Paléolithique supérieur et Mésolithique en Méditerranée : cadre culturel

The origin of the Upper Palaeolithic around the Mediterranean was the result of the local evolution, particularly in the Near East and in the Lower Nile basin, and of the migration from this zone to South-Eastern and Central Europe. The Initial Upper Palaeolithic in the Near East belt was the effect of local evolution from the industries based on Levallois concept to the industries which developed leptolithic blade technologies. This evolution is well registered in multi-layer sites in the Syro-Palestinian belt (Emirian/Ahmarian), which was the starting point of the diffusion of these “transitional” industries in South-Eastern and Central Europe. This diffusion could be identified with the migration of first anatomically Modern Humans. The Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe — dated to the second half of the Interpleniglacial — was, at least partially, based on these “transitional” industries and manifested by the appearance of the Aurignacian, contrasted with local cultures such as the Uluzzian in Mediterranean Europe. During whole the Interpleniglacial Europe was separated from Northern Africa dominated by local evolution of Middle Palaeolithic (Middle Stone Age) cultures (mostly expressed by the Aterian), and by specific “transitional” industries on the southern Mediterranean coast (Early Dabbian) and in the Lower Nile basin. The Last Glacial Maximum and the corresponding sea level recession opened new possibilities of contacts between the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula in both directions (Aterian-Solutrean and Gravettian-Early Iberomaurusian), which are still difficult to be proved before new chronostratigraphic correlations are made. At the same time we register links between south-eastern Europe and western Anatolia; the real border between Near Eastern and European Mediterranean cultural zones was marked, in the Late Glacial, by the Taurus chain. During the Late Glacial the cultural separation between Europe and Africa was particularly marked. Only in the Aegean basin the first sea navigation facilitated contacts which become widespread as late as in the Early Holocene with neolithization trough maritime contacts.     

Le peuplement humain en Eurasie : l’Asie centrale montagneuse et les piémonts sous-himalayens du Plio-Pléistocène à l’Holocène, origines, évolution humaine et migrations

During the years 1996 and 1997, a team of the Laboratory of Prehistory, National Museum of Natural History, Paris, and of the Departments of Archaeology, Karachi and Peshawar University, Pakistan, leads the first prehistoric field investigation in the District of Chitral, Hindu Kush, close to the Wakhan Corridor (the Amu Daria course in the Pamir). Problematics are the origins and the becoming of the Epipaleolithic/Neolithic hunters-gatherers known in the Pamir Plateau and the Gissar Range, the lithics tradition of which share common roots with the Sub-Himalayan Soanian tradition (Mode 1). A second field investigation has been conduced in the North West India, where Soan developed from Early Pleistocene, in the Frontal Range of the Siwaliks and Himachal Pradesh during the years 2003, 2005 and 2006 in cooperation with the Department of Archaeology and Museums of Punjab, India. New discoveries in both countries support new hypothesis for the understanding of human evolution in Asia and Homo sapiens origins.     

Les vagues de peuplements humains au Pléistocène inférieur et moyen dans le bassin de la Loire moyenne, région Centre, France. Apports de l’étude des formations fluviatiles

Evidence of earliest human settlements had been searched in the alluvial formations laid down in the Middle Loire Basin. Many stepped sheets deposited during the successive interglacial-glacial quaternary cycles are studied in four valleys of the Loire tributaries: the Creuse, Indre, Cher and Loir rivers. These sandy remnants are systematically dated, using the Electron Spin Resonance method applied on bleached fluvial quartz. Five settlements which contain very Early Palaeolithic industries with Mode 1 technology were occupied during the Lower Pleistocene. About eighty sites with hand-axe assemblages are observed in Middle Pleistocene remnants; nine of these are described in this paper. The results theorize that the geographical center of France (47°N) would be reached by two influxes of human populations with an interval around 400 years, because major climatic pejorations, particularly at the end of the Lower Pleistocene. These two populations produced lithic industries with many differences in supply of raw materials and in techniques of striking. Not any typologic link had been observed joining the two industrial unities.     

