southwestern France

The late Magdalenian coincides with the end of Heinrich 1 event and the Bölling interstadial. This period was marked by the recomposition of biotopes and the reopening of territories to human groups. The culture began to expand throughout Europe and territorial mobility models have been proposed for several regions (Paris Basin, Swiss Plateau, Rhineland). These models are based on the seasonal alternation of specialized hunting of reindeer and horses or the hunting of these ungulates in equal proportions. In the south of France, hunting was more diversified and included greater proportions of forest and mountain ungulates and small game. Specialized hunting was rare. Abri Faustin, situated in north of the Aquitaine Basin is one of the few sites in the south west of France dating to the late Magdalenian with a faunal spectrum dominated principally by horses. Despite this particularity, the site has never been subject to a detailed archaeozoological study.
New datings recently performed as part of the ANR MAGDATIS project (ANR 2011 BSH3 005) have confirmed an occupation contemporary to the Bölling interstadial. We here propose a detailed study of the hunting strategies, transport, and butchery practices carried out on horses at this site. The methods that were used are conventional in zooarchaeology: age determination, quantification of skeletal elements and observation and quantification of natural and anthropogenic marks. The bone assemblage contains 1453 bone and dental remains. A taphonomic study has revealed the excellent preservation of this remains, allowing a high-resolution archaeozoological study to be performed. Moreover, the bone refits shows that the dispersal of the remains is limited. The horse is the dominant species in terms of the number of remains (NISP = 853), number of specimens (MNI = 20) and quantity of resources. Its exploitation does not appear to represent a specialization in terms of the activities carried out on the site seeing as food and utilitarian exploitation of little games (Le Bail, 2005 ; Mallye, 2007 ; Val, 2009) and presence of domestic lithic and bone tools. The Magdalenians favoured family groups, which were more predictable, rather than single groups. Seasonality indices show that hunting episodes took place throughout the year. Hunting on single groups has been happen but was more opportunist than the one on family groups. Hunting strategy can be presumed but not clearly demonstrate. We suppose that Magdalenian took advantages of the topography of Entre-deux-Mers, to approach horse groups.
High disparities in skeletal representation can’t be explained by differential preservation and food utility indices (FUI and MUI) aren’t correlated with the survival percentage. We assume that whole carcasses of the horses were transported from the kill site to the base camp. Presence of foetal remains supports this hypothesis. This leads us to conclude that the kill site must have been located in the immediate vicinity of the shelter. The reconstruction of the butchery processes implies that horses were exploited both for their food resources (meat, marrow, and grease), and for utilitarian and symbolic purposes. We propose the use of a bone boiling method for the extraction of marrow from spongy shafts and grease from long bone ends. The results of our study reveal many common elements with sites dominated by horses, contemporary to the occupation of Abri Faustin, in the Rhineland, on the Swiss Plateau, and in the Paris Basin (Bignon, 2003 ; Street et al. 2006; Müller, 2014): seasons and hunting strategies, proximity of the kill and processing sites, exploitation for food and utilitarian and symbolic purposes. The carcass exploitation is always optimal with extraction of grease and marrow on mandible and long bones. Even if use of horse bones for utilitarian and symbolic purpose is never systematic in the late Magdalenian, we sporadically see it on some sites. All, these observations suggest a certain uniformity in the exploitation of this ungulate across Europe in the late Magdalenian.

At the Abbeville/Saint Riquier colloquium, two regional syntheses for southwestern France were proposed. One discussed the northern Aquitaine Basin (Delpech et al., 1995), the other the southern basin of the Garonne and the Pyrenean Piedmont (Jaubert and Servelle, 1996). Since then, research has focused on the classic sequences of Barbas I, La Micoque and Coudoulous I, or on little published sites, such as Lanne-Darré on the Lannemezan plateau (Colonge, 2005a; Colonge and Texier, 2005). Numerous rescue operations, many still in progress and thus only partially published, have also been conducted in recent years, mainly in geographic zones with diverse pedosedimentary contexts: the Isle Valley (Champ des Débats (Brenet and Folgado, 1998), the Midi Toulousain and the middle Adour Basin (Colonge, Lelouvier, Bertran and collaborators). Several university theses have also fully or partially addressed this region (Turq, 1992; Millet, 2001; Mourre, 2003; Jarry and Brenet, in progress). These works concerning the first occupations in this region, up until OIS 9 when Middle Paleolithic industries become fully developed, allow revision of the ancient assemblages and presentation of a general synthesis of these industries.

Après un long délai, les actes du colloque d'Hasparren, consacré aux
recherches sur le site d'Isturitz, viennent de paraître aux éditions du
CEDARC. Bien que le colloque ait eu lieu il y a maintenant presque
quinze ans, le volume comprend une série de contributions
nouvelles sur l'archéologie de cette grotte, en particulier le mobilier
aurignacien et magdalénien, la présentation du site et de sa formation
géologique, etc.
L'ouvrage est en vente au prix de souscription jusqu'au 31 octobre :
vous en trouverez ci-joint le sommaire et le bulletin de commande.