At the origins of Solutrean culture

an original culture

Discovered in September 1866, the site of Crot du Charnier in Solutré benefited from the integration of its first researchers into the scholarly circles of their time. Adrien Arcelin (1838-1904), the inventor of the site, is a historian-archivist from the École des Chartes. Henry Testot-Ferry (1826-1869) is, for his part, an experienced paleontologist and naturalist. Together, they submit the remains discovered on the site in the opinion of the paleontologist Édouard Lartet (1801-1871). The latter had reinforced the evidence of the existence of thefossil man, coexisting with extinct species, in 1860 in Aurignac (Haute Garonne) and especially in 1863-1865 in Madeleine (Dordogne). He had proposed, as early as 1861, the first timeline of times prehistoric studies based on the large mammals present among the remains. Édouard Lartet determines the fauna found by Adrien Arcelin and Henry Testot-Ferry confirming the antiquity of the site in First age of the Reindeer or to the last part of glacial times.

At the same time, Adrien Arcelin and Henry Testot-Ferry contacted other researchers in prehistory: Gabriel de Mortillet (1821-1898) from the newly established Museums of National Antiquities (1867), English Sir John Lubbock or regional researchers such asErnest Chantre (1843 – 1924), curator of the Lyon Museum. They also make the site known on the occasion of international congresses (Norwich, 1868) and publications in scholarly journals: Solutré becomes a reference for the entire scientific community.

In 1869, when Gabriel de Mortillet established a new chronological system based on theevolution of artifacts and industries of Prehistory from reference sites, he prefers Solutré to Laugerie-Haute (Dordogne), although discovered earlier, to become the eponymous site of “ the time of Solutré ". Flint points, called bay leaves, discovered in large numbers on the site, become markers of this period, named in 1872 “ the Solutrean ».

stone goldsmiths 

 bay leaves are foliaceous (leaf-shaped) points, oval to diamond-shaped, often symmetrical and cut on both sides. They appear in the middle phase of Solutrean and persist in its recent phase. Their manufacture requires seasoned know-how and many years of practice. size  hard rocks. Cut from large thinned flakes with strikers made of hard plant wood or deer antler (direct organic percussion), their shape and surfaces are regularized by a retouch flat, parallel and covering, often made by pressure with blunt antler tips. This Solutrean retouch also applies to domestic tools, perhaps with a more aesthetic than functional. Technically overinvested, the manufacturing of Solutrean tools is very demanding.

This requirement also comes into play in the choice of raw materials by the Solutrean tailors: from flint homogeneous of good quality is essential for the manufacture of tools. Occasionally the Solutreans practiced preparatory heating with flint, in order to improve the knapping ability of the material.

In addition to the quality adapted to the size, aesthetic criteria or symbolic sometimes prevail in the choice of raw materials, as suggested by a few bay leaves in rock crystal (hyaline quartz) in the Solutré series or other Solutrean sites (liveyre cave in Dordogne, Le Placard in Charente, Saulges caves in Mayenne, or the Figuier shelter in Ardèche).

The dimensions of bay leaves indicate three types of use:

• the smallest (3 to 5 cm) are elements of light projectile frames, perhaps arrowheads,
• medium-sized examples (6 to 12 cm) have the weight required to arm larger projectiles: assegais, projected by means of propellants, 
• the largest (more than 14 cm) were used as hunting or butcher knives.

Certain large sites, close to deposits of good quality raw materials, were used to manufacture bay leaves large: Les Maîtreaux in Indre-et-Loire, Pech de la Boissière, the Doline de Creysse in Dordogne. THE very large dimensions of certain specimens, larger than 20 cm, seem incompatible with their use. The most spectacular of these aberrant technical feats is a series of 17 laurel leaves of exceptional size discovered in 1874 in Volgu in Saône-et-Loire. The largest reaches 34,2 cm in length and is located at the Musée Vivant-Denon in Chalon-sur-Saône. In the absence of a possible functional use (the leaves would break), these objects are given a value of signe within Solutrean communities. The high technical quality of these objects signals the emergence of a specialized crafts and a distribution of work within human groups.

