Tayacias

Acheuleans

Age :	Stone Age - Old Paleolithic
Absolutely :	440,000 - 150,000 years ago

expansion

Europe - France , Germany , Czech Republic , Hungary , Levant and North Africa

Leitforms

Tayac tips

The Tayacien ( English : Tayacian ) is an archaeological culture of the Paleolithic , which is defined by the existence of Tayac tips. In Europe it forms the transition from the Acheuléen to the Moustérien . Characteristic for this is the lack of bifacial hand axes .

Research history and etymology

The Tayacien was set up in 1932 by Henri Breuil and Denis Peyrony . It refers to the artifact finds in layers 4 and 5 in La Micoque . The name of the culture is derived from the community name of the site - Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in the Dordogne department .

After the excavation work in Baume Bonne and in the Cave of Arago , Henry de Lumley defined the Tayacia in the 1970s as the period from the end of the Mindel-Riss interglacial to the end of the Riss glaciation . He named scrapers of the Quina type and drills as related industries .

However, the new reference profile is now the Grotte de Fontéchevade in the Charente department .

characterization

Type profile from La Micoque

The texture of the stone tools of the Tayaciens is not very demanding and hardly standardized, the cuts are irregular. In terms of time, it precedes the Levallois technique , which was previously also known as Clactonia . The stone tools already resemble the Moustérien in a certain way. Above all, scrapers (including many with Quina retouching) and numerous toothed ( French denticulés ) and notched stone tools ( encoches ) are encountered . Very atypical bifacial hand axes, which are very simple and also irregularly shaped, appear only in very rare exceptional cases. Rather, the very common Tayac tips are characteristic . These are characterized by two converging cutting edges, the perforation of which is caused by Clacton notches.

Related stone tools also come from Yabroudia in Syria .

Age

In view of its ancient characteristics, François Bordes saw the Tayacien as a preliminary stage of the Moustérie. Recent geological investigations and age dating assign the layers from the Tayacien to an age of 440,000 to 350,000 years. This corresponds to the oxygen isotope levels 11 and 10.

Sites

In Western Europe, the Tayacien was found next to the La Micoque type locality, the Grotte de Fontéchevade, the Cave of Arago, Baume Bonne, Combe Capelle , the Grotte d'Aldène and Mas de Caves (all in France). Some sites in Central Europe are close to the Tayacia, examples are Bilzingsleben in Thuringia, Kůlna in Moravia and Vértesszőlős in Hungary. In the Levant there are Bahsas in Lebanon, the Tabun Cave , Umm Qatafa ' and Yabrud . Tayacien also appears in North Africa , for example in Sidi Abderahmane near Casablanca in Morocco.

Critical consideration

The team around Harold L. Dibble subjected the Grotte de Fontéchevade to a fundamental overhaul from 1994 to 1998, during which they carried out new excavations and also re-analyzed the museum finds. It turned out that the two human finds of Tayacia ( Homo I and Homo II ), at 39,000 years ago, were much younger than previously assumed. According to their evaluation, practically the entire sediment content of the cave can be explained taphonomically. In their opinion, there are very few indications of an independent archaeological cultural stage in the Tayacia. So they recommend avoiding the term tayacia better in the future.

literature

Philip G. Chase et al .: New dates for the Fontéchevade (Charente, France) Homo remains . In: Journal of Human Evolution . tape 52 , 2007, p. 217-221 .
Philip G. Chase et al .: The Cave of Fontechavade: A New Investigation of the Site and its Paleoanthropological Implications . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008.
L. Hallam: Tayacian man from the cave of Fontechevade (Charente) . In: American Anthropologist . tape 50 (2) , 1948, pp. 365-367 .

Individual evidence

↑ C. Farizy: Tayacian . In: A. LeRoi Gourhan A., Dictionary of Pre-history 1029 Paris, Copeland L. The Tayacian of the Cordon Littoral, Ras Beirut, Lebanon, and its relations with other Tayacian sites in the Levant (ed.): Paléorient . Volume: 29 Number: 29-2, 2003, p. 87-107 .
↑ D. Peyrony: La Micoque, les fouilles recentes, leurs significations . In: Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française . tape 6 , 1938, pp. 257-288 .
↑ PG Chase, A. Debenath, HL Dibble and SP McPherron: The Cave of Fontéchevade: Recent Excavations and their Paleoanthropological Implications . Cambridge University Press, New York 2009, pp. 17-20 .
^ William L. Langer: An Encyclopedia of World History (5th ed.) . Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA 1972, ISBN 0-395-13592-3 , pp. 9 .
^ Harold L. Dibble et al.: Taphonomy and the Concept of Paleolithic Cultures: The Case of the Tayacian from Fontéchevade . In: PaleoAnthropology . 2006, p. 1-21 .
↑ Harold L. Dibble , SJP McPherron, P. Chase, WR Farrand and A. Debénath: Taphonomy and the concept of Paleolithic Cultures: The Case of the Tayacian from Fontéchevade . In: PaleoAnthropology . 2006, p. 1-21 .

[1] C. Farizy: Tayacian . In: A. LeRoi Gourhan A., Dictionary of Pre-history 1029 Paris, Copeland L. The Tayacian of the Cordon Littoral, Ras Beirut, Lebanon, and its relations with other Tayacian sites in the Levant (ed.): Paléorient . Volume: 29 Number: 29-2, 2003, p. 87-107 .

[2] D. Peyrony: La Micoque, les fouilles recentes, leurs significations . In: Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française . tape 6 , 1938, pp. 257-288 .

[3] PG Chase, A. Debenath, HL Dibble and SP McPherron: The Cave of Fontéchevade: Recent Excavations and their Paleoanthropological Implications . Cambridge University Press, New York 2009, pp. 17-20 .

[4] William L. Langer: An Encyclopedia of World History (5th ed.) . Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA 1972, ISBN 0-395-13592-3 , pp. 9 .

[5] Harold L. Dibble et al.: Taphonomy and the Concept of Paleolithic Cultures: The Case of the Tayacian from Fontéchevade . In: PaleoAnthropology . 2006, p. 1-21 .

[6] Harold L. Dibble , SJP McPherron, P. Chase, WR Farrand and A. Debénath: Taphonomy and the concept of Paleolithic Cultures: The Case of the Tayacian from Fontéchevade . In: PaleoAnthropology . 2006, p. 1-21 .