Neanderthal mobility and technological change in the northeastern of the Iberian Peninsula: The patterns of chert exploitation at the Abric Romaní rock-shelter

Understanding the changes in the technological organization of prehistoric hunter–gatherers is important to research into hominin foraging activities. During the Middle Paleolithic, the coexistence or the replacement between Levallois and discoid technologies has frequently been recorded, but there is still no clear understanding of the reasons for their alternating and fragmented use in the archaeological record. This paper aims to contribute with new data to the current debate, by exploring the chert assemblages from levels O and M of the Abric Romaní rock-shelter. The results reveal that the change from Levallois in level O to discoid in level M is accompanied by the use of different axes of mobility, a reduction in the foraging radius and a more careful management of raw materials. A cross comparison with other archaeological evidences indicates the general pattern in the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula during the late Middle Paleolithic, in which the use of Levallois technology is associated with chert and high mobility patterns whereas discoid technology is more closely linked to the use of local raw materials and a lower degree of mobility. The modifications to the mountainous environments and to the distribution of preferred prey animals may have influenced the Neanderthals’ mobility patterns and contributed to modifying their technical behaviours in order to obtain better foraging incomes.     

Exploring Neanderthal skills and lithic economy. The implication of a refitted Discoid reduction sequence reconstructed using 3D virtual analysis

Lithic refitting studies have consistently contributed to address two specific research aims: the intra-site mobility and identification of preferential areas or latent structures, and the in-depth analysis of the knapping technologies and core reduction strategies. Multiple refits, in particular, can produce highly detailed data on knapped stone technology. Elucidating human skills and lithic economy, a potential still rarely evaluated for Discoid technology: a stone knapping method largely spread across the Middle Paleolithic of Europe. The opportunity to explore Neanderthal knapping behavior is provided from the remarkable discovery of a primary lithic waste concentration in the Mousterian Discoid level of the Grotta di Fumane, Italy, dated to at least 47.6 ky cal BP. With a combined approach that included the 3D virtual interaction, we were able to reproduce a complete reduction sequence that supports the technological analysis conducted on the lithic assemblage. Results lead to a better comprehension of the knapper's technological and technical behavior, including the detection and quantification of economic objectives and productivity.     

Neanderthals and volcanic rocks. Opportunistic behaviour or optimized management?

The use of volcanic rocks by Neanderthals is frequently considered to be opportunistic, especially when good-quality stones were rare in the site neighbourhood. An analysis of the lithic series made of volcanic rocks discovered in the Middle Palaeolithic sites of Payre and Sainte-Anne I, located in the south part and at the southeastern margin of the Massif Central of France and dated back to MIS 7 up until the end of MIS 5, illustrates the capacity of Neanderthals to manage these raw materials and enables us to compare the strategies used in two different mineral environments. Shaping and flaking reduction sequences coexist in both sites in varying proportions, depending on the available rocks in the surroundings. At Payre, artefacts made of volcanic rocks are rarer in surroundings rich in flint while at Sainte-Anne I, the different series comprise a large quantity of artefacts made of different basalts and trachy-phonolites in an environment relatively poor in flint. Most of the reduction processes took place in situ. Activities outside the sites only appear to have concerned the shaping of some heavy-duty tools and some large flakes. It is likely that volcanic rocks were considered by Neanderthals as a geo-resource, either major or lesser in importance, to provide large flakes and both heavy-duty and light-duty tools, besides flint quartz and other rocks.     

Early human occupations at the westernmost tip of Eurasia: The lithic industries from Menez–Dregan I (Plouhinec,Finistère,France)

The stratigraphical complex preserved at the site of Menez–Dregan I (Brittany, France) displays an alternating sequence of 17 occupation levels and of 4 marine deposits, between ca. 450 and 150,000 years (stratigraphical units 9a and 3b). The lithic industry retrieved at the site is extremely abundant, with more than 153,000 artefacts over 3 cm in length, as well as millions of knapping debris, and corresponds to a regional facies of the Acheulean, with heavy-duty tools essentially represented by choppers, as well as a few handaxes and cleavers. This paper presents a first synthesis of the data produced for almost 30 years on the site of Menez–Dregan I. The typological study of the entire lithic collection is now complete and allows us to assess the different human occupations that occurred at this site during the Lower Palaeolithic.     

