Provisioning on the periphery: Middle Palaeolithic raw material supply strategies on the outer edge of a territory at La Combette (France)

We apply a resource selection model to evaluate the importance of factors influencing raw material provisioning at a Middle Palaeolithic site, La Combette, located on the edge of the territory from which its raw materials came. The model was previously applied to another Middle Palaeolithic site, the Bau de l'Aubesier, which is more centrally located in the same region. La Combette is smaller and in easier terrain, and was used for short-term occupations such as hunting camps, so provisioning would therefore be expected to be strongly influenced by the quality of the raw material, and by the distance to the sources. In addition, the sourcing data for La Combette are less detailed than those available for the Bau, so this tests our model in a less-than-ideal case. The results show that our approach does work under these conditions. At La Combette, variables describing the terrain (distance from the source, extent of the source area, difficulty of the terrain, etc.) are more important than those describing the raw material (quality and size of nodules available). Even in relatively easy terrain, distance is more important than quality when using a site on the periphery.