Carmen Santagata

Land-Use Strategies, Related Tool-Kits and Social Organization of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Groups in the South-East of the Massif Central, France Strategien der Landschaftsnutzung, Geräteinventare und soziale Organisation von alt- und mittelpaläolithischen Gruppen im südwestfranzösischen Zentralmassif

In the southern French Massif Central and on its southeastern border but at different altitudes, open-air sites, rock-shelters and caves have yielded artefacts ranging from isolated finds to abundant series that date from MIS 9 to at least MIS 3, representing Lower Palaeolithic (sensu Acheulean bifacial production) and diverse Middle Palaeolithic facies. From the upstream part of the gorges of the Allier and Loire Rivers to the Chassezac and Ardeche Rivers surveys, excavations and detailed analyses of the material from these sites offer data on subsistence behaviours including among others raw material acquisition, lithic reduction sequences, hunted species and carcass treatment. This information has been gathered during a Collective Research Program (PCR Espaces et subsistance au Paleolithique moyen dans le sud du Massif central) and enables discussion of the mobility of human groups, the size of the territory they occupied, duration of site occupation, landscape cognition and resource exploitation and allows some speculation about the way these humans perceived the landscape in which they lived and how these ethnographic perceptions may have changed over time. In this paper, we focus on results obtained from stratified sites dated from MIS 9 until MIS 4. Orgnac 3, Payre and Barasses II sites, Abri du Maras and Abri des Pecheurs are caves and shelters located on low plateaus on the right bank of the Rhone corridor while the cave of Sainte-Anne I and Baume-Vallee rock-shelter are located in the mid-mountains of the Velay. The lithic repertoires found in Payre, Saint-Anne I, Baume-Vallee, Abri du Maras, Abri des Pecheurs and Barasses II suggest that the stone knapping and retouching activities that took place in them were directed towards achieving different objectives at each of them. In the several human occupation phases at Payre, the main core technology closely parallels the discoid type that provides unstandardized flakes. A lack of hafted points and the importation into the site of large flakes made from various local stone types along with introduced flint flakes and nodules are related to the seasonal occupation of the site due to its location. The flint reduction sequences are quite complete but those on local stones are often partial, indicating mobility of the occupants and off-site manufacture of lithic tools. Lithic raw material imported into Sainte-Anne I originates from more than thirty different primary localities close to the site as well as from secondary and sub-primary colluvial and alluvial outcrops. The Neanderthals who used this cave obviously had an excellent knowledge of the occurrence and potential of local resources. The presence of some specific flint types suggests the use of exploitation or trade routes which crossed the borders of fluvial systems. If the duration of occupation events can be judged from the presence of a large number of artefacts produced on local volcanic rocks, quartz and types of flint, the absence of certain items like large-sized and retouched flakes from the reduction sequences, indicates that these products were used away from the site or removed when the occupants moved on through their territories. In the upper layers of Abri du Maras, the presence of flakes and pointed artefacts as well as the kind of retouch on them suggests that special equipment was being manufactured, possibly involved with hunting and butchering reindeer and horses during long-term residential occupation. Most of the Levallois lithic processing systems are complete but, judging from the size of the core-flakes, large un-retouched blades were being imported into the site suggesting that other tasks may have been undertaken there using these transported artefacts. At Abri des Pecheurs, irregular and thick broken flakes of quartz and small flakes of flint suggest an expedient lithic technology. This assemblage was probably the result of brief human occupation events in the shelter during which they processed some parts of a few cervids and ibex. The chaine operatoire is complete for quartz but incomplete for the flint assemblage which contains a higher ratio of tools to unmodified lithics. At Baume-Vallee, a range of flakes was produced by a variety of knapping techniques. Using different techniques to obtain different types of tool blanks from the same core was presumably a strategy of exploitation designed to conserve a precious resource that was available mainly as small pebbles. This assemblage indicates that multiple tasks were conducted simultaneously at a seasonal horse and cervid hunting camp. Microwear analysis shows that the stone artefacts were used to work soft or semi-hard materials, probably wood. The “Charentian” aspect of the assemblage is a reflection of intense edge reduction and appears identical to that identified at the Abri du Maras. Overall, faunal remains indicate that a diverse range of landscapes was exploited during its procurement. Also, the territorial perspective provided by the widely disparate sources of lithic raw materials indicates that the groups inhabiting the sites were mobile and undertook multidirectional and more or less long-distance forays into the surrounding landscapes. Despite the complexity of territorial exploitation strategies suggested by the importation of varied and remote resources into these three sites, at present these subsistence activities provide no evidence for the existence of planning strategies comparable to those observed elsewhere. Nor can we confirm a strictly bipolarized (summer-winter / highlands-lowlands) circulatory subsistence pattern. However, there are suggestions of exploitation routes that proceeded back and forth along the course of the Allier and more certainly along the Loire for Charentian groups. The locations of the more remote geo-resources indicate the existence of a widespread exploitation pattern radiating outwards from semi-residential camps. The dispersed locations visited or exploited by the groups of hunter-gatherers transiently occupying other camps that were brief stopping places also supports this patterning. Additionally, remote or semi-remote lithic outcrops may mark some territorial limit or perhaps they may be places where adjoining groups could meet for some unknown purpose or, such locations may even be the source of particular raw materials needed for special occasions if not for unique tasks. In the same vein, lithic artefacts abandoned in the landscape that are often categorized by archaeologists as isolates may just as easily have been left intentionally as markers for others to discover. Although a resource territory may well differ from a social territory, petro-archaeology may be able to contribute new methods through which to decipher more of the Neanderthals’ cognitive sphere. Among the exploitative itineraries we have identified are: collection of lithic resources; transportation of these lithic resources; their abandonment; seasonal hunting of selected target species; collection of other permanently available or seasonally abundant resources; processing these and other resources at a variety of stopping places and camps; the possibility of single gender as well as mixed-gender groups undertaking specific tasks; confirmation that, from MIS 9 until MIS 3, Neanderthals were not simply reacting to landscape characteristics, they were interacting with landscape features (geosymbols) and responding to environmental and bio-resource changes in a deterministic manner. These kinds of responses to landscapes and resource occurrence are very close to modern hunter-gatherer behaviour.