Dwellings and workspaces at Strandvägen, 5600–5000 cal. BC

This paper describes identified workspaces and the manufacture of slotted bone points at the Late Mesolithic settlement Strandvägen in Motala, in eastern central Sweden. Several dwellings were documented, Dwelling 1 being typically round-oval in shape 9 × 5.5 meters, with a floor area covering 49.5 m². Radiocarbon dates fall between approximately 5600-5200 cal BC. A combined archaeological record, with lithics and bone artefacts as well as analyses of the osteological assemblage has shown that slotted bone tools with mounted lithic inserts have been produced adjacent of the dwelling. The spatial distribution of bone flakes, microblades, processed resin and slotted artefacts testify to a clearly and delimited craft area near the shoreline of the river Motala Ström. Analyses of the finds, e.g. birch bark resin and prepared bone preforms by direct percussion, also help in reconstructing the stages of manufacturing composite projectile points in this part of Eurasia.     

Un faciès sédimentaire anthropique original du mésolithique vauclusien : les terres noires à petits galets calcaires

Small alluvial gravels (some millimetres up to 40 mm) were selected and carried by mesolithic peoples to their settlement where they use them in fire related activities. These small gravels varies in size and quantity between their first appearance, at the end of the azilian period, and their scarceness in the final sauveterrian period. Within particular morphological context, their shape rapidly change and allows us to order occupational layers.     

The Iron Gates Mesolithic – a brief review of recent developments

The Iron Gates section of the Lower Danube valley along the border between Romania and Serbia has an unparalleled record of Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlement spanning the period from ca. 12,700 to 5600 cal BC. Over 50 cave and open-air sites were identified during archaeological surveys in advance of dam construction in the 1960s and 1980s, and follow-up rescue excavations revealed numerous burials and architectural remains and produced rich inventories of faunal material and portable artifacts including artworks and ornaments of bone, shell and stone. Most sites are no longer accessible, submerged beneath the reservoirs created by the Iron Gates I and II dams. Since 1990, new excavations have been conducted at Aria Babi and Vlasac in Serbia, and Schela Cladovei in Romania, while detailed studies of the finds from both new and old excavations have been undertaken by researchers based in Romania, Serbia and the UK fueled by developments in archaeological science. In this paper, we review the main advances in knowledge of the Mesolithic and the transition to farming in the Iron Gates over the past 25 years, and especially the period since 2005. The paper is divided into sections dealing with chronology, mortuary practices, isotopic studies of subsistence and mobility patterns, and the nature and timing of the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic in the Iron Gates region. The review concludes with a forward look at research in progress.     

Contacts, blocages et filiations entre les aires culturelles mésolithiques et néolithiques en Europe atlantique

An examination of lithic industries evolution during VI millenium cal BC shows us transformations of mesolithic technical systems under neolithic pressures, with regional variations. Contrasting classical views, mesolithic groups seems to be less active on atlantic façade than similar groups of France or Spain. This technology transfers are not peripheral phenomenons but testify to intense interactions between mesolithic and neolithic communities, especially on weapons.     

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 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.     

Un habitat de la fin du Mésolithique dans le Centre-Ouest de la France : L’Essart à Poitiers (Vienne)

The excavation of L’Essart (Poitiers) makes it possible for the first time in the west of France to understand a very particular habitat, along a river and very much marked by the firing activities. The substrate of the site assigns the shape of a dome surrounded to the east by the Clain River, to the west by a channel. Abundant vestiges allotted to the recent Neolithic lay in the lower half of a layer of brown silts. Immediately subjacent, a level of ten centimetres, located at the top of orange silts, contained burnt stones structures: 39 hearths (circular area posed flat approximately one meter of diameter) and 14 dismantled hearths. It is dated from the final Mesolithic by the extremely abundant lithic material discovered in the layer. Lithic industry is carried out in a preferential way on bajocians flints available on the slope (62%) and oxfordians flints (8%) known to approximately two kilometres. The principal characters of this industry are a frontal exploitation of core, a production of prismatic blades, many notches of Montbani type on the blades, asymmetrical trapezoids with concave truncations (of which Trapezoids of Payré), right-angled trapezoids with concave truncations, scalene triangles with flat retouches and arrows of Montclus. The analogies with Retzian (Vendée and Loire-Atlantique) are certainly numerous, but it is rather about a relationship in a vaster unit that remains to define. The non anecdotic presence of the arrows of Montclus involves the discussion on the question of the zones of contacts between Neolithic and Mesolithic of the second half of the VI^th millenium BC.     

Le Mésolithique du bassin de l’Ourthe (Belgique) : implantation dans le paysage et néolithisation

A non-site approach permits the analysis of settlement patterns of mesolithic groups in the Ourthe Basin (Belgium) in terms of “behavioural tendencies”. These tendencies allow a hypothesis of dynamic behaviour to be proposed, in relation to its ethnological significance. This approach, applied to the question of neolithisation, demonstrates the active role that played the mesolithic substrate in this process.     

The perforated stones of the Doi Pha Kan burials (Northern Thailand): A Mesolithic singularity?

Throughout continental Southeast Asia, the Hoabinhian techno-complex stands out in clear contrast with the universal chrono-cultural model essentially established on the basis of western prehistory. Following this model, early authors considered perforated stones and associated lithic artefacts as markers of what was then believed to pertain to a Southeast Asian Mesolithic. However, Southeast Asian Mesolitithic has progressively been abandoned in favour of a ubiquitous Hoabinhian spanning from 30,000 to 3000 BP. Here, we present and discuss the discovery of perforated stones at the Doi Pha Kan site in northern Thailand. Perforated stones have almost never been found in undisturbed stratigraphic conditions nor dated with any sufficient degree of certainty. At Doi Pha Kan site, such a kind of artefacts was found in burials intersecting sedimentary layers that could be ascertained as Hoabinhian. In contrast with similar perforated stones described in the literature, that found at Doi Pha Kan are well-dated (13,000 BP), thus providing a time-reference for a putative Southeast Asian Mesolithic. We therefore advocate that such non-Hoabinhian artefacts support the early authors’ hypothesis of the existence of a Southeast Asian Mesolithic. Finally, the funerary practices, the unusually high stature of individuals found at Doi Pha Kan in conjunction with the particular lithic assemblages further contributes to raise the question of the co-occurrence of several cultures or populations at the Pleistocene–Holocene interface in continental Southeast Asia.