From flakes to grooves: a technical shift in antlerworking during the last glacial maximum in southwest France

The evolution of antlerworking technology in Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europe, especially the production of splinters, is usually described as a cumulative process. A progressive increase in blank standardization and productivity was prompted by the application of a key technical process, the groove and splinter technique (GST). The Badegoulian, however, appears as an interruption in this continuum. According to the original definition of this post-Solutrean, pre-Magdalenian archeological culture, one of its distinctive features is the absence of the GST and the manufacture of antler blanks by knapping only. However, this conception has been recently questioned, leading to an alternative hypothesis suggesting that both GST and knapping were used during the Badegoulian. In this article, we present new evidence from several sites in southwest France, which sheds new light on the issue of Badegoulian antlerworking and the transition with the subsequent Lower Magdalenian. Our study is based on two complementary methods: the technological analysis of antler assemblages well-dated to the Badegoulian (Le Cuzoul de Vers) or to the Lower Magdalenian (La Grotte des Scilles, Saint-Germain-la-Rivière), and the direct (14)C dating of specific antler artifacts from mixed or problematic contexts (Cap-Blanc, Reverdit and Lassac). The results firmly establish that, in southwest France, knapping is the only method used for the production of antler splinters during the Badegoulian, before ca. 20,500 cal BP (calibrated years before present), and that it is rapidly replaced by the GST at the beginning of the Lower Magdalenian, after ca. 20,500 cal BP. This technical shift is not linked to an influx of new human populations, environmental change or the supposed economic advantages of the GST. Instead, it must be understood as one of the expressions of a broader reconfiguration of the technical world that starts to take shape in the middle of the Last Glacial Maximum.