Bad luck de l'Azé

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Skull of a Neanderthal child from the Pech de l'Azé, in the Smithsonian Museum

Pech de l'Azé is an archaeological and paleoanthropological archaeological site in the municipality of Carsac in the French department of Dordogne . Its four sites are of great importance for the exploration of the Early Paleolithic and the subsequent Middle Paleolithic .

Geographical location

Pech de l'Azé, (German "Eselshügel") often referred to as Pech de l'Aze or just Pech , is a hill on the left above the small dry valley of la Font de Farges , also Ruisseau de Farge , which flows into the Enéa , a right tributary of the Dordogne . The hill is crowned by a limestone wall from the Coniacium , at the feet of which are the four sites. Pech I, also the cave of Pech de l'Azé, is the oldest known cave in the Périgord with prehistoric finds, Pech II is the rear exit of the cave, which runs approximately SE-NW. Pech III is a smaller cave 30 meters west of Pech II and Pech IV is a collapsed former abri 80 meters down the valley from Pech I. The sites are about 130 meters above sea level, with the now disused railway line running directly to your right Sarlat - Carsac and the D 704.

History

Pech I was discovered by F. Jouannet in 1815 and described in 1818. In the following years , numerous archaeologists visited the cave, including Édouard Lartet and Henry Christy in 1863. Excavations were carried out in 1908 by Denis Peyrony , in 1929 by Raymond Vaufrey , in 1948 by François Bordes and in 1951 by Maurice Bourgon . It was Bordes and Bourgon who found the second access, Pech II. Pech II consists of two parts, the cave part (Pech IIa) and an abri (Pech IIb) in front of it. Intensive research by Bordes finally led to the discovery of Pech III and Pech IV.

Sites

Bad luck I.

The oldest layers in the Pech I cave have been classified as belonging to the Mindel-Riss interglacial and contain stone tools from the Acheuléen . This is followed by layers from the Riss Ice Age and from the Würm Ice Age (Würm II - layers 3 to 7).

Bad luck II

The remains of fireplaces have been found in Pech II . The hearths consist of depressions in the ground, sometimes surrounded by reddened stones, in the depressions there is burnt ground and black ash. A carved bone was discovered in one of the layers from the Acheuleans. At higher elevations from the Moustérien (Moustérien de tradition acheuléenne, MTA) several pieces of iron ocher and manganese dioxide were found. The chunks show traces of trimming, some were even formed directly into "writing chalk". In one of these positions, Peyrony and L. Capitan came across the crushed skull of a Neanderthal child less than four years old . Pech II was mainly visited in Moustérien at the beginning of the last Ice Age .

According to Bordes, Pech II (Abri) shows the following structure (from hanging wall to lying ):

According to Bordes, the deep layers are pre-Mousterian and probably come from the middle Acheuléen. Rhinoceros mercki still indicates moderate climatic conditions.

Dating by means of the uranium decay series and by means of ESR now showed that Pech II was settled between OIS 6 to 3, ie from the end of the Riss ice age around 150,000 to the beginning of Würm II around 60,000 years ago BP. The lower layers 5 to 9 are therefore correlated with the OIS 6, the higher layers 2 to 4 from the Würm II are located between the middle OIS 5 ( Eemium ) and OIS 3. Layers 3 and 4 contain typical Moustérien and toothed Moustérien, layer 2 pure Moustérien.

Bad luck III

The sequence in Pech III is very similar to that in Pech II. It has seven levels from the Moustérien; among which were Rhinocerosknochen ( Rhinoceros mercki ) and an even deeper 300,000 years old layer of the Acheulean. Bordes specifies the following sequence:

  • Cover.
  • Reddish clayey sand with larger limestone lumps. Corresponds to layers 6 to 8 of Pech II with analogue artefacts and fauna.
  • Location with rounded lumps of lime. Corresponds to location 9, also with a comparable fauna.
  • Gray, sterile clay layer.

Bad luck IV

Pech IV is a very important site of the Moustérien. In front of a rock wall is a rubble fan in which François Bordes was able to identify more than twenty archaeological levels in his investigations carried out from 1970 to 1977. The site had been subjected to a meticulous excavation between 1999 and 2002 by Harold L. Dibble and Shannon McPherron , American Neanderthal specialists, which was then continued by an international team.

The Moustérien in Pech IV is built below the collapsed boulders of a former demolition as follows (from young to old):

  • Moustérien de Tradition acheuléenne (MTA - late Moustérien) - layers G, F, E and D
  • Typical Moustérien - Layers I and H
  • Asinipodien - Layer J
  • Typical Moustérien - layers X, Y and Z

The lowest layer (layers X, Y and Z) contains an unusually large number of limited, lens-like hearths and burnt stone artifacts for a site inhabited by Neanderthals. The Asinipodia above (layer J, in particular the levels J3a and J3b) is a very special stone tool industry consisting of a large number of very small artifacts, which are combined with large artifacts (cuts and stone cores). This industry is only known from Pech IV so far.

The following stone tools were found in Pech IV:

The Abri Pech IV, which collapsed later, is likely to have been visited and inhabited by Neanderthals occasionally during the Würm glacial period between 90,000 and 80,000 to 35,000 years BP, more permanently probably during the winter half-year. This is proven by isolated Neanderthals' tooth finds .

Web links

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  • Delluc, B. & G., Roussot, A. & Roussot-Larroque, J .: Connaître la préhistoire en Périgord . Sud Ouest, 1990, ISBN 2-87901-048-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bordes, F. & Bourgon, M .: Le gisement du Pech-de l'Azé-Nord. Prize de date et observations préliminaires . In: Bull. Soc. prehist. fr., n ° 6-7-8 . 1950, p. 381-383 .
  2. ↑ Schwarcz, H. & Blackwell, B .: 230 Th / 234 U age of a Mousterian site in France . In: Science, 231 . 1983, p. 236-237 .
  3. ↑ Grün, R., Mellars, P. & Laville, H .: ESR chronology of a 100,000-year archeological sequence at Pech de l'Azé II, France . In: Antiquity, 65 . 1991, p. 544-551 .
  4. ↑ Grün, R., McCulloch, M. & Mortimer, G .: Detailed mass spectrometric U-series analyzes of two teeth from the archaeological site of Pech de l'Azé II: implications for uranium migration and dating . In: Journal of Archaeological Science, 26 (10) . 1999, p. 1301-1310 .
  5. ^ Bordes, François: Le gisement du Pech de l'Azé IV: Note préliminaire . In: Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 2 . 1975, p. 293-308 .


Coordinates: 44 ° 51 ′ 30 ″  N , 1 ° 15 ′ 12 ″  E