The New 14 C Chronology for the Palaeolithic Site of La Ferrassie, France: the Disappearance of Neanderthals and the Arrival of Homo Sapiens in France S
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The new 14 C chronology for the Palaeolithic site of La Ferrassie, France: the disappearance of Neanderthals and the arrival of Homo sapiens in France S. Talamo, V. Aldeias, P. Goldberg, L. Chiotti, H. Dibble, J.-j. Hublin, S. Madelaine, R. Maria, D. Sandgathe, T. Steele, et al. To cite this version: S. Talamo, V. Aldeias, P. Goldberg, L. Chiotti, H. Dibble, et al.. The new 14 C chronology for the Palaeolithic site of La Ferrassie, France: the disappearance of Neanderthals and the arrival of Homo sapiens in France. Journal of Quaternary Science, Wiley, 2020, 35 (7), pp.961-973. 10.1002/jqs.3236. hal-03038440 HAL Id: hal-03038440 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03038440 Submitted on 17 Feb 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License JOURNAL OF QUATERNARY SCIENCE (2020) 35(7) 961–973 ISSN 0267-8179. DOI: 10.1002/jqs.3236 The new 14C chronology for the Palaeolithic site of La Ferrassie, France: the disappearance of Neanderthals and the arrival of Homo sapiens in France S. TALAMO,1,2* V. ALDEIAS,1,3 P. GOLDBERG,4,5 L. CHIOTTI,6 H. L. DIBBLE,1,7,8 G. GUÉRIN,9 J.‐J. HUBLIN,1,10 S. MADELAINE,11,12 R. MARIA,1,13 D. SANDGATHE,14,15 T. E. STEELE,1,16 A. TURQ11,12 and S. J. P. MCPHERRON1 1Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany 2Department of Chemistry G. Ciamician, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna Via Selmi 2, Bologna, 40126, Italy 3Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior, University of Algarve, Campus Gambelas Edificio 1, Faro, 8005‐139, Portugal 4CAS, SEALS, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong NSW, 2522, Australia 5Institute for Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, Tübingen, 72070, Germany 6Département Homme et Environnement, Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle, UMR 7194 du CNRS, Abri Pataud, 24620 Les Eyzies‐de‐Tayac, France 7Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA 8Institute for Human Origins, Arizona State University, USA 9IRAMAT‐CRP2A, UMR 5060 CNRS ‐ Université Bordeaux Montaigne e Maison de l'archéologie, Esplanade des Antilles, Pessac, 33600, France 10Collège de France, 11, place Marcelin Berthelot, 75005, Paris, France 11Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, PACEA UMR 5199, Allée Geoffroy Saint‐Hilaire, FR‐, Pessac, 33615, France 12Musée national de Préhistoire, F‐24620 Les Eyzies‐de‐Tayac, France 13Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel 14Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada 15University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Pennsylvania, USA 16Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, 95616 USA Received 26 February 2020; Revised 21 July 2020; Accepted 24 July 2020 ABSTRACT: The grand abri at La Ferrassie (France) has been a key site for Palaeolithic research since the early part of the 20th century. It became the eponymous site for one variant of Middle Palaeolithic stone tools, and its sequence was used to define stages of the Aurignacian, an early phase of the Upper Palaeolithic. Several Neanderthal remains, including two relatively intact skeletons, make it one of the most important sites for the study of Neanderthal morphology and one of the more important data sets when discussing the Neanderthal treatment of the dead. However, the site has remained essentially undated. Our goal here is to provide a robust chronological framework of the La Ferrassie sequence to be used for broad regional models about human behaviour during the late Middle to Upper Palaeolithic periods. To achieve this goal, we used a combination of modern excavation methods, extensive geoarchaeological analyses, and radiocarbon dating. If we accept that Neanderthals were responsible for the Châtelperronian, then our results suggest an overlap of ca. 1600 years with the newly arrived Homo sapiens found elsewhere in France. