Acquisition et exploitation des ressources animales et lithiques sur le site Moustérien de Mirefleurs (Puy-de-Dôme)

Abstract

The Mousterian open air site of Mirefleurs is located on a versant dominated by a basaltic flow, in the Allier valley (Fig. 1). Since 1970's, the site has been digged several times. This paper presents the results of several diggs located in different parts of the site. The stratigraphic data result from an intervention realized in 2003. The site of Mirefleurs delivered a lithic industry and a plentiful fauna, disrupted in various times by solifluxion (Fig. 3). Fauna is widely dominated by Horse, which shows more affinities with Equus caballus germanicus than with the shape of the upper Palaeolithic Equus caballus gallicus (Prat, 1968; Guadelli, 1987) (Tables 3 to 32). The characteristics of this animal indicate an age near the end of isotopic stage 3, corresponding at a cold and dry environment. The AMS datations realized on horse bones give an age of 37,700±2600 BP and 28,210±820 BP. The absence of marks of carnivores on the bones lets suppose an unimportant participation of these last ones and a human origin in the implementation of this accumulation of bones. It seems that horses have been killed without any selection and with an important waste. This behaviour would explain the low representation of males, the strong representation of the adults and the small quantity of notches observed on bones. Lithic industry indicates a local exploitation of raw materials (Table 44). Discoïde and centripetal recurrent débitage are dominant (Figs. 9–11). Blanks are mostly retouched in different kinds of scrapers (Figs. 12 and 13). A second chaîne opératoire concerns flint tablets, which are retouched in some bifacial scrapers. Technological and typological characteristics of this lithic industry allow an attribution to Quina Mousterian (Niederlander et al., 1956; Combier, 1967; Le Tensorer, 1978).