Re-dating the Early Upper Paleolithic Levels of Le Trou Magrite (Pont-à-Lesse, Belgium)

Abstract

All but one of the published radiocarbon dates from the 1991–1992 excavations of Strata 3 and 2 at le Trou Magrite are considered too recent because the dating was done with then-standard chemical pretreatment protocols. This study re-dates Stratum 2 using the same, then-pioneering, XAD-2 purification method on bone collagen as had been used for the 44,650 cal BP date from Stratum 3. The results are two averaged dates that are in stratigraphic order between themselves and in relation to the Stratum 3 date: 43,400 and 43,500 cal BP, according to the IntCal20 curve. These dates are very similar to recently published dates for the earliest Aurignacian in SW Germany and the latest Neanderthal remains in Belgium and they are associated with artifact assemblages that, without obvious evidence of mixture (other than that which was highly localized), include Upper Paleolithic stone tools and blades/bladelets together with numerous sidescrapers, denticulates and notches which are not exclusively Mousterian artifacts. Nineteenth-century excavations in the cave of le Trou Magrite yielded unambiguously diagnostic Aurignacian artifacts and works of portable art that could conceivably have been from a deposit equivalent in age to these strata on the contiguous terrace. It is clear that the first blade(let)-rich assemblages in the site were created on the cusp of the transition from the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition and replacement of the Neanderthals in NW Europe.