Paleolithic Site Survey in the French Pyrenees

The Mid-Pyrenees area of southern France is well known for its cave art and cave habitation sites dating to the Magdalenian period, ca. 15-11,000 years ago-Niaux, Les Trois Frères, Le Mas d'Azil, and others. In fact, some of the most recent pioneering work on the archaeology of painted caves has been done here, such as pigment compositional analyses and some of the first direct dating (using AMS) of the paintings themselves. Little is known, however, about the ways in which the "Magdalenians" used the regional landscape outside of the caves, and the wider social geographies within which art-making and art-using flourished are poorly understood.

With funding from the Stahl Endowment and the National Science Foundation (Anthropology Exploratory Research Grant #SBR 931370), and with permissions from the Conseil Superieur de la Recherche Archeologique and the Service Regional de l'Archeologie des Mid-Pyrenees, Professor Meg Conkey coordinated a three-week survey in June and July 1993 to explore systematically both the possibilities for locating open air sites and the feasibility for systematic survey in the higher altitudes (ca. 600-800+ meters) where there are several known Magdalenian cave sites. She was joined in the field by geographer and Archaeological Research Facility Associate, Dr. Les Rowntree, and by their French collaborator, Dr. Valerie Andrieu (Lab. de Botanique Historique et Palynologique, Marseille). Dr. Andrieu has located several important paleolakes for coring that have and can yield valuable paleoclimatic information for the region during "Magdalenian times." Future cores are expected to include paleoentomological (fossil insect) data as well.

In addition to the systematic survey of selected transects in the region, Conkey and Rowntree mapped current agricultural land use to assess future accessibility to archaeological remains in plowed fields. Systematic survey at thirty-two selected plowed locations (mostly corn and sunflower fields) yielded (at more than eight locations) distinctive Upper Paleolithic (blade industry) stone artifacts, and human-modified flint, as well as samples of various types of flint raw material. While Conkey notes that it is premature to call any of these locations "sites," she feels that the finds certainly warrant returning to the region for a longer and more labor-intensive survey season, hopefully in 1994.