MALICHIGDANE

RARE lot of 37 MOUSTERIAN tools from Solutré !!!

  PERIOD:  Mousterian, between 90 000 and 40 000 years ago.                  

  ORIGIN: SOLUTRE (france) !!!!!!!!!!  

        Solutré is located in the Burgundy region of France. In the southern part of this region, some 10 km. west of the Saone River, is a series of Jurassic limestone ridges or "cuestas" oriented east-west and separated by broad valleys. The site itself is located on the southern talus slope at the base of the cuesta called Roche de Solutré. Five cultural levels (Mousterian, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian) have been identified in the up to 9 metres of deposits preserved at the site and the levels reflect repeated use from the Middle Palaeolithic to the end of the Upper Palaeolithic. During these periods, horses dominated the faunas to such an extent that Solutré has been considered as the best preserved example of a Palaeolithic large-game kill-site in Western Europe.

        At the end of the last century the discoverer and first investigator of the site, Adrien Arcelin, tried to explain the mass of horse bones revealed during his excavations, by describing Palaeolithic hunters driving herds of up to 600 animals at a time over the precipice of the rock. The idea of Solutré as a "jump" site persisted well into this century, even though there was no supportive evidence at the site for hunting tactics of this kind. Today, archaeologists believe that Palaeolithic hunters periodically returned to kill horses as they passed through the valley between Solutré rock and the neighbouring cuesta of Mont de Pouilly as part of their seasonal wanderings from winter grazing grounds in the Saône Valley to summer grazing pastures on the higher land to the west of the site.

        Current research has concentrated on two excavated areas, sectors I11 and P16, which have produced rich faunal assemblages associated with inventories of Magdalenian lithic tools. Bones from these sites have been dated to 12,580±250 BP (conventional C14 date) and to 15,080±130 BP and 14, 570±130 BP (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry). The results of the faunal analysis support the theory that horses were hunted during this period in large numbers at Solutré, but also show that Magdalenian hunters took relatively high numbers of reindeer and bison. Time of death of the three main species suggests that the site was used at various times of the year and that juvenile groups of reindeer and bison had been killed seasonally. One of the characteristics of the site is the evidence of limited utilisation of the remains of large game, especially the remains of horse, by hunters.

 MATIERE: white flint

 DESCRIPTION:  see the photos

37 rare prehistoric tools from a very famous site !! 

 BIBLIOGRAPHY  

    Solutré 1968-1998 edited by Jean Combier & Anta Montet-White
Société Préhistorique Française, Mémoire XXX: 2002; 281 pages; 131 illustrations; 82 photographs (52 colour, 30 B&W); 31 tables; ISBN 2-913745-15-6                     

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                                                 malichigdane