evolutionary history-may be underpinned by variation in a range of different environmental and behavioural factors. Controlled flake production experiments have drawn inferences between flake platform preparation behaviours, which have thus far been approximated by linear measurements, and different aspects of overall stone flake variability (Dibble and Rezek J Archaeol Sci 36:1945-1954, 2009; Lin et al. Am Antiq 724-745, 2013; Magnani et al. J Archaeol Sci 46:37-49, 2014; Rezek et al. J Archaeol Sci 38:1346-1359, 2011). However, when the results are applied to archaeological assemblages, there remains a substantial amount of unexplained variability. It is unclear whether this disparity between explanatory models and archaeological data is a result of measurement error on certain key variables, whether traditional analyses are somehow a general limiting factor, or whether there are additional flake shape and size drivers that remain unaccounted for. To try and circumvent these issues, here, we describe a shape analysis approach to assessing stone flake variability including a newly developed three-dimensional geometric morphometric method (\u273DGM\u27). We use 3DGM to demonstrate that a relationship between platform and flake body governs flake shape and size variability. Contingently, we show that by using this 3DGM approach, we can use flake platform attributes to both (1) make fairly accurate stone flake size predictions and (2) make relatively detailed predictions of stone flake shape. Whether conscious or instinctive, an understanding of this geometric relationship would have been critical to past knappers effectively controlling the production of desired stone flakes. However, despite being able to holistically and accurately incorporate three-dimensional flake variance into our analyses, the behavioural drivers of this variance remain elusive

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

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

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

Introducing platform surface interior angle (PSIA) and its role in flake formation, size and shape

Four ways archaeologists have tried to gain insights into how flintknapping creates lithic variability are fracture mechanics, controlled experimentation, replication and attribute studies of lithic assemblages. Fracture mechanics has the advantage of drawing more directly on first principles derived from physics and material sciences, but its relevance to controlled experimentation, replication and lithic studies more generally has been limited. Controlled experiments have the advantage of being able to isolate and quantify the contribution of individual variables to knapping outcomes, and the results of these experiments have provided models of flake formation that when applied to the archaeological record of flintknapping have provided insights into past behavior. Here we develop a linkage between fracture mechanics and the results of previous controlled experiments to increase their combined explanatory and predictive power. We do this by documenting the influence of Herztian cone formation, a constant in fracture mechanics, on flake platforms. We find that the platform width is a function of the Hertzian cone constant angle and the geometry of the platform edge. This finding strengthens the foundation of one of the more influential models emerging from the controlled experiments. With additional work, this should make it possible to merge more of the experimental results into a more comprehensive model of flake formation

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

The late middle Palaeolithic occupation of Abri du Maras (Layer 1, Neronian, southeast France): integrating lithic analyses, ZooMS and radiocarbon dating to reconstruct Neanderthal hunting behaviour

The exact strategies and technologies underlying Neanderthal hunting events remain open for debate with lithic points being sparse across the European Middle Palaeolithic. An exception is the Neronian entity in southeast France, defned by ventrally retouched Soyons points. This study contextualises one of the largest Neronian assemblages, layer 1 at Abri du Maras. Our lithic analyses focussed on attributes described as indicative of projectile use or hafting to contextualise the morphometric and technological characteristics of the pointed implements at an assemblage level. We found that retouched points were made on a variety of blank types (including Levallois, laminar and discoidal faking techniques) and ventral retouch is present across diferent artefact types (including points, scrapers and denticulates). Next, these lithic data were compared to similar typo-technological data recorded on a sample from the recently excavated and well-contextualised point-rich layer 4.1 of Abri du Maras (MIS-3). Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) was applied to 280 faunal remains from layer 1 and indicated signifcant proportions of equids, bovids, cervids and reindeer. Carnivore remains and carnivore modifcations are absent, while human bone surface modifcations are present across a variety of species. Five bones had sufcient collagen for radiocarbon dating but returned dates younger than expected (ca. 41–31 ka cal BP). Finally, we place Abri du Maras layer 1 in its broader regional context and discuss its relation to other Neronian assemblages and more general problematics inherent to studying material from old excavations

The Late Middle Palaeolithic Occupation of Abri du Maras (Layer 1, Neronian, Southeast France): Integrating Lithic Analyses, ZooMS and Radiocarbon Dating to Reconstruct Neanderthal Hunting Behaviour

The exact strategies and technologies underlying Neanderthal hunting events remain open for debate with lithic points being sparse across the European Middle Palaeolithic. An exception is the Neronian entity in southeast France, defined by ventrally retouched Soyons points. This study contextualises one of the largest Neronian assemblages, layer 1 at Abri du Maras. Our lithic analyses focussed on attributes described as indicative of projectile use or hafting to contextualise the morphometric and technological characteristics of the pointed implements at an assemblage level. We found that retouched points were made on a variety of blank types (including Levallois, laminar and discoidal flaking techniques) and ventral retouch is present across different artefact types (including points, scrapers and denticulates). Next, these lithic data were compared to similar typo-technological data recorded on a sample from the recently excavated and well-contextualised point-rich layer 4.1 of Abri du Maras (MIS-3). Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) was applied to 280 faunal remains from layer 1 and indicated significant proportions of equids, bovids, cervids and reindeer. Carnivore remains and carnivore modifications are absent, while human bone surface modifications are present across a variety of species. Five bones had sufficient collagen for radiocarbon dating but returned dates younger than expected (ca. 41–31 ka cal BP). Finally, we place Abri du Maras layer 1 in its broader regional context and discuss its relation to other Neronian assemblages and more general problematics inherent to studying material from old excavations