L’environnement végétal des Moustériens charentiens

The fairly complete inventory of prehistoric sites including settlements of a Charentian Mousterian facies (i.e. of the atypical Ferrassie or Quina type) and studied by means of pollen data as regards their paleoenvironment and paleoclimate makes it possible to set up a description of their occupation according to regions and chronology. But the conclusions that we can draw will undoubtedly be biased from the start.

On the one hand, because the Charentian sites, distributed over France, were not all systematically studied. Hence it is artificial to propose a geographical distribution of the pollen analyses that are presented here, because they are restricted to limited regions, i.e. to South-western France, where multidisciplinary teams of quaternists are available.

On the other hand, because some sites lack absolute dating and because their spectra were dated only on the basis of their pollen contents, which is obviously insufficient: the absence of a long regional sequence of reference to chronologically situate a climatic episode attributed to the Mousterian epoch, an industry long and wrongly considered as belonging only to the early Würmian.

Therefore we presented each pollen study with a comment on its paleoclimatic meaning and wherever possible on its regional chronostratigraphic meaning; then we made a tentative synthesis trying to draw conclusions on the environment of Charentian Mousterians.

The examined areas are:

– North-Pas-de-Calais region: Biache-Saint-Vaast (Pas-de-Calais department),

– Loire region: Les Cottés (Vienne department) and Roc-en-Pail (Maine-et-Loire department),

– Auvergne: Le Maar de Saint-Hippolyte (Puy-de-Dôme department),
– Pyrénées: Le Port (Ariège department),

– Bourgogne: Genay (Côte-d’Or department),

– Languedoc-Provence region: the Esquillac-Grapaou (Gard department) and Ioton (Gard department),

– Périgord: La Ferrassie, Combe-Grenal, Caminade, Le Pech de l’Aze II, Vaufrey Cave (Dordogne department),

– Poitou-Charente region: La Quina Shelter (Charente department).

Conclusions

For France and using only pollen data, we find that :

– Charentian sites are spread out, in time, from the end of the last-but-one glaciation to the end of the first part of the last glaciation (= Early Würmian), and in space from the North to the South of the territory, among all the biotopes, from medium mountain down to the sea.

– The cultural characteristics of Charentians thus seem totally independent :

– of the living place,

– of the considered period,

– of the climatic episode and of the vegetal environment prevailing at the time.

– However it seems that, like other Neandertals, the Charentians had a clear preference for meridional regions which persistently had a milder climate during this period of the Quaternary, when a harsh climate was the rule: in fact, one can only advance occupation in the North, and that was during an amelioration of the climate. Moreover, some regional unity, perhaps entirely fortuitous, arises from the South of France (South Eastern and Western), during the cold and dry period of early Würmian.