Search

In this work, we propose to examine human activities from 72 occupations within a well-defined territory, the Bergeracois, during the Pleistocene between 250 and 35 ka. The study is based on bibliographical data stemming from programmed excavations and from rescue archaeology operations undertaken in this area (installation of rings roads around Bergerac and the Creysse municipality). In particular, this overview focuses on the behavioural evolution of acquisition strategies for raw materials, the technical systems that were implemented, as well as the different functions of and uses for the tools produced. Inferences may then be drawn regarding the mobility strategies of human groups within this lithological territory and its particularities within a larger regional framework. Before proposing a diachronic overview on these various issues, we shall differentiate, and detail four ensembles present within this significant period spanning from the end of the Acheulean to the beginning of the upper Palaeolithic. This differentiation is based on defined chronological intervals (occupations dating to prior to the Eemian period and those belonging to the period between the Eemian and approximately 40 ka), as well as on techno-cultural characterizations (Chatelperronian and early Aurignacian). Résumé. Cette contribution propose un bilan des activités identifiées sur 72 occupations humaines au sein d’un territoire bien délimité, le Bergeracois au cours du Pléistocène entre 250 000 et 35 000 ans. Fruit d’une compilation des données bibliographiques issues des fouilles programmées et de celles issues des travaux d’archéologie préventive sur ce secteur géographique (déviations de Bergerac est et ouest et commune de Creysse), cette synthèse met en particulier l’accent sur les différences comportementales observées vis-à-vis des stratégies d’acquisition des matériaux lithiques, des systèmes techniques mis en œuvre et des modes de fonctionnement des outillages. Il infèrera ensuite sur les stratégies de mobilité des groupes au sein de ce territoire lithologique et sur la place qu’occupe celui-ci à l’échelle régionale. Pour et avant de proposer une synthèse diachronique sur ces différents aspects, nous différencierons et détaillerons quatre ensembles au sein de cette longue période allant de la fin de l’Acheuléen jusqu’au début du Paléolithique supérieur. Cette différenciation sera établie sur la base d’intervalles chronologiques (occupations antérieures à l’Éémien de celles qui sont comprises entre l’Éémien et 40 kA environ) et sur des attributions techno-culturelles (Châtelperronien et Aurignacien ancien).

Since the middle of the 1980s, a lot of research has focused on the end of the Upper Palaeolithic in France. This article presents an overview of these thirty years of research, organized around four main geographic units which structure our knowledge of these societies. However, this overview aims to bring to light the main dynamics driving the composition of the technical, economic, symbolic and probably socio-cultural systems in France as a whole. Between the end of the Magdalenian and the first stages of the Mesolithic, the history of the hunter-gatherers on this territory underwent three major changes. The rhythms of these changes are still unclear and understanding the forces driving these changes is still difficult, although scenarios based on the very unstable climatic and environmental context are often advanced. This Lateglacial is no longer merely considered to be the antechamber of the Mesolithic –an “EpiPalaeolithic”, as it was called– studied in particular to contextualize the emergence of complex societies, wrongly solely attributed to the Neolithic. These last Pleistocene periods, with their abundant cultural changes and complex evolutionary techno-complexes and traditions, comprise their own research issues and constitute a subject in their own right. Depuis le milieu des années 1980, une importante dynamique de recherche bénéficie aux derniers temps du Paléolithique supérieur en France. Cet article propose un bilan de cette trentaine d’années de recherche. Bien qu’organisée autour des quatre grandes unités géographiques, chacune structurante dans la connaissance de ces sociétés, cette synthèse vise à mettre en lumière, à l’échelle de la France, les grandes dynamiques de recomposition des systèmes techniques, économiques, symboliques et probablement socioculturels. Entre la fin du Magdalénien et les premiers temps du Mésolithique, l’histoire des chasseurs-collecteurs évoluant sur ce territoire connaît en effet trois grandes inflexions dont les rythmes restent flous. La compréhension des moteurs à l’origine de ces basculements demeure très délicate, même si plusieurs scénarios mobilisant le contexte climatique et environnemental, très instable de cette période, sont régulièrement avancés. Quoi qu’il en soit, ce Tardiglaciaire ne constitue plus aujourd’hui l’antichambre du Mésolithique – un « Épipaléolithique » disait-on – surtout étudié pour contextualiser l’avènement des sociétés complexes, attribuées à tort au seul Néolithique. Ces derniers temps du Pléistocène, du fait de nombreuses transformations culturelles des techno-complexes et traditions aux schémas évolutifs complexes, sont en réalité particulièrement riches en problématiques de recherches propres.

