Azilien

Nur aus der Anfangsphase des untersuchten Beobachtungszeitraums, der sich von 15000 v. Chr. bis 5000 v. Chr. erstreckt, sind Behausungen anhand direkter Funde erkennbar. Bei anderen Fundstellen können nur die Fundkonzentrationen Rückschlüsse auf die Form und Aufteilung möglicher Behausungen geben.
Sechs solcher Fundstellen werden in dieser Studie präsentiert: Dazu gehören die Lagerplätze des Magdalénien in Cepoy im Pariser Becken und in Orp-Ost in Brabant, sowie die Fundkonzentrationen der Federmessergruppen Rekem 10 in Belgien, Geldrop 3-2 in den südlichen Niederlanden, Berlin-Tegel IX und aus dem Mesolithikum Hartmannsdorf 26-1 in Brandenburg.
Durch Kartierungen von Artefakten wurden die Arbeitsbereiche innerhalb der Wohnplätze charakterisiert und die erzielten Ergebnisse mit anderen ausgewählten Fundstellen verglichen.  *****
Accumulations of lithic artefacts and burnt fragments of hearth stones can be interpreted as evidence for late glacial and postglacial habitation structures without surviving constructional elements when a number of factors coincide to permit recognition of a former delimitation of the find concentration fram its surraundings, i.e. to show the original graund plan of the dwelling. The discussed artefact concentrations are characterized by a clear reduction in the amount of material at their periphery. A rise in the quantity of finds from the centre to the immediate edge of a find concentration associated with a drastic fall in the amount of finds beyond this point merely represents a particularly favourable example of this phenomenon. The density of find distribution of many smaller concentrations of finds, with a maximum diameter of some 4 m, does not decrease gradually with the distance fram the centrally placed hearth but instead tends to appear as a plateau which breaks off rapidly at the edge. The identification of this peripheral decrease in find density becomes clearer in direct relation to the number and small size of the excavation units with wh ich the fine fraction of the material - which generally forms the largest component - was recovered. In the case of larger objects, the measurement of individual finds allows an optimal investigation of their distribution
patterns. In conjunction with the clear demarcation of the find concentration and the decrease in material at its edge, which can be represented particularly weil by find density isopachs, the location of former effective boundaries can also be shown by the positions of refitting lines and lithic tools relative to these. The presence immediately outside the concentration of specific objects such as large bones or unwieldy blocks of stone which would have formed hindrances within the dwelling space can also show the location of a wall. The combination of commonly accepted analytical methods for the investigation of Stone Age settlement structures and their synthetic graphic depiction enable the direct comparison of their differing evidence for irregularities in find distribution patterns. In this way it is possible to investigate those dwelling sites which are not amenable to meaningful analysis by the popular Ring-and-Sector Method, either because they are not circular in form or because their structure can not be subdivided due to their small size.
Six concentrations of finds were analysed within the framework of this study. In three ca ses it was possible to demonstrate the presence of a dwelling structure by the combination of previously established strands of evidence. At Orp Ost, a hexagonal Magdalenian dwelling structure was identified with a length of 5.5 m, a width of 3.8 m and a surface area of some 14 m2 . This structure had a central hearth, close to which were located a further small hearth, two pits and two shallow depressions recognizable due to their content of finds. Thus there existed a centrally located hearth complex of a type previously known only from large Magdalenian tents at Gönnersdorf and Andernach, where the presence of paved areas favoured their preservation, and fram Andernach IV. In the case of the Federmessergruppen site Rekem 10, R. Lauwers had already postulated the possible presence of a dwelling due to a ring of large stone blocks peripheral to the concentration of finds, a suggestion which was lent further weight by M. De Bie with his recognition of a clear rise in the number of finds towards the edge of the concentration in association with a fall in numbers beyond this. The shape of the tent ground plan can be more accurately reconstructed by the numerous refitting lines between conjoined finds. Rekem 10 appears as a trapezoidal zone distinct from the surrounding area measuring some 5 m in length and 4.5 m in breadth with a surface area of appraximately 18 m2. A trapezoidal form was also established for a Federmessergruppen tent at Berlin-Tegel IX, which in this case measured 4 m in length and at most 4 m in breadth with a surface area of only some 15 m2. Parallel to this study, other colleagues have recognized further Federmessergruppen tent ground plans on the basis of find distribution patterns, so that the number of dwelling structures known from the Allerød Interstadial has increased greatly over the past few years. In their ground plan and size, these tents correspond to those described here: Andernach 3 (hexagonal, 14 m2 surface areal, Niederbieber I (narrow trapezoid, 12 m2 surface areal and Niederbieber IV (trapezoidal, 15 m2 surface areal. The late Federmessergruppen dwelling at Bad Breisig might have had a polygonal or circular ground plan with a diameter of ca. 5 m and a surface area of 20 m2 All of these structures are appreciably smaller than the large trapezoidal tents of the Magdalenian and early Backed-Point Complexes marked by peripheral rings of large stones (tent weights?) which have surface areas of 25 m2 and the still larger constructions of the Magdalenian with a polygonal ground plan covering an area of 35-40 m2. Tents with a trapezoidal ground plan and a generally similar internal organisation are also found during the Mesolithic, for which structures with circular and indeed rectangular forms up to 24 m2 in area are also known. While tents with a trapezoidal ground plan might be interpreted as possible evidence for surviving traditions of a dwelling construction, the great diversity in the shape of contemporary structures cannot be overlooked.
Two further find concentrations are interpreted as open air localities. Neither the Magdalenian find concentration around a hearth at Cepoy nor the concentration of artefacts at Geldrop 3-2 which is attributed to either the Ahrensburgian or the early Mesolithic produced any evidence that they were separated from the surrounding area by a wall. Numerous refitting lines between conjoined artefacts demonstrate that there were no barriers to obstruct the activities of the inhabitants. Hartmannsdorf 26-1 shows features only partially diagnostic of a peripheral barrier, so that the question whether this concentration of Mesolithic finds was associated with walls and a roof remains unanswered.
All the investigated find concentrations and the majority of the sites drawn upon for comparison had a centrally located hearth around which there could generally be distinguished discarded tools and production waste of two work zones representing the remains of distinct overlapping areas of activity. It is often astonishing how little the remains of these work places seem to have been disturbed, even allowing for the possibility of major cleaning-up activities and removal of waste. The persons present at the site had
different focuses of activity, whereby specific artefact types were not limited to a single working area. In the majority of cases, the particularly abundant waste from the production of hunting equipment is concentrated in only one area. The work zones complement each other to a certain extent, since tools which are poorly represented in one area are more common in the other, while other find categories are present in the same quantity. Such complementary work areas are not normally represented more than once around
a central hearth, so that it is probable that they are associated with the activity of only two main participants, suggesting an interpretation of each discussed find concentration as the remains of a (possibly multiple) occupation by a nuclear family. A different situation is given when several hearths are present surrounded by basically identical find distributions. However, this is the case for only a few large Magdalenian and Mesolithic tents which possibly housed several families. In the case of the large Magdalenian tents it has been possible to identify a temporal progression of hearth use, rendering their interpretation difficult. Nevertheless, it can be established that the few, particularly large structures which probably represent the dwellings of several families are so far known only from the Magdalenian and the Mesolithic. Also dating to these periods are those rare dwellings with surviving evident structures which were assembled with exceptional effort and probably for a long duration of use. The question as to why the construction of these large and extraordinarily costly dwellings should be favoured in such opposed biotopes as the steppe and deciduous forest must be addressed by future research.
(Translation by Martin Street).

