Christophe Falguères

CNRS

To appear in: Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa, Volume 1, chapter 49. Editors: Amanuel Beyin, David K. Wright, Jayne Wilkins, and Deborah I. Olszewski. Publisher: Springer Nature, Cham, Switzerland. ISBN-13: 978-3031202896

Des analyses par uranium-thorium (U-Th-TIMS), par résonance de spin électronique combinée à l’U-Th (ESR/U-Th) et par luminescence stimulée optiquement (OSL) ont été réalisées sur des échantillons provenant de la formation de Waziers, en France septentrionale. Ces trois méthodes ont été respectivement appliquées sur un échantillon de gyrogonite prov...

A multi-analytical study has been undertaken to characterise wall paintings from the al-Qarawiyyin university in Fez, dating back to the 9th century and still in activity, with the aim of identifying the pigments used and going back to the painting techniques adopted by the Moroccan craftsmen of the time. The investigation crossed Raman and ATR-FTI...

The Galería de las Estatuas is a Mousterian site located within the Cueva Mayor-Cueva del Silo karstic system at the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain). This site is characterised by an important Upper Pleistocene stratigraphic sequence in which a large number of lithic artefacts exhibiting clear Mousterian affinities and a rich assemblage of faun...

The Lower Paleolithic Late Acheulian in the Levant marks a fascinating chapter in human cultural and biological evolution. Nevertheless, many aspects of the Late Acheulian are still undeciphered, hindered by the complex nature of each site on the one hand, a scarcity of wide, multidisciplinary studies on the other, and by difficulties in obtaining...

Résumé L’Afrique du nord et en particulier le Maghreb est une région-clé pour la préhistoire africaine en ce sens qu’elle abrite des sites dont la chronologie couvre toute la période du Pléistocène depuis 2,5 Ma jusqu’à l’Holocène. En termes de culture, elle s’intègre dans le schéma général du « Stone Age » mais elle présente des particularités qui...

Palaeolithic sites associated with the Eemian Interglacial (MIS 5e) are very rare in NW Europe, and especially in Northern France, where their preservation is restricted to very specific geological contexts, in association with carbonated tufa (Caours) or peat deposits (Waziers). In order to check the reliability of ESR/U-series method to date teet...

In the last few decades, multidisciplinary research on calcareous tufas as palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic records has intensively grown, which has provided an increasing number of well-documented sites. Consequently, inter-site comparisons and regional- to continental-scale reviews have developed, discussing the link between tufa distributi...

Qesem cave is a Middle Pleistocene site located close to Tel Aviv, Israel, assigned to the Acheuleo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex (AYCC) of the Lower Palaeolithic. The site provides rich assemblages of knapped flint, animal remains and some human teeth making it of particular interest. Its location in the Levantine corridor confers a major interest to...

The olive tree was an iconic plant for most of the past Mediterranean civilizations, for which it had important economic value. Here we report the earliest use of fruits and wood from olive trees in Africa so far, around 100,000 years ago. These findings suggest the presence of olive trees on the Atlantic coast of Morocco during most of the last gl...

North African coastal Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites are key to study the development and expansion of early H. sapiens. El Mnasra cave on the Atlantic coast of Morocco (Té mara region) is a crucial site associated with MSA archaeological materials considered advanced cognitive hallmarks of behavioural innovation, such as numerous Nassar-iidae perfor...

This note is a reply to the comment “Did the first inhabitants of the Caune de l’Arago between 700,000 and 400,000 years BP have domesticated fire? Did they know how to light the fire at will?”, about the article “Search for early traces of fire in the Caune de l’Arago at Tautavel (Eastern Pyrenees, France), combining magnetic susceptibility measur...

Previous studies have suggested that the Lower-to-Middle Paleolithic transition was associated with the earliest Neanderthals, but recent research has established that the oldest Neanderthal fossils and the first signs of their technologies and behavior appear from MIS 11 or possibly earlier. To understand these changes, re-evaluation of the eviden...

Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr / 86Sr) are a key geochemical tracer used in a wide range of fields including archaeology, ecology, food and forensic sciences. These applications are based on the principle that the Sr isotopic ratios of natural materials reflect the sources of strontium available during their formation. A major constraint for curren...

The middle Rhône valley, located at the southeastern margins of the Massif Central in France, produced a large number of Middle Palaeolithic sites, most of which dated to the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Due to its position, connecting northern Europe and the Mediterranean basin, this corridor and the surrounding plateaus are of particular interest...