L’industrie aurignacienne de la grotte de Šandalja II (Istrie, Croatie) dans le contexte de la région de l’Est de l’Adriatique

This paper presents the results obtained by lithic analysis of Early Upper Palaeolithic levels in Šandalja II Cave, Istria, Croatia. Technological and typological analysis of stone and typological analysis of bone artefacts have been carried out. Production of flakes in Aurignacian levels (G, F, E and E/F) is dominant, but blade and bladelets production is also present. Blades and bladelets were produced by direct soft hammer technique. Aurignacian people of Šandalja II produced their debitage mainly on local grey chert, which is often patinated. Šandalja II is one of the rare—if not the only—site with Aurignacian industry in eastern Adriatic region. The main reason for absence of such industry at other sites can be seen in scarce population or abandonment of some parts of this region.     

Les éléments de parure au Paléolithique supérieur en Belgique

Considering that body ornaments are, through the choice of the elements, good cultural markers, along with the transitional geographical position of Belgium in the Palaeolithic, an up-to-date study of the body ornaments has been undertaken to catch the diffusion and contact phenomenon next to the influences in the lithic industries between regions. Despite the fact that the observations made take cultural value once they are considered in a broader frame than the actual political boarders of the country, cultural and chronological tendencies in terms of “fashions” within the Belgian material have nevertheless confirmed their informational potential.     

L’industrie microlithique du Paléolithique inférieur de Bizat Ruhama, Israël

Bizat Ruhama is a lower Palaeolithic site in the southern coastal plain of Israel. The site was recently dated to ca. 1ma. In terms of lithic industry, Bizat Ruhama is a unique phenomenon amongst the Lower Palaeolithic sites in the Levant. The lithic assemblage of the site is characterized by the production of small (ca. 25mm) tools, flakes and cores. An in-depth technotypological study was made in attempt to reconstruct the production mode of these artifacts. The results presented here reveal a well-developed cognitive production process, which includes selection of special-sized raw material, production of desired blanks and their subsequent shaping into tools. The implications of this study contribute significantly to our understanding of the phenomenon of lower Palaeolithic microlithic industries in Eurasia.     

Zaozer'e, un nouveau site du Paléolithique supérieur ancien dans le nord-est de l'Europe. Rapport préliminaire

This paper presents preliminary archaeological and chronostratigraphical data obtained during pilot excavations of one of the northernmost European Early Upper Palaeolithic sites, Zaozer'e, situated on the western slope of the Middle Urals.     

The birth of the Acheulian techno-complex in the Caucasus region

The lithic industries of the sites Kermek, Ciscaucasia (2.1–2.0 Ma) and Karakhach, South Caucasus (1.85–1.78 Ma) contain almost all the components of the Acheulian, indicating that this techno-complex appeared in the different areas of the Caucasus region not later than at the end of the Gelasian. Such extremely old ages of these industries as well as a number of their features due to the influence of the local raw material (tabular clasts) suggest that they were formed independently of the Early Acheulian industries known in Africa and the Near East. The very early appearance and further dispersal of Early Acheulian in the Caucasus can be explained by the presence there of raw materials with qualities supporting the production of large tools inherent of Acheulian, and by the very favorable natural conditions of the region in the final Gelazian-initial Calabrian (low or medium altitude terrain with subtropical climate and savanna-like landscape).     

Le passage vers l’Atlantique : le processus de néolithisation en Algarve (sud du Portugal)

The late beginning of the research on the neolithisation in the Algarve (southern Portugal) has been providing, as a paradox, excellent conditions for the establishment of interdisciplinary research and the test of working hypotheses. The systematic projects put forward by the University of Algarve permit us today to conclude on a preliminary basis for the formation of a Neolithic enclave at ca. 5500 cal BC, centred in the coastal territories of the region. This enclave is fully Neolithic in economic terms and it is the westernmost extension of the Mediterranean Cardial. However, some specific features of these first Neolithic groups’ artefactual items (such as pottery morphology and style and some technological aspects of chipped stone production) indicate the existence of phenomena of partial reformulation of their material cultures. According to the presently available data, this complex process seems to have occurred in similar traits also in Andalucia and coastal Morocco, that is, at the moment of the passage to the Atlantic. This individualization within the Neolithic of Cardial tradition is the equivalent to the same general cultural phenomena that have been responsible for the formation, for example, of the so-called “Franco-Iberian Cardial” or “Tirrenic Cardial” at the time of settling of the Neolithic groups in these regions.     

