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The two Magdalenian open-air sites Champréveyres and Monruz, on the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel, were occupied during the warm season, predominantly during the spring and early summer. The diverse faunal assemblages include the horse as the dominant species, which yielded 70 and 90 % of the weight of acquired animals, respectively. Due to their behavioural adaptation as animals with long fleeing distances, horses cannot be hunted close to an actively occupied site. Horse hunts must therefore have taken place at a relatively long distance from base camps and, in addition, could be carried out only from some kind of ambush or hunting hide. Since the weight of a horse precludes transport as a whole, and the skeletal representation indicates that entire horses were present on the site, the most plausible conclusion is that camps were relocated to a successful horse-hunting site. While consuming the horses and possibly preparing them for later use, other activities were performed, including the hunting of other, smaller species. After a mean duration of from one to a few weeks, the camp was relocated to a subsequent horse-hunting site, at a distance of some kilometres. The number of burning cycles in the hearths as well as the amount and types of lithic material corroborate these conclusions. Since horse-hunting sites need to meet specific, strategic characteristics, the number of reoccupations of the main horizons (6 for Champréveyres, 20 for Monruz) is easily explicable.

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Abstract. Cotencher cave is one of the oldest Palaeolithic sites of Switzerland and is known for its rich faunal and Mousterian artefacts, the latter suggesting one or several passages of Neanderthal hunter–gatherer tribes. This interdisciplinary study summarises novel data concerning site formation processes and anthropic attendance of the site. While the lithic artefacts indicate tool production at the site, the faunal remains do not yield any evidence of a link to human occupation. The sedimentary sequence permits us to unravel several important environmental changes that occurred during the Late Pleistocene. The presence of a local glacier around 70 ka (Marine Isotope Stage, MIS 4) is revealed followed by ice-free conditions characterised by alternating soil formation processes and landscape destabilisation during MIS 3. Solifluction processes suggesting recurrent frozen ground were responsible for the displacements of part of the artefacts and faunal remains. Evidence of local glacier development around 36 ka is related to the particular geomorphological conditions of the studied region and shed new light on the complexity of glacier dynamics. The recognition and dating of recurrent hostile glacier landscapes might contribute to understanding the reasons for the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic attendance hiatuses known in the studied region.