The Solutrean in space and time

Geographical and climatic framework of the Solutrean

The rise of Solutrean is brief and circumscribed around the Last Glacial Maximum, around 24 years before present. This culture only spans a few millennia, between 000 and 26 years before present. The extension of continental glaciers and the drop in sea levels are then at their maximum. THE temperatures averages are 10 to 15 degrees lower than current seasonal averages. The climate is very cold et laughed at. Open steppe landscapes are characterized by cold fauna: reindeer, mammoth, rhinoceros, musk oxen…

Limited in space, the Solutrean develops in western European Finistère, contained by the Rhone furrow to the east, from the Paris basin to the Mediterranean rim, from the Ardèche valley to the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. To the west, the Solutrean territories meet the Atlantic Ocean, from Portugal and the peripheral valleys of the Spanish Meseta, passing through Cantabria and western Aquitaine to Mayenne. Beyond the natural border of the Rhône and the Saône, the glaciers Alpine and Jura regions prohibit trade towards the east where other cultural traditions.

Chronological framework

Le Solutrean is divided into three major evolutionary phases, characterized by hunting weapons.

• The last phases of the Gravettian, between 33 and 000 before the present, saw the first examples of flat-faced points which will become characteristic of the ancient Solutrean, from 26 to 000 before the present.
• The middle phase, from 25 to 000 BCE, is characterized by bifacial bay leaves, while the recent period, between 23 and 500 before the present, sees the appearance of notched points, retouched on one or two sides, and willow leaves in central Aquitaine.
• A recently evolved stage only exists in the Iberian Peninsula, where late Solutrean traditions and other types survive: finned points, laurel leaves with concave bases.

The bone industry (spears, pierced sticks, smoothers, etc.) Solutrean is scarce and without originality. The first ones thruster hooks in reindeer antler (Combe-Saunière, Dordogne) and the first eye needles from Western Europe appear in the equipment of the Solutreans.

Solutrean artistic witnesses

 decorated objects are regularly present. Although their decor is quite crude, series ofnotches peripherals orincisions parallel, sometimes arranged in rhythmic series, animate the surfaces of domestic tools or indeterminate bone fragments. Elements of set, in teeth or shells, bear witness to supply circuits from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.
Several examples testify to the production of figures stone in Solutré or in Périgord (muskox from Laugerie-Haute). Cave art, not very abundant, including parietal blocks with animal decoration at Roc-de-Sers in Charente or at Fourneau-du-Diable in Dordogne. Well represented in the Ardèche gorges (Oulen, le Figuier, Chabot, La Tête-du-Lion), in Mayenne (Mayenne-Sciences, Margot cave), in Cantabria (Altamira, Chufin, ), the Solutrean figurations feature silhouettes with plump bellies, small heads and short limbs (style 3 by André Leroi-Gourhan). They announce the parietal art of Lascaux, the latest dating of which suggests a Solutrean or Badegoulian age, 23 to 000 before the present, linking them to future artistic traditions of the Magdalenian between 19 and 500 before the present.

Habitat

The Solutrean habitat is also known as rock shelter, such as on the sites of Roc-de-Sers in Charente, Fourneau du Diable in Périgord or Salpetrière in Gard, possibly supplemented with paving or built structures, only in the form of outdoor camp, as in Montaut, in the Landes, or Fressignes in Indre-et-Loire. The first excavations at Solutré (1866-1869), unfortunately imprecise, described structures ofcircular habitat arranged in pits in the ground.

scattered human remains

Gap in documentation or result of funerary practices not allowing the preservation of the bodies, no burial definitely intentional, nor no skeleton complete are not known for the Solutrean. THE scattered human remains (isolated teeth, mandibles, cranial fragments and rare post-cranial elements, as well as a single complete skull and a tibia at Parpallo in Spain) do not allow us to consider the physical characteristics Solutreans, who nevertheless fit among the Homo sapiens Europeans of theice age from which they do not seem different.