Archaeology Magazine - November/December 2023 - 38

Grotte Mandrin, which was alternately
home to Neanderthals and modern humans,
overlooks the Rhône River in southern France.
category that refers to the artifacts Neanderthals
typically made, including stone tools that could
be grasped or affixed to thrusting spears.
Unexpected finds started to surface, however,
more than 2,000 miles away, on the shores
of the eastern Mediterranean in what is now
Lebanon. Excavated during the twentieth
century, this cliffside rock shelter once
contained about 75 feet of artifact-packed
sediment that had accumulated over the past
100,000 years. One community of humans
who sheltered in the cave, known to be
H. sapiens based on a jawbone discovered
there, produced elongated blanks and small
triangular points. The same method was used
to craft remarkably similar lithics at Grotte
Mandrin. It appears Europe's earliest H. sapiens
emerged from the same culture as the point
makers of Ksar Akil.
The hypothesis that H. sapiens made the
Paris
in 2006. Midway through the Mousterian layers,
the team reached sandy sediment packed with
thin, light points, many shorter than an inch, and
so standardized they seem to have been massproduced.
" During the years we were excavating
this layer, we thought that something wasn't
normal-there were too many points, and they
were too little, " says Aix-Marseille University
archaeologist Laure Metz. From this section, called Layer E, the
team has recovered nearly 900 such tiny points, as well as a few
artifacts with possible symbolic or artistic flourishes, including a
notched bone point and a deer tooth that might have been a pendant.
They have not, however, unearthed any Mousterian artifacts
despite their abundance in layers above and below. Whoever
made the Layer E tools had radically different techniques and aims
than those of the cave's resident Neanderthals.
Lithics like those in Layer E have been found in the Rhône
Valley before. Within 30 miles of Grotte Mandrin, several sites
excavated in the 1950s furnished Mousterian lithics, along with
a few dozen unusual points. Archaeologists labeled these artifacts
Neronian, after the site of Grotte de Néron, and hypothesized
that valley Neanderthals had invented a hyperlocal style.
More recently, scholars have suggested that the distinctive
points and the Mousterian lithics accumulated at different times
but became mixed through years of burial or excavations. The
picture emerging from Grotte Mandrin, where hundreds of the
small points were excavated employing twenty-first-century
methods, seemed more reliable.
S
38
ince discovering Layer E, the team has worked to
understand the anomalous cave dwellers by analyzing
their lithics. " We don't find this kind of industry around
France or in Europe, " says Metz. To find similar artifacts, the
researchers had to examine collections from Ksar Akil, a site
FRANCE
Grotte Mandrin
Grotte de Néron
200 400 miles
Grotte Mandrin points was strengthened
when University of Bordeaux paleoanthropologist
Clément Zanolli analyzed nine
human teeth found in various cave layers.
Because the specimens' outer surfaces were
worn and damaged, he used micro-CT scans
to view internal features of the teeth. " By virtually
removing the external parts, we could
attribute the teeth to a species, " says Zanolli.
Comparing them to hundreds of teeth from
other sites, Zanolli showed that the only specimen from Layer
E, a baby tooth lost by a two- to six-year-old, came from a
modern human. The other eight teeth, which were recovered
from layers containing typical Neanderthal tools, belonged to
Neanderthals. In addition, a partial jawbone from the uppermost
Mousterian layer yielded a full Neanderthal genome.
According to Metz, combining this fossil evidence with the
lithics and dating studies leads to the unassailable conclusion
that modern humans visited Grotte Mandrin 54,000 years
ago-but didn't stay long.
The H. sapiens would have been obvious outsiders, appearing
lanky and feeble compared to the stocky, muscular Neanderthals.
Presumably they spoke strange tongues, entertained
themselves with unknown songs and dances, and dressed in
exotic garb. None of this left enduring traces. Thus, their
customs can only be gleaned from durable objects made of
stone and bone. These remains indicate that the new arrivals
and native Neanderthals chased the same prey using radically
different hunting strategies. While the Neanderthals jabbed
dangerous animals with handheld spears, the Neronian humans
would have stood at a safe distance, aimed their bows, and fired
high-velocity arrows.
Metz has built a case for early archery since 2010, when she
began investigating the functions of stone tools from Grotte
Mandrin. To interpret microscopic signs of damage related to an
artifact's use, she conducted experiments using replicas fashioned
ARCHAEOLOGY * November/December 2023
Rhône River
Archaeology Magazine - November/December 2023

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