La Noira Site (Centre, France) and the Technological Behaviours and Skills of the Earliest Acheulean in Western Europe B
- PDF / 5,854,919 Bytes
- 47 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 78 Downloads / 158 Views
La Noira Site (Centre, France) and the Technological Behaviours and Skills of the Earliest Acheulean in Western Europe Between 700 and 600 ka Marie-Hélène Moncel, et al. [full author details at the end of the article] # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract New fieldwork and the revision of lithic collections during the past decade have renewed our interpretation of the timing and characteristics of the earliest Acheulean techno-complexes in western Europe. The lower level of the la Noira site is a crucial snapshot for evaluating the technological abilities and strategies of Middle Pleistocene hominins at 700 ka in Europe at the beginning of elaborate biface production and associated behavioural changes. The site of la Noira is located in the central part of France, where climatic conditions may have had a stronger impact on occupations than in southern Europe. New excavations between 2011 and 2018, over a surface of 100 m2, yielded a large corpus of artefacts including cores, flakes, bifaces and a large heavy-duty component. We analysed the lithic corpus composed of almost 1000 artefacts from a taphonomic perspective, identified the chaînes opératoires and all the reduction processes involved at the site, and examined the spatial distribution of the archaeological remains. The results offer a broad overview of the types of lithic management and related cognition and skills of Middle Pleistocene hominins living on a riverbank under cool conditions, at the beginning of a glacial stage. A comparison with penecontemporaneous sites indicates that a technological shift possibly occurred in western Europe between 700 and 600 ka. The technological strategies used indicate (1) common abilities in core technologies including some sporadic independence from stone shape, (2) a diversity of technical solutions and morphological results for biface shaping with evidence of a bifacial or bilateral equilibrium and a preconceived form on some tools, and (3) a large and diversified heavy-duty component. Biases related to activities, raw material types and various traditions are discussed. The chronology of the emergence of new behaviours, such as an early biface shaping ability, seems to have been identical in the northwest and south of Europe. Keywords Europe . Early Acheulean . Technology . Bifaces . Core technology . Heavy-
duty component
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-02000049-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology
Introduction Recent fieldwork and the revision of lithic collections over the past decade have renewed our interpretation of the timing and characteristics of the earliest Acheulean techno-complexes in western Europe. These Acheulean techno-complexes cover a large geographical area, extending from northwest Europe to the Mediterranean coast, but are limited in the east by the Rhine River and in the northeast by the Caucasus Mountains (i.e. Moncel et al. 2015; Schrev
Data Loading...
