The Tardenoisian Type Station

Turning from the region of the Pyrenees in Azilian times, we observe the region lying between the Seine and the Meuse in northern France as the scene of a contemporary industry. At the station of Fère-en-Tardenois, in the Department of the Aisne, is found an especially large number of the pygmy flints;[(4)] these present various geometric forms, including the primitive triangular, as well as the rhomboidal, trapezoidal, and semicircular; together, they were designated by de Mortillet as Tardenoisian flints, and in 1896, in monographing this microlithic flint industry, he traced them throughout France, Belgium, England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia, also along the southern Mediterranean through Algiers, Tunis, Egypt, and eastward into Syria and even India.

These geometric flints were at first attributed to a primitive invasion which was supposed to have occurred at the beginning of Neolithic times; thus the Tardenoisian industry was considered as contemporaneous with that of the Campignian, which is early Neolithic. It was further observed that the topographical location of the stations closely followed the borders of ocean inlets, or of river courses, and when the food materials found in the hearths were compared, it appeared that these flints were used principally by fishermen or tribes subsisting upon fish. From an examination of the flints, it would appear that a very large number of them were adapted for insertion in small harpoons, or that those of grooved form might even have been used as fish-hooks. Thus the picture was drawn of a population of fishermen. The Tardenoisian, therefore, was for a long time regarded as contemporaneous with the early Neolithic rather than with the close of Palæolithic times, but as exploration proceeded it was found that neither the remains of domestic animals nor any traces of pottery occur in any of these Tardenoisian deposits, which consequently have nothing in common with the true Neolithic culture.

The problem was finally solved in 1909, when the grotto of Valle near Gibaja, Santander, in northern Spain, was discovered by Breuil and Obermaier.[(5)] Here was a classic Azilian deposit containing all the well-known Azilian types of bone implements, such as fine harpoons, carvings in deer horn, bone javelins, polishers of deer bone, flint flakes resembling those of the late Magdalenian, also microlithic flints of typical geometric Tardenoisian form. This discovery established the fact that the lower levels of the Tardenoisian industry were not really to be distinguished from the Azilian, for here beneath layers with painted pebbles and harpoons of Azilian style were harpoons with single and double rows of barbs of Magdalenian pattern, but cut in stag horn instead of reindeer horn.

The mammalian life in this true Azilian-Tardenoisian layer includes the chamois, roe-deer, wild boar, and urus, or wild cattle. In a layer just below, which represents the close of the Magdalenian industrial period, there are found, although rarely, remains of the reindeer, an animal hitherto unknown in this part of Spain, also the wild boar, the bison, the ibex, and the lynx. After this discovery it could no longer be questioned that the Azilian and Tardenoisian were contemporary.

As to the relation of these two industries, Breuil remarks[(6)] that the prolongation of the Tardenoisian types of flints is observed in Italy and in Belgium, but neither the term 'Tardenoisian' nor the term 'Azilian' is sufficiently comprehensive to embrace the totality of these little industries, which will finally be distinguished clearly from each other. Of the two the Azilian represents the prolongation of an ancient period of industry, the progress of which was apparently from south to north, as we can trace the distribution of the characteristic flat harpoons of deer horn from the Cantabrian Mountains and the Pyrenees, through southern and central France, to Belgium, England, and the western coast of Scotland. The later industrial phase, the Tardenoisian, with its geometric trapeziform flints, originally appears along the southern Mediterranean in Tunis and to the eastward in the Crimea, while in France it represents a final phase of the Palæolithic, closely approaching the period of the earliest Neolithic or pre-Campignian hearths common along the Danube and observed in the vicinity of Liége. Thus the most comprehensive term by which to designate the ensemble of these implements, in Europe at least, would be Azilian-Tardenoisian.

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Fig. 249. Small geometric flints characteristic of the Tardenoisian industry. After de Mortillet. 295 to 303, 321, 322, 326. From various sites in northern France. 311. Uchaux, Vaucluse, France. 305, 315, 320. Valley of the Meuse, Belgium. 312, 313. Cabeço da Arruda, Portugal. 304, 314. Italy. 317, 318, 329. Tunis. 325. Egypt. 306, 310, 324, 328. Kizil-Koba, Crimea. 307 to 309, 316, 319, 323, 327. India. All one-half actual size.