Environmental factors in human evolution and dispersals in the Upper Pleistocene of the western Mediterranean

5. Moroccan Sites

   1. Introduction and underlying rationale
   2. Key Issues
   3. Specific Objectives
   4. People
   5. Moroccan Sites
   6. Gibraltar Sites
   7. Map of Sites
   8. Summary of Sites
   9. References

Palaeoenvironmental and chronological analyses will be specifically targeted at cave sites known to contain important archaeological Middle and Upper Palaeolithic deposits. One of the longest uninterrupted sequences comes from the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt. Previous excavation at the cave (Roche 1953) exposed up to 6m of deposits with 17 Iberomaurusian layers overlying a thick archaeological sequence of Aterian and earlier Middle Palaeolithic layers. The cave was never bottomed. Preliminary radiocarbon dates suggested an oldest dating for the Iberomaurusian levels of c. 21 ka BP (Roche 1976) but this was based on bulk charcoal samples and the dating of the immediately underlying Aterian levels, on shell, proved largely inconclusive. The archaeological layers contain a rich abundance of charcoals and ashy lenses (Courty et al. 1989) and are easily accessible for sampling purposes. In addition to known finds of small and large mammals, we expect the same fine grained sequence to include fossil evidence of mollusca, fish, birds, amphibians and reptiles.

A nearby site is Rhafas Cave where the Middle Palaeolithic to Aterian transition is preserved but is so far not well-dated (Wengler 1997). The site has extremely high potential for palaeoenvironmental and chronological studies, and like Taforalt also contains evidence of associated human material. Elsewhere in the north are a number of caves with stratified Iberomaurusian deposits (Kehf el Hammar, Ghar Cahal) and include the new discovery of an intact Iberomaurusian burial (Hattab 2). Preliminary unpublished dating results at Kehf el Hammar and Ghar Cahal indicate the potential for further AMS 14C, luminescence and U-Series dating. Like the other locations mentioned here, nearly all of these caves lie within 30 km of the present coastline and in several cases reveal human exploitation of marine resources, providing further opportunities for dating and isotopic studies. The site of Aliyah Cave on the extreme northwest tip of Morocco is of added interest because it contains typologically some of the youngest known Aterian material, which shows affinities to the Upper Palaeolithic of Iberia (Debenath et al. 1986).

Sites on or near the Atlantic coastline (Jebel Irhoud, Contrabandiers, Dar es Soltane II and Chaperon Rouge) form the remainder of the Moroccan sample. Like the sites further north, they are highly accessible, are well-stratified and have excellent preservation of organic remains and cover broadly similar archaeological age ranges to the other locations.