Since the 1970’s, the study of lithic prehistoric collections in France has improved through a profound modernisation. Andre Leroi-Gourhan, first interested in traditional and ethnological techniques, decided to consider all remains and traces left by a human group within a prehistoric site as evidence of its activity, thus opening the “palethnological perspective”. He also promoted the principle of “chaine operatoire” (that is, to consider the successive actions and gestures engaged in the transformation of diverse raw materials) a notion which had been formerly introduced by Marcel Mauss. But, it is the experimentalists of stone knapping, Francois Bordes and Jacques Tixier, who made it possible to enrich this notion with its concrete applications. Above all, Tixier, armed with his clear practical understanding of knapped pieces and his pedagogic skills, enriched and stabilized the lithic terminology, and systematized the “technological reading” of lithics, in other words, the reading of the direction and order of the different scars (negatives of previous removals) visible upon the surface of a flake, a core, or a shaped tool, thus allowing one to mentally reconstruct the fabrication of a tool or the reduction of a core. He also introduced the capital distinction between the “method of knapping” (the arrangement and succession of the removals to reach the goal of the chaine operatoire, i.e., a type or a class of blanks or tools), and the “knapping techniques” (that is, the practical mode of detachment, e.g., direct percussion with a hard stone or a wooden billet, pressure with an antler or copper point, etc.). On this basis, in 1980, Tixier together with a few close colleagues from France and Belgium introduced the concepts of economy of raw materials, debitage, and tools, all three concepts being corollaries of the concept of management rules. The notion of intention - which articulates the blank production modalities and the morphology of the blanks obtained and that of the final tools - also appears, which is the basis of the postulate according to which the knapping modalities (effective decisions and actions) are coherent with the morphology of the expected or priority products. It is this postulate, parallel to that of “design theory” taken up by Brian Hayden, which founded, through the consideration of all the lithic remains, the French approach in lithic technology: to perceive - to understand - the intentions of lithic production within a site or collection before classifying and measuring. This principle is then applied to the small (324 pieces, including 30 to 40 tools) lithic collection from the site of Yokomichi (Yamagata Dept., Northeastern Honshu), with blade production but without (i.e., anterior to) bladelet or microblade production; thus datable to approximately 18,000 BP C14 non-calibrated, from regional chronostratigraphical comparisons). At first it appears that two different blade productions co-exist: one of light and straight blades with a small platform remnant detached from slender cores, and the other of larger blades with a thick platform remnant detached from wider cores. Among the retouched tools, it is the few “Sugikubo knives” (straight and pointed backed points) whose blanks correspond to the priority intention of the slender core reduction, a few other tools being retouched on “second choice” blanks (irregular, too thick, etc.). Such a Sugibuko knife, in a similar collection, shows a fracture with a ventral elongated tongue [“languette” in French] that strongly indicates that this type of tools is actually, at least in part, a projectile point. Various observations then suggest that the priority intention of the wide core reduction was to obtain one or a few large pointed blades, which are very difficult to achieve, while its many second choice products and by-products (being too short, having cortex, etc.) could have been used as unretouched knives or resharpened as “Kamiyama burins” (these are indeed blades or flakes modified by a “pseudo” upper plane burin blow from an inverse truncation, very similar to Kostienki knives). A further experiment shows that both blade productions were made by direct percussion with a soft stone, but in different ways: by tangential percussion for the light blades with a small platform, and by direct percussion inside the striking platform for the stronger blades with a thick platform.

The Neolithic peopling of Arabia is a subject of increasing debate, as different scenarios are proposed to describe the relatively sudden appearance of seemingly homogeneous archaeological sites throughout the south of the Peninsula during the Early Holocene. Such sites are identified by the co-occurrence of a laminar core reduction strategy with its supposed fossile directeur, the “ Fasad point.” This techno-typological package has been used by some to link these sites with an expansion of pastoralists from the Levant. A recent study of blade technologies in Southern Arabia, however, demonstrates a large degree of internal variability within these reduction strategies, whilst an inter-regional study of Fasad points reveals this artifact category to be both time-transgressive and morpho-metrically variable across parts of Southern Arabia. Archaeological findings from al-Hatab Rockshelter in Dhofar, Oman go further to challenge the notion of an expansion originating in the Levant and spreading across Southern Arabia. Here we demonstrate that an indigenous occupation with a blade technology and tanged points pre-dates the ‘ Levantine expansion’ by at least four millennia. Based on the lithic assemblage from al-Hatab, we argue the Arabian Late Palaeolithic developed locally in Southern Arabia, forming part of the previously defined Nejd Leptolithic tradition. The evidence from al-Hatab in conjunction with recent genetic findings indicates that some groups in Southern Arabia have persisted there since the Late Paleolithic ca 13,000 years ago, if not earlier., Le peuplement néolithique de l’Arabie est devenu le sujet de nombreux débats, alors que différents scénarios ont été proposés pour expliquer l’apparition soudaine de sites archéologiques apparemment homogènes à travers le sud de la péninsule au cours de l’Holocène ancien. Ces sites sont identifiés par la concomitance d’une stratégie de débitage laminaire avec son fossile directeur supposé : la «pointe de Fasad » . Cet assemblage typo-technologique est utilisé pour relier ces sites à l’expansion de pasteurs venus du Levant. Une étude technologique récente sur le débitage laminaire d’Arabie du Sud a cependant montré une forte variabilité parmi ces stratégies de débitage, alors qu’une étude interrégionale des «pointes de Fasad » révèle que ce type est à la fois trans-chronologique et de morphométrie différente suivant les régions d’Arabie. Les découvertes archéologiques dans l’abri d’al-Hatab, dans le Dhofar (Oman), contredisent le scénario d’une origine levantine, démontrant l’existence d’une occupation indigène qui possédait une technologie laminaire et des pointes pédonculées, et qui précédait «l’expansion levantine » de plusieurs millénaires. Dans cet article, nous utilisons l’assemblage lithique d’al-Hatab pour définir une nouvelle industrie au sein du Paléolithique récent d’Arabie du Sud, qui se développe localement et appelée le Hatabien. Les vestiges provenant d’al-Hatab, ainsi que les données génétiques, suggèrent que des groupes en Arabie du Sud ont perduré sur place depuis le Paléolithique récent, il y a 10 000 à 15 000 ans., Hilbert Yamandú H., Usik Vitaly I., Galletti Christopher S., Morley Mike W., Parton Ash, Clark-Balzan Laine, Schwenninger Jean-Luc, Linnenlucke Lauren P., Roberts Richard G., Jacobs Zenobia, Rose Jeffrey I. Archaeological evidence for indigenous human occupation of Southern Arabia at the Pleistocene/ Holocene transition: The case of al-Hatab in Dhofar, Southern Oman. In: Paléorient, 2015, vol. 41, n°2. pp. 31-49.