The first human occupations in southwestern France: A revised summary twenty years after the Abbeville/Saint Riquier colloquium

Abstract

At the Abbeville/Saint Riquier colloquium, two regional syntheses for southwestern France were proposed. One discussed the northern Aquitaine Basin ( Delpech et al., 1995), the other the southern basin of the Garonne and the Pyrenean Piedmont ( Jaubert and Servelle, 1996). Since then, research has focused on the classic sequences of Barbas I, La Micoque and Coudoulous I, or on little published sites, such as Lanne-Darré on the Lannemezan plateau ( Colonge, 2005a; Colonge and Texier, 2005). Numerous rescue operations, many still in progress and thus only partially published, have also been conducted in recent years, mainly in geographic zones with diverse pedosedimentary contexts: the Isle Valley (Champ des Débats ( Brenet and Folgado, 1998), the Midi Toulousain and the middle Adour Basin (Colonge, Lelouvier, Bertran and collaborators). Several university theses have also fully or partially addressed this region ( Turq, 1992; Millet, 2001; Mourre, 2003; Jarry and Brenet, in progress). These works concerning the first occupations in this region, up until OIS 9 when Middle Paleolithic industries become fully developed, allow revision of the ancient assemblages and presentation of a general synthesis of these industries.