Les Pyrénées au cours du Dernier Maximum Glaciaire. Un no man’s land badegoulien ? Nouvelles données sur l’occupation du piémont pyrénéen à partir du réexamen des industries solutréennes de l’abri des Harpons (Lespugue, Haute-Garonne)
Authors: Ducasse Sylvain , Pétillon Jean-Marc , Costamagno Sandrine , Foucher Pascal , San Juan Cristina , Caux Solène , Renard Caroline 
Published: February 2020

According to some, the first part of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM : 23-19 ky cal. BP) in the Pyrenees appears to be a singular moment when the cultural trajectory of hunter-gatherer groups diverged from the frameworks defined further north. Similar to the Upper Solutrean of the Vasco-Cantabrian area with which it shares several typotechnological specificities (e. g. concave-base points, Cantabrian-type shouldered points), the Solutrean of the Pyrenees would thus continue into the heart of the LGM (circa 21 ky cal. BP), parallel to the development of the Badegoulian tra ditions in the adjacent areas. The current scarcity or absence of Badegoulian sites throughout the Pyrenees fits well with this establishing of a cultural geography on the scale of South-Western France. However, the radiometric data used to support this model are currently questioned, while the age of the excavations on the LGM Pyrenees sequences and the impact of geomorphological processes on their degree of conservation can cause a skewed vision of this phenomenon. A collective and interdisciplinary reassessment of several key sites taking into account these biases was undertaken as part of the “ SaM” project to discuss the reality of this palaeogeographical hypothesis on a new and firm basis. In the wake of the recent work undertaken on Grotte des Scilles (Lespugue, Haute-Garonne) providing the first evidence of Lower Magdalenian settlement in the Pyrenees (second part of the LGM ; circa 19.5 ky cal. BP), our research focused on the gorges of the Save. This canyon, carved in the limestone of the Pre-Pyrenees, has recorded a long-term and continuous human occupation thanks to several sequences from caves and rockshelters. In this rich Palaeolithic environment, Abri des Harpons (Lespugue, Haute-Garonne), excavated by R. de Saint-Périer from 1912 to 1930, attracted our attention. Besides layers from the historical periods, it reveals one of the longest Upper Palaeolithic sequences, comprised at least between the Early Solutrean and the Azilian. In the early 2000s the Upper Solutrean industries and faunal remains from layer D were reassessed by two of us (P. F. and C. S. J.-F.) providing new data on the Pyrenean Solutrean but demonstrating at the same time the heterogeneity of the assemblage on typological and radiometric bases. However, while this heterogeneity was circumscribed on a Solutrean scale (from the early to the upper/ final phases), the discovery of several “ raclettes typiques” raised questions, in addition to 14C dates more or less compatible with a Badegoulian chronology. In 2012, these elements led us to set up a new reassessment project with the aim of 1) evaluating the existence of a Badegoulian component in layer D, 2) carrying out a technological analysis of the Solutrean component to complete the typological and lithological data previously acquired, 3) searching for technological evidence of these two technocomplexes in the osseous industries and 4) renewing the radiometric framework through direct dating of several characteristic antler and bone waste products. This work allowed us to confirm and enlarge the heterogeneity of the layer D assemblage : the Solutrean remains are clearly associated with Magdalenian, Gravettian and indisputably Badegoulian elements. Although the existing conditions of the Saint-Périer collections are a brake on the precise characterization of this Badegoulian component, these results allow us to contradict the idea that the Pyrenees were a no man’s land for the Badegoulian groups. If the question of the early expressions of this cultural tradition (i. e. Early Badegoulian) cannot be addressed from the Abri des Harpons data, we are now at least able to confirm the frequentation of the Pyrenees by holders of Recent Badegoulian technology as was suggested at Enlène cave (Montesquieu-Avantès, Ariège) in the 1980s through another mixed assemblage. Based on the comparison of the new AMS 14C dates with the most reliable data available in southwestern France, we finally propose an alternative archaeostratigraphic framework of the Pyrenean LGM occupations that restores the role of the Badegoulian in regional palaeohistory and demonstrates a significant aging of the end of the Upper Solutrean (circa 23 ky cal. BP). These encouraging results should be supplemented by further analysis and will ultimately allow discussion of the nature and rhythm of the French Solutreo-Badegoulian transition outside the area of the classical definition of these two cultural traditions.