Abstract
The end of the Palaeolithic represents one of the least-known periods in the history of western Africa, both in terms of its chronology and the identification of cultural assemblages entities based on the typo-technical analyses of its industries. In this context, the site of Fatandi V offers new data to discuss the cultural pattern during the Late Stone Age in western Africa. Stratigraphic, taphonomical and sedimentological analyses show the succession of three sedimentary units. Several concentrations with rich lithic material were recognized. An in situ occupation, composed of bladelets, segments, and bladelet and flake cores, is confirmed while others concentrations of lithic materials have been more or less disturbed by erosion and pedogenic post-depositional processes. The sequence is well-dated from 12 convergent OSL dates. Thanks to the dating of the stratigraphic units and an OSL date from the layer (11,300–9,200 BCE [13.3–11.2 ka at 68%, 14.3–10.3 ka at 95%]), the artefacts are dated to the end of Pleistocene or Early Holocene. Palaeoenvironmental data suggest that the settlement took place within a mosaic environment and more precisely at the transition between the open landscape of savanna on the glacis and the plateau, and the increasingly densely-wooded alluvial corridor. These humid areas must have been particularly attractive during the dry season by virtue of their rich resources (raw materials, water, trees, and bushes). The Fatandi V site constitutes the first stratified site of the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in Senegal with both precise geochronological and palaeoenvironmental data. It complements perfectly the data already obtained in Mali and in the rest of western Africa, and thus constitutes a reference point for this period. In any case, the assemblage of Fatandi V, with its bladelets and segments and in the absence of ceramics and grinding material, fits with a cultural group using exclusively geometric armatures which strongly differs from another group characterized by the production of bifacial armatures, accompanied in its initial phase by ceramics (or stoneware) and grinding material.
Highlights
The present study provides new data from a recently discovered site, Fatandi V, to illustrate the complexity of late Palaeolithic cultural assemblages in western Africa, their chronology and the environmental context in which they evolved to the Neolithic
The Fatandi V site constitutes the first stratified site around the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in Senegal with both precise geochronological and palaeoenvironmental data. It perfectly complements the data already obtained in Mali and in the rest of western Africa, and constitutes a reference point for this period at the end of Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene
The assemblage of Fatandi V, with its bladelet debitages and segments and in the absence of ceramics and grinding material, is related to a group using exclusively geometric armatures, which strongly differs from another group characterized by the production of bifacial armatures, accompanied in its initial phase by ceramics and grinding material
Summary
In order to obtain chronological data for the site of Fatandi V, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating was performed This palaeodosimetric technique takes advantage of the grains of quartz present in sediments, which behave as a sort of stopwatch capable of recording the time elapsed since their last exposure to light [14]. The second (U2) starts in the area of the archaeological site and is thicker towards the north This unit is represented by whitish-grey/light ocre-colored silty-sand sediments, less clayey, and constitutes a sedimentary prism that seems to have formed in the opposite direction to the dominant slope of the current. Multiple statistical models were tested: the simple arithmetic average
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