Rietberg 5 ist Teil des frühen Federmessenfundplatzes Riteberg-Große Höppe in der Westfälischen Bucht, der um ca. 13,800 cal BP datiert. Das lithische Inventar von Rietberg 5 wurde mithilfe von Zusammensetzungen und Attributsanalysen untersucht und zeigt einige, für frühe Federmesserinventare typische Merkmale auf. Anhand der Zusammensetzungen und weiterer Kartierung konnten auf dem Fundplatz verschiedene Aktivitätszonen unterschieden werden, die teils mit Gruben im Zusammenhang stehen. Ein weiterer Aspekt von Rietberg 5 ist, dass Werkzeuge hier stark unterrepräsentiert sind und die Fundstelle den Charakter eines Schlagplatzes aufweist, an dem wohl auch Vorräte in den Gruben zurückgelassen wurden.

Etude préliminaire du site de Saint-Paër (Seine-Maritime) ayant livré une série de 11 000 artéfacts, dont 500 nucléus et 116 pièces à dos (dont Federmesser). L’ensemble, azilien, correspond à plusieurs occupations se situant dans l’Alleröd et le Dryas III.

Auf einem spätpaläolithischen Lagerplatz in Boppard wurde ein aus der plantaren Seite eines Metatarsus vom Rothirsch (Cervus elaphus) gefertigter Glätter gefunden. Auf seinen Schmalseiten weist das Gerät zahlreiche parallele Kerben auf, welche senkrecht zur Längsachse des Knochens orientiert sind. Sie bilden Gruppen, welche von einander durch Kerben-freie Zonen getrennt sind.

