- Solutrean
The Solutrean industry is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper
Palaeolithic .It is named after the type-site of
Solutré in theMâcon district,Saône-et-Loire , easternFrance and appeared around 19,000 BCE. The Solutré site was discovered in 1866 by the Frenchgeologist andpaleontologist Henry Testot-Ferry (second son ofNapoleon 's famous cavalryman, GeneralClaude Testot-Ferry , Baron of the Empire). Solutrean tool-making employed techniques not seen before and not rediscovered for millennia. The era's finds also include ornamental beads and bone pins as well asprehistoric art .The Solutrean has relatively finely worked, bifacial points made with
pressure flaking rather than cruder flint knapping. This method permitted the working of delicate slivers of flint to make light projectiles and even elaborate barbed and tanged arrowheads.Large thin spear-heads; scrapers with edge not on the side but on the end; flint knives and saws, but all still chipped, not ground or polished; long spear-points, with tang and shoulder on one side only, are also characteristic implements of this industry. Bone and antler were used as well.
The industry was named by Gabriel de Mortillet to describe the second stage of his system of cave chronology, following the
Mousterian , and he considered it synchronous with the third division of theQuaternary period.The Solutrean may be seen as a transitory stage between the flint implements of the Mousterian and the bone implements of the
Magdalenian epochs. Faunal finds include horse, reindeer, mammoth, cave lion, rhinoceros, bear andaurochs . Solutrean finds have been also made in the caves ofLes Eyzies andLaugerie Haute , and in the Lower Beds ofCresswell Crags inDerbyshire, England . The industry first appeared in modern-daySpain and disappears from the archaeological record around 15,000 BCE.The Solutrean Hypothesis in North American archaeology
The
Solutrean hypothesis claims similarities between the Solutrean industry and the laterClovis culture /Clovis point s ofNorth America , and suggests that people with Solutrean tool technology crossed the Ice Age Atlantic by moving along the pack ice edge, using survival skills similar to that of modernEskimo people. The migrants arrived in northeastern North America and served as the donor culture for what eventually developed into Clovis tool-making technology. Sites such asCactus Hill ,Virginia , have yielded artifacts which appear to bridge the temporal and technological gap between Solutrean and Clovis cultures.Jim Adovasio found stone blades and cores nearPittsburgh ,Pennsylvania which he dated to 16,000BP [http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Stone Age Columbus ] ] . ArchaeologistsDennis Stanford andBruce Bradley concluded that theClovis point did not derive from any stoneworking tradition from Asia known from the archaeological record. Instead, they traced a line of stone artefact development starting with the points of theSolutrean culture of southern France (19,000BP) to theCactus Hill points of Virginia (16,000BP) to theClovis point [The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World. Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford. World Archaeology 2004 Vol. 36(4): 459 – 478. http://planet.uwc.ac.za/nisl/Conservation%20Biology/Karen%20PDF/Clovis/Bradley%20&%20Stanford%202004.pdf] . This would mean that people would have had to move from theBay of Biscay across the edge of the Atlantic ice sheet toNorth America . This journey appears to be feasible using traditionalEskimo techniques still in use today, technology which would have been available to the Solutrean people.In addition, certain
mtDNA anomalies in pre-Columbian Amerind populations leave open the possibility of alternate migration patterns into the Americas. GeneticistDouglas Wallace ofEmory University , studying themitochondrial DNA of Native Americans, found an mtDNA type called X. GeneticistStephen Oppenheimer reports that X occurs 'only among Europeans and Native Americans, with a single report from southern Siberia, but the link between the Old and New Worlds is up to 30,000 years old' ["Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World", Stephen Oppenheimer, Constable & Robinson, 2003, ISBN 978-184119-894-1] . However, the most recent study of complete genomes suggests a single founding population, including type X, arriving via the Beringia route from Asia. [Nelson J.R. Fagundes et al. [http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(08)00139-0 Mitochondrial Population Genomics Supports a Single Pre-Clovis Origin with a Coastal Route for the Peopling of the Americas] in "The American Journal of Human Genetics", vol. 82 no. 3 (28 Feb 2008), pp583-592]In short, the idea of a Clovis-Solutrean link remains rather controversial and does not enjoy wide acceptance. The hypothesis is challenged by large gaps in time between the Clovis and Solutrean eras, a lack of evidence of Solutrean seafaring, lack of specific Solutrean features in Clovis technology, and other issues.
ee also
*
Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures
*Franco-Cantabrian region
*Gravettian References
*1911
External links
* [http://www.centerfirstamericans.com/mt.php?a=47 Clovis and Solutrean: Is There a Common Thread?] by James M. Chandler
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml Stone Age Columbus] BBC TV programme summary
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3116_stoneage.html "America's Stone Age Explorers"] transcript of 2004 NOVA program on PBS
* [http://www.primtech.net/Summer2003/Solutreanartifacts.htm Images of Solutrean artifacts]
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