Aurignacian(s) in the Mas d'Azil Cave (Ariège, Pyrénées, France)

Summary

Mas d’Azil cave is one of the most important karstic landmarks in southwestern France. This prehistoric research hotspot is mainly famous for evidence of Magdalenian and Epipaleolithic cultures, but recent researches were confirmed the existence of traces of the oldest occupations of the Upper Palaeolithic, poorly documented so far. In this case, the discovery of an in situ cultural sequence containing older and recent Aurignacian opens up largely new possibilities. First, because the cave contains a chronological sequence never recognized in earlier work; this sequence revealed by recent surveys confirms the presence of an older Aurignacian (cf. Péquart's excavations in the "Silex Gallery"), while providing the first evidence of recent occupation phases, which has no known regional equivalent. Second, these observations cast new light on a context that, for the Aurignacian, is greatly lacking in the French central Pyrénées; that of a vast cavity at the bottom of a deep valley that possibly corresponds to another settlement type in the territory; significantly different from (and complementary to) the "small" caves often "perched" in the landscape, which is by far most of the information we currently have to describe this culture in this region.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Frison Institute/Geoarchaeology Interest Group Symposium: Archaeology and Geoarchaeology of Rockshelters and Caves

Keywords

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