A spatula recovered from the Late Palaeolithic site of Boppard is manufactured on a fragment of the plantar face of a metatarsal bone of red deer (Cervus elaphus). Along its narrow side, the tool exhibits numerous parallel notches at right angles to the longitudinal axis of the bone. These are arranged in groups separated by notch-free areas of bone.

Dans le cadre des diagnostics d’archéologie préventive réalisés sur le contournement ouest de Bergerac, un secteur positif a permis de documenter une occupation azilienne repérée sur 450 m2. Elle était installée sur un léger relief de la plaine alluviale de la Dordogne, aujourd’hui invisible dans le paysage. La fouille a porté sur deux locus, comportant chacun un foyer de galets chauffés. L’opération a livrée 1 485 restes lithiques taillés. La datation du foyer localisé dans
le locus B place l’occupation vers 11430 -11117 av. J.-C, soit dans la seconde partie de l’interstade de l’Allerød. Si la conservation du gisement n’est pas optimale en raison de la présence d’occupations néolithiques et historiques qui ont partiellement endommagé le site, l’assemblage lithique recueilli est homogène et permet de documenter pour la première fois les comportements techniques de populations aziliennes en plein air dans le Sud-Ouest français, dans un contexte
stratigraphique bien maitrisé. La découverte du gisement des Pinelles permet ainsi de combler une lacune en la matière. L’assemblage lithique constitue un jalon inédit de l’occupation azilienne de la Dordogne. En dépit d’un contexte taphonomique a priori peu favorable (destruction de plusieurs secteurs du site par des structures historiques et naturelles ;
présence d’indices d’occupations néolithiques), la cohérence technique des vestiges collectés permet de les attribuer aux groupes contemporains de la fin de l’Azilien. Les groupes aziliens ont exploité deux catégories de matériaux : des silex sénoniens locaux de qualité médiocre et des silex du Bergeracois de bien meilleure qualité, disponibles localement et à environ 5 km du gisement. Les productions réalisées à partir des silex sénoniens se distinguent par le caractère opportuniste
et peu hiérarchisé des chaînes opératoires. Les blocs de silex sénoniens ont été exploités à partir d'un ou deux plans
de frappe avec un percuteur dur. L’exploitation des silex du Bergeracois a, pour sa part, fait l’objet de débitages plus soignés
ayant pour conséquence une meilleure régularité des supports produits. Cependant, la recherche d’éclats et d’éclats
laminaires reste l’objectif premier des opérations de débitage. La présence de monopointes à dos courbes, fabriquées
sur des supports variés et de régularité variable, constitue le seul type d’armature identifié dans la série. En l’absence de
remontage sur de longues distances, la contemporanéité de l’ensemble des vestiges du gisement ne peut être démontrée.
En revanche, si l’on se fie à la stratigraphie de référence pour l’Azilien du Sud-Ouest français – le Pont d’Ambon (Bourdeilles)
– et que l’on considère la présence ou l’absence de certains types d’outils – et en particulier les couteaux à dos –
on peut prudemment envisager plusieurs moments d’occupations sur le site des Pinelles. Plus généralement, l’industrie
lithique des Pinelles s’inscrit dans la dynamique commune documentée dans la région et au-delà. L’exploitation des
excellents silex du Bergeracois constitue cependant une originalité économique loin d’être anecdotique.
Mots-clés : Paléolithique final, Azilien récent, Dordogne, technologie lithique, campement de plein-air, géomorphologie,
structures de combustion.