L’impact de l’environnement sur l’évolution biologique et culturelle dans les périodes de transition en Préhistoire : Paléolithique ancien/moyen et Paléolithique moyen/supérieur

This paper deals with the environmental changes during two important transitional periods, namely Lower/Middle Paleolithic and Middle/Upper Paleolithic transitions, and with their impact on biological and cultural evolutions, in the context of central, eastern and northwestern Europe, where ice-sheet transgressions induced particular paleogeographical and paleoecological conditions. Another country was studied too, the Balkans, a privileged area for bilateral contacts between Europe and the Near East.     

40 Years of Excavations at Mitoc–Malu Galben (Romania): Changing fieldwork methodologies and implications for the comparability of archaeological assemblages

Mitoc–Malu Galben (Romania) is one of the key-sites for the Upper Palaeolithic in Eastern Europe, with abundant Upper Palaeolithic archaeological layers embedded in a ∼14 meters long loess-palaeosol sequence. The excavations in 1978–1990 yielded rich remains of Aurignacian and Gravettian workshops. From 1992 to 1995, an international collaboration helped better define their stratigraphical position, age, and typological characteristics. Since 2013, our team has conducted new fieldwork focusing on interdisciplinary study of site formation processes and a detailed technological study of the lithic artefacts. These different excavation phases have employed quite substantially different fieldwork methodologies. Here, we explore the impact of the changing excavation methodologies on the comparability of the generated assemblages by analyzing the frequency of bladelets among the elongated blanks as well as the length distribution of elongated blanks. Our preliminary study allows us to suggest that some of the assemblages seem to be influenced by the fieldwork methodology employed by each excavation phase, but more studies are needed to start to understand how the assemblages are biased.     

Blades,bladelets and flakes: A case of variability in tool design at the dawn of the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition in Italy

Neanderthals left diverse sets of cultural evidence just before the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe. Within this evidence, the production of lithic implements plays a key role in detecting possible affiliations (or lack thereof) with the techno-complexes that occurred during the few millennia before the large-scale spread of the Proto-Aurignacian. This crucial phase has also been recorded in the North of Italy, where around 44–45 ky cal BP, the last Neanderthals were still using the Levallois knapping technique, in common with the technology adopted at several sites in the central Mediterranean region. A similar picture is seen at the Grotta di Fumane, which provides the evidence presented in this paper. The production technology employed produced different levels of variability with respect to the production of blades, sometimes pointed, and the use of recurrent centripetal flaking at the end of the reduction sequence, in addition to bladelet and Discoidal volumetric structures. This variability does not outweigh the dominant tendency towards the use of elongated Levallois blanks and other by-products for shaping into basic retouched tools such as simple or convergent scrapers and points. A break from this apparently well-rooted use of the unipolar Levallois method is recorded in the Uluzzian where, instead, flakes and cores were made using the centripetal modality.     

Identification of Neandertal individuals in fragmentary fossil assemblages by means of tooth associations: The case of El Sidrón (Asturias,Spain)

Identification of the individuals represented in a fragmentary fossil assemblage is a key step in paleobiological research, as ensuing organism-level studies, as well as sampling strategies (e.g., DNA, isotopes, dating, etc.), may depend on the reliability of such estimates. In the human fossil record, dental remains represent the most abundant and informative material, allowing individual identification on the basis of a variety of diagnostic criteria. In this paper, we present a procedure for sequential association of the dental remains and the identification of the minimum number of individuals (MNI) represented in the 49,000-year-old Neandertal assemblage from El Sidrón (Asturias, Spain). In order to quantify the possible association errors, the 12 criteria used in this study are organised according to three levels of reliability. Following this procedure, a minimum of 13 individuals (seven adults, three adolescents, two juveniles and one infant) have been identified at El Sidrón, two of them uniquely represented by postcranial elements. A next step in this investigation foresees the development of methods for associating postcranial elements with the dentally-based identified individuals.     