This study provides new geomorphological and geochronological data (Electron spin resonance dating, ESR), allowing the characterization and correlation of the fluvial terrace staircases of the Lower Tejo River at reach IV with the marine terracesadjacent to the river mouth, namely at the Raso and Espichel capes (western central Portugal). The terra...

The Caune de l'Arago is an important Middle Pleistocene archaeological site, consisting of a cave with a sedimentary infilling deposited between 700 and 100 ka. Excavations have revealed traces of the use of fire in the layers formed between 400 and 100 ka, but no earlier traces have been recorded in the underlying levels. These potential older tra...

Middle Pleistocene Homo in the Levant Our understanding of the origin, distribution, and evolution of early humans and their close relatives has been greatly refined by recent new information. Adding to this trend, Hershkovitz et al. have uncovered evidence of a previously unknown archaic Homo population, the “Nesher Ramla Homo ” (see the Perspecti...

After the last interglacial [Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e] Europe was affected by several harsh climatic oscillations. In this context southern Italy acted, like the rest of peninsular Mediterranean Europe, as a 'glacial refugium', allowing the survival of various species, and was involved in the spread of 'cold taxa' (e.g. woolly mammoth and wool...

The stratigraphic sequences of numerous Palaeolithic sites of Central and Southern Italy, very rich in both archaeological and palaeontological remains, have also recorded Pleistocene volcanic events through volcanic ash deposits (tephra). They allow the establishment of an accurate chronological framework by comparing results obtained by ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar...

Actes des tables rondes tenues à Dreux les 12 et 13 mars 2018 et les 18 et 19 novembre 2019

A reliable chronology for the oldest settlements of Europe from the Early to the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene is an important requirement for understanding human evolution and especially the routes used to reach Western Europe from Africa. The paucity of sites, plus the limited number of available samples for dating, and the many contexts wh...

We present the results of a new dating study carried out at Lunery-la Terre-des-Sablons (LTS) and Brinay-la Noira (BN), two key Lower Palaeolithic sites located in deposits associated to the Cher River (Middle Loire Catchment, France). These sites preserve abundant Mode 1 and Mode 2 lithic industries, and are considered as among the oldest evidence...

The Neogene Içá Formation is a major sedimentary deposit in central Amazonia (Brazil) that is critical to the understanding and modeling of the evolution of the Amazon Basin. However, its chronostratigraphy is poorly defined, mostly because it is not fossiliferous and it does not contain volcanic ash levels. This study is the first attempt at the a...

To date, in Africa, evidence for animal processing and consumption in caves routinely used as living spaces is only documented in the late Middle Pleistocene of the North and South of the continent and postdates the Middle Pleistocene in East Africa. Here we report the earliest evidence in a North-African cave (Grotte des Rhinocéros at Casablanca,...

The geological sequences of numerous Lower and Middle Palaeolithic sites of central and southern Italy, found in fluvio-lacustrine contexts and rich both in archaeological and palaeontological remains, have recorded various volcanic events all along the Middle Pleistocene timescale. These sedimentary sequences made of detritic and volcanic material...

Natural or artificial irradiation of certain solid materials generates paramagnetic centres, free radicals, defects or ions, which are stable enough to be identified and quantified by EPR. The irradiation dose can be assessed from the intensity of the spectrum, which opens opportunities for numerous applications such as dosimetry of radiation used...

Des échantillons de marbres prélevés de différentes régions du Maroc ont été analysés par la diffraction des rayons X (DRX) et la spectrométrie de Résonance Paramagnétique Électronique (RPE). La calcite a été identifiée dans tous les échantillons comme phase cristalline principale avec des faibles taux de dolomite et du quartz, ainsi que des traces...

There is a relatively low amount of Middle Paleolithic sites in Europe dating to MIS 4. Of the few that exist, several of them lack evidence for anthropogenic fire, raising the question of how this period of global cooling may have affected the Neanderthal population. The Iberian Peninsula is a key area to explore this issue, as it has been conside...

The Cenozoic basins of western Iberia have a culminant allostratigraphic unit (designated UBS13), which records the beginning of Atlantic drainage and predates the fluvial incision that led to the development of the present drainage networks. However, the available numerical dating is quite limited and mainly restricted to the lower level terrace...