Le Paléolithique ancien de l’Europe orientale et du Caucase

Currently, only Tréhougol’naya Cave has reliably dated evidence for human settlement in Eastern Europe and Caucasus, from the beginning through the middle of the Middle Pleistocene. In Eastern Europe, assemblages from Khriatchi and Mikhailovskoé, and possibly Darvagchai I, appear to be the only stratified locations that tentatively can be compared (despite problems with these materials) with Tréhougol’naya. In the eastern limits of Central Europe, layer VI in Korolevo I is the only stratified assemblage that may be compared with Tréhougol’naya. All these Lower Paleolithic occupations yielded the Pre-Mousterian small tool industries with some pebble tools, but without Acheulean bifaces and Levallois technique. These data suggest that Eastern Europe lies outside the distribution range of the Acheulean techno-complex demarcated with the “Movius Line”. In the Southern Caucasus, the Dmanissi hominine and lithic records document the fact that the earliest small-brained humans – probably later H. habilis-rudolfensis or earlier H. ergaster-erectus hominids bearing Pre-Oldowan technology – initially left Africa and appeared in Western Asia as early as 1.8 Ma ago. However, in the Southern Caucasus, the available chronological data indicate that the Acheulean complex has a later temporal appearance here compared to the Upper Acheulean or Acheulo-Yabrudian in Western Asia. Two main Upper Acheulean industrial variants currently can be recognized in the Southern Caucasus. The first, called the Kudarian by the author (from the caves of Kudaro I, Kudaro III, and Azyk), is characterized by lithics made from mostly siliceous rocks, rare Acheulean bifaces, and non-Levallois flaking technique. The second variant is characterized by lithics made from volcanic rocks, numerous Acheulean bifaces, and often more laminar or Levallois debitage. It can be suggested that there are independent origins for these Southern Caucasus Upper Acheulean industrial variants. Possible roots of the Acheulean assemblages of Kudarian variant might be in the local earlier Lower Paleolithic small tool assemblages with some pebble tools but without Acheulean bifaces. The other Caucasus variant of the Upper Acheulean appears to be related to the Levantine Upper Acheulean.     

Le site de Nepryakhino sur la moyenne Volga (Russie)

The site is located East of the Saratov region, between the rivers Volga and Ural. The stratigraphy is the following: the 1st upper layer is Eneolithic and the bottom layers complexes belong to the Palaeolithic and yield numerous quartzite artefacts. The preliminary data allow to assign layer 2 to the Upper Pleistocene (Ostashkovo). Layer 7 matches the limit between Late Middle Palaeolithic and archaïc Upper Palaeolithic. The implement complexes are mainly represented by Mousterian tools and the typical Upper Palaeolithic ones are less numerous (cores and blades). Handaxes are numerous; so are bifacial subtriangular points. It is possible to assume a connection of the bottom layers from Nepryahino with the earliest complexes of Kostienky-Streletskaya culture.     

Le « nucléus Donggutuo » et sa signification dans l’industrie du paléolithique inférieur de Donggutuo, bassin de Nihewan, Chine du Nord

As one of the most important Lower Pleistocene sites of the Nihewan basin in North China, Donggutuo (DGT) site is well known for its fine retouched small tools and characters of flake industry. However, new excavations still reveal some new discoveries and educe some new issues to us. For example, the “DGT core” introduced in this article is a new discovered typotechnology and indicates new economic strategy of the local people, which was never known before in this area at the time of 1.1 Ma B.P. The paper provides general background and statistic analysis of DGT industry including special method applied to the “DGT core” and discusses possible influence of environmental change for the emerging of the “DGT core”. The “DGT core” shows a germinated microlithic tradition and reflects a cultural diversity of early humans in the Lower Paleolithic in North China.     