Humanizing European Paleolithic art: A new visual evidence of human/bird interactions at L’Hort de la Boquera site (Margalef de Montsant,Tarragona, Spain)

This paper reports the discovery of a new example of portable art in North-eastern Iberia dating to the Late Upper Palaeolithic (12.250 ± 60 BP). The piece is analysed in relation to the European Palaeolithic art assemblage to determine its significance and how it contributes to our understandings of Palaeolithic artistic practices. Both the motifs depicted (birds and humans) and the patterns of composition (a narrative scene) are unusual in Palaeolithic assemblages. In addition, this new find contributes to filling a geographic gap in the artistic record as evidence of Palaeolithic art is rare in Catalonia. The anatomical features of one of the birds suggest that it is a crane, a species that has been depicted in a limited number of sites, as summarized in this paper. Moreover, there are only three known example of birds and humans interacting in a narrative scene in Palaeolithic art. Exhibiting innovations in media, subject matter and compositional norms, this new find has the potential to change the classic definition of European Upper Palaeolithic art and integrate the region in the artistic trends circulating along Mediterranean Iberia during the Upper Magdalenian.     

Techno-économie et signification culturelle de l’occupation moustérienne supérieure de Baume-Vallée (Haute-Loire)

The archaeological units of the Baume-Vallée rock shelter (Haute-Loire) in the South-East of the Massif Central, excavated by A. Laborde (from 1966 to 1973) then by J.-P. Raynal (from 1974 to 1996), have yielded abundant lithic assemblages attributed to the late Middle Paleolithic, characterized by a remarkable diversity of the raw materials used. The lithic industry of the upper units had previously been described as belonging to the Charentian facies lato sensu, then was attributed to the Ferrassie-type Mousterian. The technology and the techno-economic revision of its upper assemblage bring new information on the flaking mechanisms and the steps of the chaînes opératoires. These data tend to include this assemblage in the Levallois techno-complexes with scrappers often observed in late Middle Paleolithic of southeastern France.     

Étude techno-économique du Moustérien de Pradayrol (Caniac-du-Causse,Lot) : entre mobilité des ressources lithiques et adaptation aux matériaux locaux,un exemple de gestion complémentaire des quartz et silex au Paléolithique moyen récent en Quercy

The Mousterian locus at Pradayrol (Caniac-du-Causse, Lot, France) produced an important lithic assemblage, composed primarily of quartz, alongside a varied flint component. Our technological analysis reveals the presence of several chaînes opératoires adapted to the morphology and mechanical properties of different raw materials. This is especially evident in the use of the bipolar on-anvil technique on quartz cobbles and discoidal flaking methods on both quartz and relatively local flints. Flint from the Périgord region provides evidence for a fragmented and ramified Levallois chaîne opératoire, different from that observed with local raw materials. These techno-economic features are similar to those documented for many late Middle Palaeolithic assemblages in the Quercy. The Neanderthal occupation of Pradayrol seems to reflect a balance between technical know-how and adaptations to the raw material constraints.     

The influence of raw material qualities in the lithic technology of Gran Dolina (Units TD6 and TD10) and Galería (Sierra de Atapuerca,Burgos, Spain): A view from experimental archeology

This paper analyses the qualities of the raw materials used in two Palaeolithic sites (Gran Dolina and Galería) of the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) during the Lower and Middle Pleistocene, and their influence in the development of knapping. These sites offer a chronological sequence that allows us to study the evolution of lithic technology at a local scale during 1.2 Ma. Combining technological analysis and experimental archaeology has proven to be an excellent tool for the understanding and the interpretation of the qualities of raw materials and their relation with the development of the gestures, methods and techniques.