Mesolithic and Neolithic material productions in Aveyron (France) during the 6th millennium BC: Originality or adaptability?

Abstract

International audienc

Beyond the sea… The Neolithic transition in the southwest of France

“…The assemblages from these hinterland sites are difficult to interpret as they represent a mixture of specific local features, specific site functions and assemblage recomposition (Defranould et al, 2017). The same problem occurs in other regions, like in the Northern Italian Alps (Perrin, 2005) or the Ebro valley (Utrilla and Domingo, 2014; García-Martínez de Lagr an, 2017).…”

“…This example illustrates that the hasty use of cultural mechanisms to define the Early Neolithic in the hinterland as a distinct cultural entity is not necessarily the most pertinent approach and that we should also look for functional or economic mechanisms (the whole technical system must then be analysed in detail without focusing on pottery production; Defranould et al, 2017). These interpretations are in keeping with the mobile and combined socio-economic organization of the environment of Cardial and Epicardial societies.…”

“…In reality, the identification of such interactions must rely on more complete and more all-encompassing methods, and extend beyond mere emphasis on a particular attribute. At the scale of the archaeological site, it is essential to take account of geoarchaeological data in order to approach the question of the coherency of the stratigraphic units: can the level in question be considered to be reliable or can it result from the compression of multiple occupation levels in a single stratigraphic unit as a consequence of post-depositional effects (Zilhão, 1993;Guilaine et al, 1993;Bernabeu Aub an et al, 2001;Biagi, 2003;Berger et al, 2014;Defranould et al, 2017)? At a regional level, it is also essential to take account of chronological and geographic distances between the different sites, but this is only rarely established.…”

“…BC (Beta-460504 e Table 1), which is consistent with the dates of some others hinterland sites, like Jean-Cros (see hereafter). They correspond to habitat types, with rare small pottery shards, sometimes decorated with regionally known standards (Defranould et al, 2017), several lithic elements and a lot of faunal remains, which are exclusively wild, for the moment.…”

Potential interactions between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers in the Western Mediterranean: The geochronological data revisited

“…Another example is the Gaban group in northern Italy which was initially understood to be the result of a process of acculturation [40], before stratigraphic issues were once again identified [41][42][43][44]. In France, it is widely accepted that the Roucadourian, which was presented as an example of indigenous Neolithization in the 1980s [45], is a hypothesis that must be definitively rejected, as it is based only on contexts devoid of stratigraphic reliability [46,47]. In North Africa, the hypothesis of the rooting of the Neolithic among the hunter-gatherer societies of the Capsian Mesolithic [48] must also be approached with caution in view of the low reliability of the stratigraphic contexts and available chronological data.…”