Modifications anthropiques sur des restes humains mésolithiques et néolithiques de la grotte d’Unikoté (Iholdy, Pyrénées-Atlantiques)
Authors: Boulestin Bruno , Henry-Gambier Dominique , Mallye Jean-baptiste , Michel Patrick 
Published: February 2017

The site of Unikoté, located in Iholdy in the French Pyrénées-Atlantiques, was discovered in 1984 and excavated between 1993 and 2003. The excavations were first carried out inside the cave (Unikoté I), then extended from 1995 on in front of the entrance (Unikoté II). Both loci soon yielded traces of human occupation as well as human remains. Unikoté I has a 3-metre thick very complex stratigraphy. The artefacts found have allowed the occupation to be dated to the Middle Palaeolithic, without any greater precision. The fill of Unikoté I can be divided into three units : at the base is a hyena den with a few traces of human occupation ; the intermediate level has yielded most of the human remains and the upper level is a mix of both underlying levels. The artefacts from the lower level can be attributed to the Mousterian period ; those coming from the intermediate level could date from either the Upper Palaeolithic or the Mesolithic, any precise attribution to one period or the other being impossible. Both loci have also yielded a small assemblage of human remains. In both cases the remains are extremely disturbed, which makes it impossible to reconstitute the original mode of deposit. They also lack any cultural context, so that their dating can only come from radiocarbon analyses. The Unikoté I remains date from the beginning of the Middle Neolithic II. The Unikoté II remains belong to an early phase of the Second Mesolithic. The human assemblage from the first locus is composed of 15 fragments corresponding to a minimum number of 2 individuals, a female adult and a child aged about 10. Eighty-five remains come from the second locus, among which eleven certainly belong to the same adult whose sex and age cannot be determined. The 74 remaining immature bones most probably belong to two individuals : while the corresponding frequency MNI is only 1, their stages of development are incompatible. A cranium could thus belong to a 15-year old juvenile whereas the other post-cranial remains probably belong to a child aged between 6 and 11. The main interest of these human remains lies in the fact that they all display anthropogenic bone modifications. In the Unikoté I Neolithic assemblage the cranium shows several cutmarks that could attest to skinning practices, and a cutmark is also visible on a fragment of scapula. The Mesolithic immature cranium from Unikoté II presents a perforation with characteristics unequivocally suggesting a perimortem trauma indicating a violent death. Moreover, several cutting and scraping marks can be observed on this fragment. The small size of the assemblages and their lack of context make the interpretation of these marks and the signification of these human deposits difficult to establish ; while several hypotheses can be raised, none can be favoured. For Unikoté I, the specificities of the cutmarks suggest head-skinning and thus allow several possibilities to be raised : cannibalism, which cannot be proved but cannot be set aside either ; a funerary practice in which the body could have been cut up but not eaten ; or some specific treatment of the head, for instance its preparation to become a trophy or a relic. In Unikoté II the marks on the cranium seem to correspond more to defleshing activity, i. e. a cleaning of the bone, and the trauma matches an overall context of armed violence. It is however impossible to determine either the environment or the mobilization level of this violence, all the more so as all attested perimortem cranial traumata for the Mesolithic period are so far linked to the specific practice of head deposit known in Alsace and Southwestern Germany, which does not seem to be the case here, and as the practice of cutting up corpses is far from being rare for this period, although certainly diversely motivated. The observations made on the human remains from Unikoté are difficult and limited, but they can nevertheless provide new information on the treatment of the dead and related body-cutting practices during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. Data are still lacking, so this topic cannot be discussed in detail now, until attested cases become more numerous. On the other hand, these observations prove once again that anthropogenic bone modifications are frequently observed and must be systematically sought in all human assemblages, whatever the period.