New data from the Middle Palaeolithic Cotencher cave (Swiss Jura): site formation, environment, and chronology

Judit Deák,Marie-Isabelle Cattin,Jean-Christophe Castel,Frank Preusser,François-Xavier Chauvière

doi:10.5194/egqsj-67-41-2019

Judit Deák, Marie-Isabelle Cattin + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5194/egqsj-67-41-2019

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Abstract

Abstract. Cotencher cave is one of the oldest Palaeolithic sites of Switzerland and is known for its rich faunal and Mousterian artefacts, the latter suggesting one or several passages of Neanderthal hunter–gatherer tribes. This interdisciplinary study summarises novel data concerning site formation processes and anthropic attendance of the site. While the lithic artefacts indicate tool production at the site, the faunal remains do not yield any evidence of a link to human occupation. The sedimentary sequence permits us to unravel several important environmental changes that occurred during the Late Pleistocene. The presence of a local glacier around 70 ka (Marine Isotope Stage, MIS 4) is revealed followed by ice-free conditions characterised by alternating soil formation processes and landscape destabilisation during MIS 3. Solifluction processes suggesting recurrent frozen ground were responsible for the displacements of part of the artefacts and faunal remains. Evidence of local glacier development around 36 ka is related to the particular geomorphological conditions of the studied region and shed new light on the complexity of glacier dynamics. The recognition and dating of recurrent hostile glacier landscapes might contribute to understanding the reasons for the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic attendance hiatuses known in the studied region.

Highlights

While Alpine glaciers extended several times onto the Swiss Plateau during the Pleistocene (Ivy-Ochs et al, 2008; Preusser et al, 2011), the Jura Mountains were recurrently covered by local and sometimes Alpine ice bodies (Campy, 1992; Graf et al, 2007; Buoncristiani and Campy, 2011)
As recognised already by former scholars in the first quarter of the twentieth century (Dubois and Stehlin, 1932/1933) the sedimentary sequence of the Cotencher cave is an outstanding record of the environmental changes that occurred during the Late Pleistocene
The interdisciplinary study of the sedimentary fill of Cotencher cave permitted us to unravel and date several significant environmental changes encoded in these deposits

Summary

Introduction

While Alpine glaciers extended several times onto the Swiss Plateau during the Pleistocene (Ivy-Ochs et al, 2008; Preusser et al, 2011), the Jura Mountains were recurrently covered by local and sometimes Alpine ice bodies (Campy, 1992; Graf et al, 2007; Buoncristiani and Campy, 2011). A few records of Pleistocene environmental change are available from the Swiss Alpine foreland and in the Jura Mountains for the time before the LGM (Ivy-Ochs et al, 2008; Preusser et al, 2011; Heiri et al, 2014; Cupillard et al, 2015). Cave and rock shelter deposits have the potential to provide valuable additional information in this context due to their relatively protected setting compared to potentially more eroding open-air sites. These landscape elements were places of human activity, and geoarchaeological studies aim at understanding the processes behind site formation (Goldberg and Macphail, 2006). Understanding these processes and their environmental causes is challenging and often performed within interdisciplinary investigations (e.g. Goldberg et al, 2003; Angelucci et al, 2013; Boschian et al, 2017)

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