Understanding the Short-term Occupations of the Lateglacial and Early Mesolithic Groups in Western Europe

Summary

Prehistoric archaeology is now focusing on past hunter-gatherers societies behaviors and relationships with their environments. In Western France, the Late glacial and the Early Holocene were the stage of an important research dynamic. The chrono-cultural organization has been revised relying in particular on the excavation of new key sites. This research shed greater light on the human territories and paleo-economic behaviors. Understanding human mobility depends on our control of time linked directly with the sedimentary cover. Our knowledge of short-term occupation stations is limited since these sites are not easy to find (archaeological visibility) or to identify (palimpsest, multi-locii sites). Some large archaeological sites are sometimes constituted by little "locii" which can reflect short occupations. It is however not the most frequent configuration. Most of these short-term occupation sites have been recognized in rock-shelters. Research conducted in small rock-shelters of the Armorican Massif is very promising today. Limited to a few square meters, these small shelters could accommodate only limited groups for short periods. The overwhelmingly dominant production of hunting tools confirms this hypothesis. This research draws a first picture of the complexity of land use strategies between the Azilian and the Mesolithic in this European peninsula.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Short-Term Occupations in Paleolithic Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15762