First Obsidian in the Northern French Alps during the Early Neolithic

Pierre-Yves Nicod (1) , Thomas Perrin (2) , François-Xavier Le Bourdonnec (3) , Sylvie Philibert (2) , Christine Oberlin (4) , Marie Besse (5)

1 LAP - Laboratoire d'archéologie préhistorique
2 TRACES - Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés
3 IRAMAT-CRP2A - IRAMAT-Centre de recherche en physique appliquée à l’archéologie
4 ArAr - Archéologie et Archéométrie
5 Laboratoire d'archéologie préhistorique et anthropologie

An exceptional discovery was made in 2013 in the northern French Alps, at the Grande Rivoire site in Sassenage (Isère department): an obsidian bladelet from Sardinia was found in a cultural horizon dated to about 5360-5210 CAL B.C. The abundant arrowheads found with it are characteristic of the Early Neolithic in the South of France (Cardial/Epicardial). Yet there was no pottery or domestic fauna, and only discrete markers of farming. The typological, technological and micro-wear analysis of this bladelet, as well as the determination of the origin of the raw material, open new avenues of reflection for the neolithization of the northern Alps, in particular concerning the role played by the Early Neolithic cultures of northern Italy.

Mots clés: Early Neolithic; French Alps; Obsidian

Mots clés: Néolithique ancien; Alpes; Obsidienne

Domaines: Archéologie et Préhistoire

Pierre-Yves Nicod, Thomas Perrin, François-Xavier Le Bourdonnec, Sylvie Philibert, Christine Oberlin, et al.. First Obsidian in the Northern French Alps during the Early Neolithic. Journal of Field Archaeology, 2019, 44 (3), pp.180-194. ⟨10.1080/00934690.2019.1580077⟩. ⟨hal-02076203⟩