Abstract
The archeological record of La Roche-à-Pierrot (France) is central to debates on the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. To this day, it is the only site to have provided a relatively complete Neandertal skeleton associated with an industry identified as transitional, the Châtelperronian, which had been attributed until then to <em>Homo sapiens</em>. The site was the subject of several excavation campaigns led by F. Lévêque in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and ongoing fieldwork resumed in 2013. Spatial representations and statistical analyses of the original excavation data are of invaluable help in assessing the coherence of the first archeological stratigraphy established in the 1970s. A 3D reconstruction of Lévêque’s spit record was developed for exploratory purposes, based on reassessment of the faunal collection and completed by information recorded in the excavation notebooks filled out by Lévêque’s team. It was then used in order to evaluate the feasibility of modeling the data recorded during the first excavations. Geovisualization tools, associated with appropriate 3D spatial statistics using the Queen contiguity applied to the archeological sequence, such as the similarity and coherence indices, provided an understanding of the spatial inconsistencies in the first archeological sequence, as well as revealed the spatial organization (geometry) of the archeostratigraphic units. The resulting interactive visualization application provides researchers with a new tool to explore the stratigraphic units spatially, as well as according to their indices. Where inconsistencies are observed, use of similarity and coherence indices allows discussion of any biases potentially related to topography, spatial heterogeneity of the deposits (facies), excavation history, or primary data acquisition/recording. Such spatial analyses contribute to a better understanding of site formation processes and provide novel means to explore archival information interactively, as well as to produce models including data from old and new excavations on the same site.
Highlights
The site of La Roche-à-Pierrot in Saint-Césaire (France) is central to one of the most keenly-debated topics in paleoanthropology and Paleolithic archeology: the disappearance of Neandertals and their replacement by Homo sapiens in Eurasia during the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition period (e.g. Zilhão and d’Errico 1999; Mellars 2004; Talamo et al 2020)
2.3 3D COMPUTATION OF INDICES FOR BETTER DETECTION OF STRATIGRAPHIC INCONSISTENCIES AND CROSS-LAYER TRANSITIONS Spatial analysis can provide tools for a better understanding of where inconsistencies are located and we proposed to adapt local measurements of spatial association (Anselin 2020) to stratigraphy, i.e. to a 3D structure
The tools developed in this research provide a new descriptive and analytical approach for investigating archeological data retrieved from archives by 3D georeferenced visualization of primary recordings and by computing spatial statistics using the Queen contiguity of the archeological sequence. Computation of both the similarity and coherence indices allows the geometry of the deposits and spatial inconsistencies to be outlined and discussed in light of the original archeostratigraphic model of the site, as illustrated here with La Roche-à-Pierrot
Summary
The site of La Roche-à-Pierrot in Saint-Césaire (France) is central to one of the most keenly-debated topics in paleoanthropology and Paleolithic archeology: the disappearance of Neandertals and their replacement by Homo sapiens in Eurasia during the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition period (e.g. Zilhão and d’Errico 1999; Mellars 2004; Talamo et al 2020). New digital tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 3D geovisualization and photogrammetry hold a prominent place, given their increasing utility and ability to extract, study, and characterize the spatial dimension of archeological data (e.g. 3D models), especially on an intra-site scale (Discamps et al 2016; Dilena & Soressi 2020) Such tools can be applied to archival documentation (e.g. photographs, maps, drawings) and stratigraphic excavation sequences, and are useful to complement the use of classical spatial statistics or spatial taphonomy for interpreting Pleistocene palimpsests and thereby test site integrity (Discamps et al 2019). Digital archeology and GIS allow complex spatial statistical analyses to be performed based on 2D or 3D data for a better understanding of site formation processes, whether anthropogenic or natural
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