Indices de fréquentation humaine dans les grottes à ours au Paléolithique moyen final: L’exemple de la Caverna Generosa dans les Préalpes lombardes, Italie

Already known like a palaeontological site for the study of Ursus spelaeus, Caverna Generosa also records ephemeral traces of human visits during the late Middle Palaeolithic. The cave opens at an altitude of 1450 m on the steep southern slope of the Monte Generoso Massif between the Lugano and the Como lakes and forms a complex group of narrow galleries and inner chambers. Sedimentological and palaeontological data and radiocarbon dates place both the cave-bear and the human frequentations in the first part of the isotopic stage 3 with climatic conditions shifting from cool and dry to more temperate and wet. Environment progressively changed from scarcely arboreal to arboreal-brush with small open spaces. Few flakes and Levallois flakes have been recovered scattered in the sediment and affected in most cases by intense postdepositional alteration. These items testify incursions of mousterian groups equipped with end-products and radiolarite flakes struck from blocks provisioned at lower locations southwards. End-products, namely Levallois flakes, prove that lithic reduction sequences were spatiotemporally fractionated in the covered territory. Conversely, it cannot be excluded a priori that sublocal radiolarite has been chipped at the entrance of the cave or at the very close surroundings for extraction of rudimental tools for immediate use. It is worth to mention that the small chert slabs in the Moltrasio limestone which crop throughout the cave walls were totally ignored. Caverna Generosa can be viewed as a refugia-location used in function of more or less constrained factors strongly influenced by high-altitude and bioclimatic situations. This type of site might well be integrated within the seasonal movements of humans in the western Lombard Pre-Alps area.     

Les industries magdaléniennes de l’Ardèche (France) dans le contexte du bassin méditerranéen

Ardèche, a department of Rhone Alpes region, is rich in prehistoric sites belonging to a very large chronological period dated back to 350?000 years ago. But, the prehistory of the region has been unknown for a long time, mainly, because of its distance from traditional centres of research. Jean Combier, in his abstract dated 1967, defined for the first time Upper Palaelolithic stages: only towards the acquisition of new data, we are now able to suggest a new evolution for the Magdalenian from its origins to the Alleröd climatic episod. To define Ardèche originality within the Magdalenian context, we have compared its lithic industries with those of the Adaouste Cave oriental sites, the Cornille rock shelter and of the Gazel cave in the Aude western part. Ardèche Magdalenian dwelling is peculiar compared to the South West of France. Badegoulian has been substituted by a Mediterranean Facies culture rich in bladelets, the Salpestrian. This facies limited in its geographic extention to Gard and Ardèche, evolves gradually in situ gaining Magdalenian elements (such as backed bladelets and dihedral burins) giving birth to the transitory lithic complex of Huguenots and Baume d’Oullins Cave. An established Magdalenian is certified in the Blanchisserie camp, within a cold climatic context dated back to circa 16?000 years ago. Although the lithic industry is dominated by dihedral burins and backed bladeletse it is also characterised by some archaic features (such as keel endscrapers, transverse burins and scalene bladelets). The upper Magadalenian with bone harpoons appears soon in our region, in the Colombier rock shelter, in a fairly temperate climatic context dated according to 14C back to circa 14?000 BP. We could identify six stages within the evolution of this Upper Magdalenian.which are attested in the Colombier, Ebbou and Deux Avens Caves and in the Colombier rock shelter that has been occupied during several periods. The Magdalenian gradually changed loosing his most typical elements, the bladelets and burins supremacy has been substituted by Azilian elements (such as short endscrapers and curved backed points). But even if the Azilian process happens very early (before 12?500 BP) the Magdalenian, in its fundamental features, never disappears completely and it has never been substituted by classic Azilian. After Alleröd appears a culture characterised by the recovery of Magdalenian features similar to the Epimagdalenian defined by D. Sacchi in Gazel. The described evolution can be compared, as regard to its upper stages, to that of several sites of Rhone region as well as of the North West of France, which allow to define a culturally homogeneous province having the Rhone corridor with Ardèche as its Southern border. At the end of Palaeolithic this province broke up and Ardèche opened to the South and the Mediterranean from where seems to come the retouched large blade facies and endscrapers attested by the Colombier rock shelter dating back to 12?150 BP.     

Les cétacés des gravures rupestres néolithiques de Bangu-dae (Corée du Sud) et les débuts de la chasse à la baleine dans le Pacifique nord-ouest

The Neolithic site of Bangu-dae (6000-1000 B.C.), south-east of the Korean peninsula, presents numerous rock carvings of cetaceans (n = 46, 19.9% of the figures), and especially large species. Among these two families of baleen whales (Balaenidae and Balaenopteridae) and the sperm whale can be identified. This site also presents whaling scenes suggesting that the Neolithic populations who lived along the coast of Korea were among the first to take advantage of coastal whales. All these carvings give exceptional evidence on the prehistoric beginning of whaling.     

