The Montclus rock shelter (Gard) and the continuity hypothesis between 1st and 2nd Mesolithic in Southern France

Abstract

International audienc

What relations between North Africa and Europe in the early holocene?

“…Whatever the case, in 1971, Rozoy went on to propose the existence of a transitional facies between the First and Second Mesolithic in southern France: the "Sauveterrien à trapezes" (Rozoy, 1971), originally identified by Escalon de Fonton, based on data from Layers 15 and 16 at the site of Montclus (Gard;Escalon de Fonton, 1966). While it has since been demonstrated that this hypothesis was based on the mixing of two occupations from very distinct time periods, and that the site of Montclus cannot therefore support this hypothesis (Perrin and Defranould, 2016), it clearly reflects the desire to search for permanent occupations and local developments.…”

Untitled

“…Quoi qu'il en soit, c'est ainsi que J.-G. Rozoy propose en 1971 l'existence d'un faciès de transition entre Premier et Second Mésolithique dans le sud de la France, le « Sauveterrien à trapèzes » (Rozoy, 1971), originellement identifié par M. Escalon de Fonton à partir des données des couches 15 et 16 du site de Montclus (Gard; Escalon de Fonton, 1966). Si nous avons depuis démontré que cette hypothèse reposait sur le mélange de deux occupations bien distinctes dans le temps et qu'elle ne pouvait donc être soutenue par le site de Montclus (Perrin et Defranould, 2016), elle témoigne bien de la volonté d'une recherche de permanences d'occupations et d'évolutions locales.…”

“…Whatever the case, in 1971, Rozoy went on to propose the existence of a transitional facies between the First and Second Mesolithic in southern France: the "Sauveterrien à trapezes" (Rozoy, 1971), originally identified by Escalon de Fonton, based on data from Layers 15 and 16 at the site of Montclus (Gard; Escalon de Fonton, 1966). While it has since been demonstrated that this hypothesis was based on the mixing of two occupations from very distinct time periods, and that the site of Montclus cannot therefore support this hypothesis (Perrin and Defranould, 2016), it clearly reflects the desire to search for permanent occupations and local developments.…”

Global Processes, Regional Dynamics?

“…For the northern part of the studied area, the period is traditionally integrated into a so-called '2 nd Mesolithic', and it has been characterized by the presence of trapezoidal arrow points in archaeological assemblages. This characteristic lithic industry is the consequence of blades obtained from the knapping of big cores, and a successive modification of laminar supports (Perrin, Defranould 2016). The distribution of sites for this technocomplex is represented in Supplementary Material 2 at http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4312/dp.47.10.…”