Ludovic Slimak (ed.). Artisanats et territoires des chasseurs mousteriens de Champ Grand (Artisanats et Territoires 1).
Otte, Marcel
LUDOVIC SLIMAK (ed.). Artisanats et territoires des chasseurs
mousteriens de Champ Grand (Artisanats et Territoires 1). 432 pages,
numerous colour & b&w illustrations & tables. 2008. Aix-en-
Provence: Maison Mediterraneenne des Sciences de l'Homme;
978-2-9529587-0-7 paperback 50 [euro].
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This book is first of all an exceptionally beautiful artefact,
standing out among often drab and dull 'Palaeolithic'
publications. (For a preview, see http://artisanatset-territoires.mmsh.
univ-aix.fr/livres/pdf/ chap2.pdf). Superb enlargements of colour
photographs show (finally!) the true care given to stone tools, seen in
exquisite detail and displaying the raw material in its endless variety
of tone and texture. Certainly not a random choice, but it had to be
appreciated for its own merits, and given the stage it deserved.
The volume under review deals with a site on the upper Loire
excavated some time ago by Jean Combier but left largely unpublished.
Thus the documentation from the excavation is not as full as more recent
methods of recording have accustomed us to expect, which renders the
authors' exploit all the more impressive! They show for example
that different chaines operatoires were in simultaneous existence,
depending on raw materials or requirements. What would normally have
been taken as evidence for distinct 'traditions', along lines
so entrenched in French scholarship, is shown to reveal a panoply of
different strategies, always available, depending on circumstances, to
the same ethnic groups, be they 'Levalloisien' or
'Charentien'. The data point to a remarkably stable range of
activities which took place some 55 000 to 45 000 years ago, at the
beginning of the last glacial phase. An oval dwelling was carefully
built, showing once again that such social behaviour (shelter, transfer
of skills) predates by far the arrival of anatomically modern humans in
Europe. 'Territories', crossed to procure supplies, are well
established and defined, as the Neanderthal groups themselves may have
been too. Hunting targeted mainly horses and bovids. The reprises
observed at the extremities of tools (thinning achieved by opposed
retouching) betray the intensity of occupation, documented by the
frequency of re-hafting, a measure probably explained by the fact that
some raw materials were procured a long way away.
The essential novelty of Slimak's volume lies in its freedom
of tone in relation to the often stifling dogma prevalent in France when
it comes to the significance of the Mousterian 'facies'. The
authors note, in all honesty, that these already ancient models just do
not work in the case of Champ Grand (and perhaps, in my opinion, they
fail elsewhere too!). The work also shows that the notion of
'progress' or of change probably did not have the same
meaning, or the same importance for Mousterian communities as they do in
our anxious modern human societies. On the contrary, permanence seems to
have been a virtue! Yet another lesson offered by this handsome work ...
MARCEL OTTE
Service de Prehistoire, Universite de Liege, Belgium
(Email: Marcel.Otte@ulg.ac.be)
(Translated by Reviews Editor)
