Shell Beads and Pigments Associated with Châtelperronian Artifacts atLa Roche-à-Pierrot, Saint-Césaire, France - Archive ouverte HAL
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

Shell Beads and Pigments Associated with Châtelperronian Artifacts atLa Roche-à-Pierrot, Saint-Césaire, France

François Bachellerie
Eugène Morin
Cédric Beauval
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 834533
Damien Flas
Guillaume Guérin
François Lacrampe-Cuyaubère
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 861683
Carolina Mallol
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 1198731
Xavier Muth
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 1417491
Hélène Rougier
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 868956

Résumé

La Roche-à-Pierrot is well-known for the 1979 discovery of a partial Neanderthal skeleton from what was described at the time as a Châtelperronian level (EJOP sup). Since then, the site has played a key role in discussions concerning the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in western Europe. Excavated by F. Lévêque over a period of 11 years, the collapsed rock-shelter of La Roche-à-Pierrot has produced a near complete stratigraphic sequence preserving late Mousterian to recent Aurignacian occupations (Lévêque et al. 1993). A recent reassessment of Lévêque’s lithic assemblage highlighted both incoherencies in material culture associations and stratigraphy (Gravina et al. 2018). Since 2013, renewed fieldwork and geoarchaeological work have provided new important information concern-ing site formation processes, allowing spatial inconsistencies to be tested and the site’s chronology and lithostratigraphic sequence to be reassessed (Couillet et al., 2022; Todisco et al. 2023). Here we present a concentration of Châtelperronian lithic artifacts associated with personal ornaments and red pigments from stratigraphic unit 18-19 (US18/19), correlatable with Léveque’s EJOP sup. The per-sonal ornament assemblage is dominated by marine gastropods of the genus Littorina, two thirds of which present clear anthropogenic perforations. While Middle Paleolithic artifacts are present in US18/19, a statistically supported, multi-proxy spatial and taphonomic analysis demonstrates the shell beads and pigments to be clearly associated with its Châtelperronian component. This is the first time that shell beads have been associated with the Châtelperronian. While anthropogenically perforated shells are unknown from Middle Paleolithic contexts, diverse perforated marine gastropods have been recovered from sites contemporaneous with the Châtelperronian in southeastern Europe and around the Mediterranean. This hitherto undocumented combination of a western European early Upper Paleolithic industry and shell beads provides new evidence for discussing cultural and/or biological connections between the various human groups present in Eurasia during this important period of human evolution.
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Dates et versions

hal-04774586 , version 1 (08-11-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04774586 , version 1

Citer

Isabelle Crevecoeur, François Bachellerie, Brad Gravina, Solange Rigaud, Laure Dayet, et al.. Shell Beads and Pigments Associated with Châtelperronian Artifacts atLa Roche-à-Pierrot, Saint-Césaire, France. Paleoanthropology Society Meeting, Paleoanthropology society, Mar 2024, Los Angeles, United States. pp.155. ⟨hal-04774586⟩
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