This is the story of the ESR team at Muséum national d'histoire naturelle of Paris, which has been involved in Quaternary dating for 40 years. It is a dedication to Yuji Yokoyama who created this laboratory and contributed to its development. The history of the ESR dating laboratory is presented since its beginnings in the CFR lab at Gif-sur-Yvette...

We present a geomorphological, stratigraphical and geochronological study reconstructing a suite of paleo-surfaces in a 200 km-long coastal sector of the central Tyrrhenian Sea between Argentario and Circeo promontories. Identification of the near-shore deposits associated with these paleo-surfaces allow us to define corresponding marine terraces a...

Geißenklösterle Cave (Germany) is one of the most important Paleolithic sites in Europe, as it is characterized by human occupation during the Middle and early Upper Paleolithic. Aurignacian layers prior to 37–38 ka cal BP feature both musical and figurative art objects that are linked to the early arrival in Europe of Homo sapiens. Middle Paleolit...

In this work, three important Pleistocene sites of the Madrid basin located close to the junction of the Manzanares (PRERESA site) and the Jarama (Valdocarros site and Maresa quarry) rivers have been studied in order to improve the existing chronological framework of the basin and to clarify the geological evolution of these fluvial systems and the...

At the left side of the Oued Tamri mouth, a palaeo sea-level (Unit 1) consists of marine and fluvio-marine deposits at ca. + 6 m a.s.l. The U/Th dating method applied to one marine shell of Patella sp. has yielded ages of 100,02 ± 1,662 ka and 101,188 ± 1,339 ka (MIS5.3) The overcoming dune (Sx) is dated at 84 ± 4 ka by OSL (MIS5.1). At Tighrine Im...

Tourville-la-Rivière (Normandy, France) is one of the rare Middle Pleistocene palaeoanthropological localities of Northern France. Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) and combined ESR/U-series dating methods were independently applied by different teams on sediments and teeth from this site. The present work provides an overview of this multi-laboratory...

U-series disequilibrium measurements carried out on thermogenic travertine samples from a 12.6 m-long core and a 10 m-thick section from southeastern Morocco yielded finite ages ranging from 500 ka to the present-day, as well as two clusters determined to be older than 500 ka. The calculation of initial 234U/238U activity ratios in all samples youn...

The Swabian Jura is a key region for the early Aurignacian. Sites such as Geißenklösterle, Hohle Fels, Vogelherd and Hohlenstein-Stadel have produced the earliest evidence of figurative and musical art, such as ivory figurines and flutes made of bone and ivory, attributed to Homo sapiens. To date, radiocarbon (14C) and thermoluminescence dating hav...

Monospecific exploitation of reindeer by Neanderthals is a common behaviour in the Upper Pleistocene of Western Europe. However, reindeer-dominated assemblages have largely been reported from regions of northern Germany and south-western France, with few examples noted in south-eastern France, where faunal assemblages yield most of the time a varie...

The study of geomagnetic excursions is key for understanding the behavior of the magnetic field of the Earth. In this paper, we present the geomagnetic record in a 2.29-m-long continuous core sampled in a flowstone in Liguria (Italy) and dated to the Lower Brunhes. The cored flowstone developed from Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 13 to MIS 7, accordin...

The study of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in North Africa is essential to better understand the human dispersals during the Late Pleistocene. The timing of the transition from the MSA to the Later Stone Age (LSA) in the region is still debated due to the scarcity of sites and the limited chronological constraints available. Among the few existing MIS...

Atlantic Morocco : post-MIS5 marine, aeolian and colluvial coastal sedimentations and tracks of Human settlement

Two well-developed Late-Middle Pleistocene coastal dune systems accumulated under NNW dominant palaeowinds on the left side of wadi Tamri (30°42’N; 9°51’W, 50 km N from Agadir). The first system, with clear crossbed sets, consists of established coastal foredunes with coarse biodetritic sands. The second system, without internal structures, also co...

The Peniche staircase of marine terraces (central-west Portugal) dating strategies At the rocky coast of Peniche Peninsula, a staircase of six wave-cut surfaces and associated sedimentary deposits was identified. The strategies for the absolute dating of the several records of the Pliocene and Pleistocene marine incursions is here presented. The th...

This work aims to give a short description of the ESR method applicability for dating Pliocene and Pleistocene sedimentary units of western central mainland Portugal ranging between 4 and 0.2 Ma. The vast culminant unit of the sedimentary infill only was previously dated at the base, ca. 3.7Ma, in North of Rio Maior. Dating the topmost deposits of...