As part of the archaeological surveys carried out during work on the western by-pass of Bergerac, an Azilian site covering 450 m2 was investigated. It was established on a slight rise in the alluvial plain of the Dordogne river, no longer visible in the landscape. The excavations examined two loci, each with a burnt-stone hearth structure,
and yielded 1,485 lithic artefacts. The Azilian from the Allerød interstadial is known from a dozen of archaeological settlements in the Dordogne area. This is a low number compared with the numerous sites for the whole of the Late Palaeolithic. Azilian open-air sites are quite rare in this area in comparison with occupations in caves or shelters (Niederlender et al., 1956; Jude, 1960; Champagne and Espitalié, 1970; Bordes, 1979; Célérier, dir., 1993; Séronie-Vivien, dir., 1995; Detrain et al., 1996; Ballista, 2006; Fat-Cheung et al., 2014). While the site of Les Pinelles (Prigonrieux, dordogne) is not lacking problems, in particular from a taphonomical point of view, it provides an interesting contribution
to document the techno-economical behaviour of Azilian societies in South-Western France. With these criteria, we will try to establish comparisons with the main Azilian site of the south-western area, Pont d’Ambon, excavated by G. Célérier (Célerier, dir., 1993). We will focus on the lithic industry discovered in locus B. This area delivered a
hearth structure, dated by 14C (Fy 80), in association with lithic remains. The measurement gave a date that allowed this structure to be attributed to the Late Azilian (ERL-18 582, 11359 ± 89 BP, 11430–11 117 cal. BC). We will furthermore try to demonstrate that most of the lithic remains discovered in other parts of the site are also contemporaneous
with the Azilian settlement. In spite of more recent disturbances (modern, medieval and Neolithic), the lithic industry is coherent and for the most part contemporaneous with the late Azilian. Productions made from the local raw material was particularly opportunistic and not hierarchical from a technological point of view. Senonian flint, collected in the immediate environment, was exclusively exploited with a hard hammerstone on a uni or bipolar knapping surface. The best quality Bergeracois flint shown a more sophisticated chaine opératoire and a higher regularity of the blanks produced. For both raw materials, the production of flakes and laminar flakes dominated. The Bergeracois flint was brought in as already exploited blocks, as demonstrated by the lack of cortical flakes. The hearth structure is one of the originalities of the site: such structures are rare in an Azilian context. While the absolute contemporaneity of all the lithic remains cannot be proved—due to the lack of refitting among different loci of the site—most of it can be associated with the Azilian settlement. These data prove that Les Pinelles was probably a large site during the Allerød. This is rather similar to the few known Azilian northern examples such as Le Closeau, Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine, France (Bodu, dir., 1998) or Niederbieber, Neuwied, Central Rhineland, Germany (Gelhausen, 2011). These two sites were also occupied on several occasions during the Azilian. With respect to the data from Pont d’Ambon, Bourdeilles, Dordogne (Célérier, dir., 1993; Fat-Cheung et al., 2014), in particular the presence or the lack of several types of tools (backed knife), we can propose that the Les Pinelles site was occupied on several occasions during the Azilian. Finally, the lithic industry from Les Pinelles belongs to the same cultural trend as the closest sites but also those outside the south-western area. The exploitation of the excellent Bergeracois flint is one of the originalities of the site. The difference with the strictly local flint (Senonian) can be explained by the very low quality of the Senonian flint. For a better understanding from an economic point of view we hope for the future discovery of a better preserved sites in this region. The example of Les Pinelles suggests the homogeneity of Azilian technical behaviour in south-western France. In other contexts, the data available at present point towards a technological diversity that the chronological
difference does not totally explain (Mevel and Bodu, in press). The corpus of known sites is clearly limited and new data should renew our perception of the ‘Azilianisation’ process in this geographical area.

Keywords:Final Paleolithic, Late Azilian, Dordogne, lithic technology, open-air settlement, geomorphology, hearth structure.

La grotte du Bourrouilla a Arancou, Pyrenees-Atlantiques, decouverte en 1986, avait ete affectee par une fouille clandestine dont les deblais ont ete tamises sous l'eau, livrant des restes lithiques et fauniques abondants ainsi que des oeuvres d'art mobilier en os et bois de Cervide, attribuables au Magdalenien. Un sondage important effectue a l'exterieur mit en evidence trois ensembles de couches contenant un possible Azilien, du Magdalenien superieur et un possible Magdalenien moyen. Les datations carbone 14 des ossements provenant du sondage confirment l'appartenance des niveaux dates au Magdalenien superieur et moyen. Les resultats de ces datations sont compares a ceux obtenus anterieurement pour d'autres sites de la region pyreneenne. Les deux series d'outillage lithique du sondage et des deblais de la fouille clandestine sont attribuees au Magdalenien moyen et superieur a final. Les vestiges decouverts dans le sondage ont beneficie de nombreux remontages, d'un classement sommaire par categorie de matieres premieres et d'une etude typo-technologique. L'outillage recueilli dans les deblais de la fouille clandestine complete les donnees typologiques de la fouille. L'outillage en matieres dures animales, os et bois de Cervide, est varie et comporte des aiguilles a chas, des harpons a double rang de barbelures, des sagaies a biseau simple ou double, ainsi qu'une piece en os portant une douille et qui a du servir a l'emmanchement. Les sagaies fourchues caracteristiques du Magdalenien pyreneen ont ete trouvees dans le sondage au dessous des couches a harpons. L'un des objets les plus caracteristiques du site est une lame d'os sur cote refendue et polie, faconnee en forme de canif et souvent decoree. Les parures sont principalement des incisives sciees et des craches de Cerf percees. Des dechets de debitage sur os et bois de Cervide indiquent les techniques de debitage par rainures doubles et

Several dwelling structures of the Magdalenian and an early phase of the Final Palaeolithic (bipointe phase) are characterized by floors made of slabs of schist (Bosinski, 1979; Street, 1995) or by stones in lateral position used as weights (Jöris & Terberger, 2001). Such ...