Magen O'Farrell

It is acknowledged the human evolution is related to biological responses to environmental pressures and constraints: the more humans evolve, the more they choose, select and transport, and the less they succumb to the domination of environmental constraints. Studies of raw material sources are nearly as old as the discipline of archaeology. The objective of the first authors was essentially to identify rare stones with a distant origin, such as polished stones and metamorphic or volcanic rocks (obsidian). The "mineral" or "lithic" parameter is therefore opposed to the mobility of human groups who, by definition, belong to the biological sphere. The mobility patterns of human groups must be replaced in the context of their schéma opératoire(s). A permanent relationship is implied between the natural environment and the needs of the human group. In order to investigate the subject of raw materials there is already an agreement on the order of priorities: identification of RM sources, generally outcrops; estimation of the quantity or density of this RM and whether the outcrops can be qualified as numerous, rare, variable, monotonous, etc. It is then necessary to determine the conditions of their accessibility, which could have varied in function of marine or lake regressions and transgressions, the advance of continental or alpine glaciers, the sedimentation or erosion of valleys and slopes or variations in the vegetal cover. Though these factors are well known, they are difficult to define and evaluate.

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.

Résumé/Abstract Une collection de rennes du Canada (ou Caribou; Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus), à la fois très importante et représentative en terme d'âge, est analysée pour préciser la relation entre les différentes mesures de la hauteur de la couronne dentaire et l ...