Ressources en silex au Paléolithique supérieur dans le Massif central : réseaux locaux et approvisionnements lointains revisités

The southern French Massif Central has been considered a hostile land for human populations during interglacial and inter-stadial times but has for decades been a privileged field for the study of human movement. Once believed to be devoid of flint nodules suitable for blade production, this region in fact shows an unsuspected wealth of exploitable materials suitable for stone tool production. Although it is true that primary outcrops of flint are few and have restricted surface exposures they are however, now well characterized. Detrital formations coming from the old alluviums of the Loire, Allier and Truyère rivers also supply an abundant stock of geo-materials that were also exploited during the various occupation phases of the region. A renewed methodology based on the principle of an evolutionary chain of silicification, well proven for the Middle Palaeolithic, was applied exhaustively to three archaeological series belonging to the Upper Palaeolithic ; the lithic assemblages of Chauvet cave in the Ardèche, the Proto-Magdalenian of Le Blot rockshelter and the Badegoulian of Le Rond-du-Barry cave both in Haute-Loire. Preliminary results do not confirm the previous observations for the sources of lithic raw materials first proposed in the 1980s for Upper Palaeolithic sites in the Massif Central. Exploitation behaviours for the supply of raw materials vary in accordance with the temporal differences in the cultures. In Chauvet cave, there is a wider acquisition zone for the lithic artefacts compared with that commonly attributed to the Middle Palaeolithic of the Ardèche. The Proto-Magdalenian of le Blot rockshelter in the Massif Central shows that entire flint nodules were transported to the site from the south-west margins of the Paris Basin (Indre-et-Loire and Loir-et-Cher), more than 250 km distant from the Velay site. This suggests that excursions were made into territories further afield than those normally frequented. The Badegoulian occupation of le Rond-du-Barry exploited a local lithic spectrum similar to the one studied at the adjacent Middle Palaeolithic Sainte-Anne I cave site. However, to the local and semi local material is added a variable component of flint from a very distant locality (Loir-et-Cher), illustrating an understanding of the resources available from two distinct and separate environments and planned exploitation of a vast territory.