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Quaternary Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd KEYWORDS: chronology; human evolution; La Ferrassie; Palaeolithic; radiocarbon Introduction (Fu et al., 2015). Additionally, in many regions, artefact assemblages from this period are also interpreted as transitional In Europe, the period between 50 000 and 39 000 years ago was industries. These relatively short‐lived and spatially limited particularly important for Neanderthals and their interaction with archaeological entities appear to combine elements of the Homo sapiens (Hublin, 2015, Higham et al., 2014, Hublin preceding Middle Palaeolithic (Neanderthals) with innovative et al., 2020). During this time, usually referred to as the Middle to elements of the subsequent Upper Palaeolithic (Homo sapiens), Upper Palaeolithic transition period, Homo sapiens entered though to varying degrees (Ruebens et al., 2015). Who made the Europe and eventually spread across most of the continent, so‐called transitional industries? To what extent were late encountering Neanderthals along the way. By the end of this Neanderthal behavioural innovations influenced by incoming period, Homo sapiens had replaced Neanderthals but carried Homo sapiens? and How frequently did one group encounter the with them genetic evidence of interactions with Neanderthals other? are questions that remain largely unresolved. The region‐ by‐region timing of the spread of Homo sapiens and the demise *Correspondence: S. TALAMO, as above. of Neanderthals are all highly debated topics for which having E‐mail: [email protected] good chronological control is essential (Hublin, 2015). © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Quaternary Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 962 JOURNAL OF QUATERNARY SCIENCE For the archaeological record of the last 50 000 years, AMS still poorly understood both in terms of their formation processes radiocarbon dating remains an essential tool for chronological and their archaeological affinities. Nevertheless, Layer 8 contains reconstructions. However, its application to the transition a mix of Aurignacian and Gravettian, and Layer 9 could be period has been complicated by a number of factors: 1) the attributed to the Gravettian. resolution of the calibration curve is still not accurate enough Though the dates presented here come from the Western in this time range; 2) counting errors, which occur with any Sector of the site, new excavations also took place towards the 14C date, are greater for older ages and when combined with east, in what we call the Northern Sector and where Delporte point 1 produce wide confidence intervals; 3) many of the key previously excavated and found another partial skeleton (LF 8 sites were excavated before and during the first half of the 20th (Gómez‐Olivencia et al., 2015)). In this area of the site, the century when excavators were less conscientious about cultural sequence is similar to the Eastern and Western Sectors documenting complicated stratigraphies and post‐ in that the Middle Palaeolithic, Châtelperronian and Upper depositional movements of objects, further increasing the Palaeolithic are all represented. However, it is important to uncertainty associated with 14C ages; and 4) while increasing emphasise that despite the similarities of the archaeological the number of dated samples can help reduce these sequences, there is at present no direct physical correlation uncertainties, its destructive nature and its costs in archae- between the Northern and Western Sectors. Moreover, ological budgets limit the number of dated materials in most different and virtually independent depositional processes contexts. While the radiocarbon community is constantly and mechanisms existed across the east–west length of the working to refine the calibration curve (Adolphi et al., 2017, site (Goldberg et al., 2016, Aldeias et al., 2014). Muscheler et al., 2014), here we provide a high‐resolution chronology for the site of La Ferrassie (France). Recent Geology of the site excavations included extensive radiocarbon sampling (n = 40), which resulted in a collection of new 14C dates and Though the site today has the appearance of a shelter (and was a new interpretation described below. called le grand abri) we now know that it is part of an elongated karstic system whose breech in the roof gives the appearance of its being a shelter. We also know that the The site of La Ferrassie geology and stratigraphy at La Ferrassie are complex and quite variable across the site. This assertion is based on a The site of La Ferrassie is located on a small tributary of the comparison of our section in the Western Sector with the Vézère river not far from the town of Le Bugue, France, (44° 57′ sections published by Peyrony (1934), the large section visible 06″ N, 00° 56′ 17″ E; 120 m asl). It consists of several localities, today in the Eastern Sector of the site (Delporte and of which the best known is the so‐called main shelter (the grand Delibrias, 1984; Texier, 2006), some small test excavations abri, hereafter La Ferrassie), where excavations were carried out we did between the East and West Sectors, and work we did in in the early part of the 20th century by Capitan and Peyrony and the Northern Sector. As a result, though the Western, Northern in the 1960s and early 1970s by Delporte (Delporte and and Eastern sectors of the site share similar archaeological Delibrias, 1984; Peyrony, 1934) (Fig.