Subject: hunter-gatherer
Culture: Solutrean
Setting: Last Glacial Maximum, France ~22,000-17,000BP
Caveat
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* Dickson 1990 p67-69
"Sometime after about 21,000 B.P., in the latter half of the Würm III stadial, a new cultural tradition emerges in southwestern France. This industry is termed the Solutrean after Solutré, an isolated open-air site located near Lyon on a tributary of the lower Rhone River called the Saone-et-Loire. The Solutrean tradition is of relatively short duration; it disappears from the region around 17,500 B.P. after only 3,500 to 4,000 years. Its geographic distribution is also limited when compared with traditions like the Aurignacian, Perigordian, and Magdalenian. Unlike those earlier and later traditions, the classic Solutrean has been found almost entirely in southwestern France within an area bounded on the extreme southwest by the province of Asturia, in the south by the Spanish Pyrenees and the northeast coast of Spain in Catalonia, in the north by the Sarthe River in the department of the Mayenne and on the east by the lower Rhone Valley in France."
Weapons
* Dickson 1990 p69-70
"The analysis of the Solutrean component at Laugerie-Haute and other sites reveals that in general the lithic repertoire is characterized by a high proportion of specialized blade tools including end-scrapers, and the celebrated unifacial and bifacial 'foliates' or leaf-shaped projectile points. These blades often exhibit characteristic flat, narrow, parallel flake scars known as 'Solutrean retouch'. Eccentric or imaginative blade forms are also common. ...
"Of course, the cultural traits that fated the Solutrean tradition to be the 'martyr culture' of the Upper Paleolithic are the very traits which make it the most distinctive tradition in southwestern European prehistory: the spectacular leaf-shaped or foliate blades and the bravura 'Solutrean retouch' flint flaking. The presence of these unique traits amid an otherwise rather undistinguished Upper Paleolithic tool assemblage leads Philip Smith to assert that most Solutrean assemblages are a blend of rather conservative tool types and experimental, specialized artifacts." [references omitted]
* Hommes préhistoriques 1995 p73
"Les <<pointes à cran>> solutréennes sont certainement parmi les plus spectaculaires. De taille variée, elles armaient des javelots et des lances."