Comportements de subsistance au Paléolithique supérieur en Crimée : analyse archéozoologique des couches 6-2, 6-1 et 5-2 de Buran-Kaya III

The rockshelter of Buran-Kaya III (Crimea), found in 1990 by A. Yanevich, presents an exceptional stratigraphic sequence ranging from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Neolithic. The cultural layers yielded abundant assemblages of lithic and bone industries, personal adornments and mobiliary art, several ones made of mammoth ivory. We present here the results of zooarchaeological analyses of the large mammal remains from layers 6-2, 6-1 and 5-2, attributed to Gravettian sensu lato, and their interpretation in terms of subsistence behaviours, by comparing the three assemblages. The faunal composition of the three layers is rather homogeneous. The site settlements seem mainly related to the acquisition and treatment activities of small and middle-sized mammals, especially saiga antelope in summer, and large-sized mammals, in winter in 6-1 and maybe also in 5-2. During Gravettian, Buran-Kaya III was repeatedly used as a butchery or short-termed camp-site, probably in summer for hunts of saiga antelope.     

福建漳平奇和洞发现的新石器时代早期人类头骨

2011年在福建漳平奇和洞发现的距今1万年左右的新石器时代早期人类遗骸"奇和洞III号",是迄今在福建地区发现的最早、最完整的古人类头骨,为探讨华南更新世晚期向全新世过渡阶段人类的体质特征及现代人群的形成与分化提供了重要的研究材料。本文对这件头骨进行了研究,奇和洞III号为35岁左右的男性个体,牙齿龋病严重,推测当时人类的经济模式主要以农耕为主。通过与更新世晚期柳江、山顶洞101号及14组新石器时代人类头骨的比较,发现奇和洞III号头骨兼有更新世晚期人类及新石器南、北方居民的混合体质特征:奇和洞III号头骨长而脑量大,似更新世晚期人类;其高而狭窄的面部、宽阔而低矮的鼻部,呈现出不同于南、北方人群的特殊体质特征。主成分分析显示,奇和洞III号与对比的新石器时代各组在头骨的测量数据上没有表现为明显的南、北地区间差异,但在头骨的测量指数或形状上存在时代和地区间的不同。本文研究为新旧石器过渡阶段人类体质特征的变异提供了进一步证据。     

Variabilité et homogénéité des modes de débitage en Chine entre 300 000 et 50 000 ans

The position of lithic industries of Chinese Paleolithic in comparison with those of other regions in the world is always a controversial topic. The typological analysis has made Chinese prehistorians reveal some variability between lithic industries of different regions of China in terms of technical tradition and industrial structure. But this recognition, based upon some morphological characters of stone artifacts, failed to define systematically the modes of production that exist in each site. To answer these problematic some new methods need to be applied. So the lithic materials from 8 Chinese sites dated from 300 ka to 50 ka B.P. were selected and analyzed by means of lithic technological analysis and a new approach for analyzing the structures of cores. This paper presents principally the analytical results of modes of débitage and revealed that the modes of débitage during this period were characterized essentially by system C (“simple débitage”) and E (discoid) and that the concept Levallois was absent during this period in technical systems of lithic production in China. The Chinese lithic industries between 300 ka and 50 ka B.P. saw some homogeneity in the scale of the continent and remarkable difference from those of other regions in the world. So a stable, continuous but independent even isolated evolution in comparison with those of other regions was observed in this period. In addition, despite of apparent homogeneity, some variability exists also between these industries.     

L’habitat en grotte au Néolithique : vers une estimation de l’intensité des occupations

The archaeological excavation of the cave of the Gardon has brought to light a dilated and nearly continuous stratigraphy for the Neolithic era. The analysis of lithic industry has showed the existence of variations between those neolithic layers, which are independents of the technological processes of tools productions. Four criteria allow us to characterize the occupation’s type of each layer. Compared to the excavations data and to sedimentological analysis, these results allow us to display the evolution of the intensity of occupations of the cave throughout the whole Neolithic.