Le site de plein air de l’Abbaye (La Romaine, Haute-Saône, France) : un nouveau jalon Gravettien en Franche-Comté

The Franche-Comté region, like the northeastern part of France, contains few Early Upper Palaeolithic sites. Surveys carried out in the 1980s revealed the site of l’Abbaye, which was subject to an extensive survey in 2010 as part of a wider research program focused on gathering information on and knowledge of the Palaeolithic in this region. The lithic assemblage recovered at l’Abbaye is limited but does reveal several particularities related to the local raw materials used: thin flint slabs sourced from the Mont-les-Étrelles tertiary basin. The archaeological material is located within a hydromorphic horizon of tundra gley (level F), underlying three layers that exhibit deep fissures due to frost cracking (gelifluction) that develops from the top of layer D. 80 kilometres from the site, in Ajoie, Switzerland, cryoturbations similar to those found at l’Abbaye are indicative of a cold climate of the Heinrich I type.

The shaping of the flint slabs used by knappers at l’Abbaye is summarized by the development of a coarse anterior crest using soft stone percussion, as well as the use of soft organic hammers for laminar production. This process is not very consistent and generates slender, short, and straight unipolar products. Once calibrated by this laminar production, the cores were probably subjected to successive core tablets removals in order to reduce their length and then produce bladelets via bipolar débitage using a soft stone hammer. Bladelets were also produced at the expense of carinated burins and polyhedral burins. These three distinct processes of laminar production thus produced bladelets with varied morphologies. The lithic industry of l’Abbaye does not exhibit typical ‘fossiles directeurs’, therefore, its chrono-cultural attribution must be assessed carefully. However, some typo-technological elements show similarities with Azé (Camping de Rizerolles) and La Vigne Brun (OP 10) in Saône-et-Loire and Massif Central respectively, which could demonstrate the existence of an Early Gravettian hitherto unknown in Franche-Comté. Dating on the bone and teeth of Bison priscus recovered from the site was carried out, but unfortunately proved to be unusable due to the absence of preserved collagen.