Art mobilier au Paléolithique supérieur en Roumanie

Recent approaches on ancient artifacts collections and very recent discoveries enable a detailed discussion (repertory, typology, technology, radiocarbon dates etc.) on the relative rare evidence of portable art - decorated and so-called non utilitarian objects - in the Romanian Upper Paleolithic (Aurignacian and Eastern Gravettian, about 30-13 kyr BP). The artifacts were discovered in 10 open air and cave sites especially from Moldavia and Transylvania. Most of the pieces (15) are attributed to the Eastern Gravettian and 4 belong to the Aurignacian. The types identified are: spear points in bone and roe-deer antler; bâtons percés worked in wolf and horse long bones or in roe-deer antler; decorated horse metapod; lithic objects in quartzite and graphite as well as bone and antler pieces having linear engraved decoration or notches; decorated roe-deer antler harpoon; ivory mammoth tusk fragment; fossil mollusks of Congeria species. Some artifacts are of significant importance for the phenomenon of art and of prehistoric technology in these regions; in this point of view we have to mention the fragment of bone discovered in 1998 with the engraved image of an animal's foot from Piatra Neamt, Neamt County. Another exceptional artifact is the fragment of mammoth tusk from Lespezi, Bacau County, dated at around 18 kyr showing the debitage traces on the proximal part that prove the using of notching and grooving technique and probably of transverse sawing with fiber; this should be the oldest situation of use of such a technique solution in this part of Europe. Taking into account the extreme rarity of ivory artifacts in the Upper Paleolithic of Romania it is probably that the provenance of the objects can be found in the near territories of Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Ukraine, Republic of Moldavia, Russia) where the manufacture and use of such artifacts was common in that epoch. The study contributes essentially to the definition in actual terms of typology and technology of oldest portable art objects from Romania as material expression of first spiritual manifestations of hunter-gatherer communities and allowed to integrate the data of the phenomenon in the South-East and Central European context.