The Mousterian-Aterian transition

The data about the Mousterian and the old Aterian in th Moghreb are rare. We know however that the Mousterian looks like a Charentien of Ferrassie facies, made, as well as the Aterian which succeeds to it, by an Homo sapiens who was not neanderthaloid. In the Aterian, known between 22 000 and 45 000 years B.P., stemmed artefacts are added to a, mousterian tradition. The geological and cultural context in which the succession of these two cultures happened wasn't until now known precisely. Two interesting areas, discovered in Eastern Morocco, have given archaeological, geological and palaeoenvironmental data to approach this problem. The first, on the northern Limit of the steppic Hauts Plateaux, allowed to study three open air sites in the upper part of a Soltanian alluvial terrace. The second, in the Tetraclinis formation of the Oujda Mountains, is the Rhafas cave, where a lone sedimentary and archaeological sequence belonging to the same period was found. The transition between Mousterian and Aterian happens during the beginning of the warm and humid interstade of Inter-Soltanian II-III (= Inter Wurm II-III) and it seems related to this climatic event, The way of life the small groups of nomad hunters-gatherers doesn't change, nor does their territory; the raw material economy, the knapping of the artefacts and the retouching of the tools remain mainly the same. But the choice of the raw materials improves, as well as the workmanship of the artefacts. Besides, stemmed artefacts appear progressively, and this technological mutation will cause a modification in the percentages of the main groups of tools, the cultural context remaining however the same. The Aterian appears first as a facies of the Mousterian, then as a cultural stage.