Dordogne

The cave’s archaeological context is now an essential aspect for researches about the symbolical productions of prehistoric societies. In the same way that Michel Lorblanchet thought of a complete archaeology of ornamented caves, the actual studies of prehistoric representations must not be conceived without taking in account all of the human traces identified within the cave.

One of the main problems that arise for most of the European Upper Palaeolithic’s caves is the difficulty of linking them to some reliable chronological sequence. Without charcoal drawings and having limited possibilities for indirect dating, the research must then include archaeological, geomorphological and sedimentological data for a better understanding of the painting’s and engraved entities’ context.

Bernoux’s cave is an interesting case to compare data provided by these different fields of research. Located in the right bank of the Dronne River in Dordogne, it opens on a hillside and develops itself along a diaclase of twenty meters. Discovered in 1929, it was excavated almost immediately by Denis Peyrony. The cave walls were re-examined in 1979 by Brigitte and Gilles Delluc. In 2011, the start of new research program led to a significant renewal of the graphical corpus (from 3 to 11 pictures and more than twenty engraved entities). Several surveys were carried out into the cave and gave a fresh overview of the inner parts and its surroundings. The discovered remains enlarge the vision of the human settlements provided by the data of the 1930s.

Thanks to a cross analyse of the different types of data (with a large place given to geomorphology), activities and settlements at the Bernoux’s cave came to a better understanding. This paper aims to present the main results obtained since 2011 as well as to discuss the value of each approach and their contribution to link the Bernoux’s cave to the European Upper Palaeolithic’s chronology.

The late Mousterian open-air site of Bout-des-Verges was the subject of large-scale rescue excavations between 2012 and 2103 that yielded evidence for the spatial organisation of particular techno-typological elements amongst the 900 lithics recovered from the site. Three knapping concentrations in the southwest sector of the site produced two-thirds of the overall lithic assemblage, the remaining pieces were found scattered across the excavated area. Our techno-economic analysis of the Bout-des-Verges assemblage revealed clear differences in terms of raw material economy and artefact transport patterns between the dominant discoidal component and the larger, imported bifaces and Levallois flakes. Refitted reduction sequences and our spatial analysis confirm the three lithic concentrations to be contemporaneous and, by extension, to form part of a single Mousterian occupation with multiple technological components. The majority of discoidal products produced on the site were exported for future use, while the imported bifaces and Levallois scrapers with longer use-lives were transported multiple times by Neanderthal groups.

Discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Abri Casserole (Dordogne, France) was the subject of salvage excavations in the early nineties. The fieldwork revealed a sequence of 13 archaeological levels that document human occupations from the Gravettian to the Magdalenian, including very rare and poorly known assemblages (e.g. Early Badegoulian, Protosolutrean) that afford a particular importance to this sequence. Results of a previous dating program that focused on the Badegoulian levels were obtained in 1994 but were neither extensively published nor discussed. Five AMS 14C ages obtained for the Gravettian and Solutrean assemblages in the early 2010s served to complement the site’s chronology. However, since the beta counting ages for the Badegoulian levels were in conflict with the accepted AMS chronology for the region’s late Pleniglacial archaeological record, a new AMS dating program was implemented to renew the radiometric framework of this specific portion of the sequence. Compared to the previous beta counting measurements, the seven newly obtained AMS ages are about 1000 years older (23.3–20.5 cal ka BP) and congruent with other AMS dated Badegoulian sequences. These results thereby restore the inter site chronological coherence of the Solutrean–Badegoulian and Badegoulian–Magdalenian transitions.

For six years, an interdisciplinary team carried out the study of a Bronze Age underground network. This program has been labelled by the Institute of Ecology and Environment of the French Research Council (CNRS), who wants to promote new methodologies and experimental studies in Global Ecology. It takes advantage of the support of the French Ministry of Culture. The archaeological cave of Les Fraux (Saint-Martin-de-Fressengeas, Dordogne) is the only protohistorical site in Europe wherein are gathered testimonies of domestic, spiritual and artistic activities. Fortunately, the cave was closed at the end of the Bronze Age, following to the collapse of its entrance. The site is currently registered in the French Historical Monuments. The cave forms a wide network of galleries, characterized by the exceptional richness of its archaeological remains such as ceramic and metal deposits, numerous parietal representations (engravings or fingerings incised in the clay-walls and paintings sometimes in association with deposits) and about sixty domestic fireplaces. In that framework, 3D models of the cave constitute the common work support and the best way for scientific communication for the various studies conducted on the site by nearly forty researchers. In this specific context, a partnership among archaeologists and surveyors from INSA Strasbourg allows the team to develop, in an interdisciplinary way, new methods of data acquiring based on contact-free measurements techniques in order to acquire a full 3D-documentation. All the surveys are conducted in compliance with the integrity of the site. Different techniques based on Terrestrial Laser Scanning, Digital Photogrammetry and Spatial Imaging System have been used in order to generate a geometric and photorealistic 3D model from the combination of point clouds and photogrammetric images, for both visualization and accurate documentation purposes. Various scales of acquiring and diverse resolutions have been applied according to the subject: global volume cave, parietal representations, deposits… The aim of this paper is firstly to issue a statement of 6 years of 3D-recording in the cave and secondly to display recent methodological developments as for the integration of heterogeneous data in 3D models (i.e. magnetic field recording combined with the 3D models in order to locate magnetic anomalies in the cave). Another purpose is to give an overview of methodological and technological limitations we experienced since 2008. Finally, we attempt to present work in progress as to 3D-modelling and simulating and thinking on the way we should use 3D in archaeological caves.