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inria-00598460, version 1

The Reality of Neandertal Symbolic Behavior at the Grotte du Renne, Arcy-sur-Cure, France

Francois Caron () 12, Francesco D'Errico 34, Pierre Del Moral () 12, Frédéric Santos 3, João Zilhão 5

PLoS ONE 6, 6 (2011)

Résumé : Background: The question of whether symbolically mediated behavior is exclusive to modern humans or shared with anatomically archaic populations such as the Neandertals is hotly debated. At the Grotte du Renne, Arcy-sur-Cure, France, the Châtelperronian levels contain Neandertal remains and large numbers of personal ornaments, decorated bone tools and colorants, but it has been suggested that this association reflects intrusion of the symbolic artifacts from the overlying Protoaurignacian and/or of the Neandertal remains from the underlying Mousterian. Methodology/Principal Findings: We tested these hypotheses against the horizontal and vertical distributions of the various categories of diagnostic finds and statistically assessed the probability that the Châtelperronian levels are of mixed composition. Our results reject that the associations result from large or small scale, localized or generalized post-depositional displacement, and they imply that incomplete sample decontamination is the parsimonious explanation for the stratigraphic anomalies seen in the radiocarbon dating of the sequence. Conclusions/Significance: The symbolic artifacts in the Châtelperronian of the Grotte du Renne are indeed Neandertal material culture.

  • 1 :  ALEA (INRIA Bordeaux - Sud-Ouest)
  • INRIA – Université de Bordeaux – CNRS : UMR5251
  • 2 :  Institut de Mathématiques de Bordeaux (IMB)
  • CNRS : UMR5251 – Université Sciences et Technologies - Bordeaux I – Université Victor Segalen - Bordeaux II
  • 3 :  de la Préhistoire à l'Actuel, Cultures, Environnement, Anthropologie (PACEA)
  • CNRS : UMR5199 – Université Sciences et Technologies - Bordeaux I – Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
  • 4 :  Department of Archaeology
  • University of the Witwatersrand
  • 5 :  Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats [Barcelona] (ICREA)
  • ICREA – Universitat de Barcelona – Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació (FCRI)
  • Domaine : Statistiques/Applications
    Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Archéologie et Préhistoire
 
  • inria-00598460, version 1
  • oai:hal.inria.fr:inria-00598460
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  • Soumis le : Lundi 6 Juin 2011, 14:55:05
  • Dernière modification le : Mercredi 9 Novembre 2011, 10:35:07