Note on a Micoquian Tool from a Raised Beach in Morbihan

During the years between 1932–40 I went many times to Carnac (Morbihan) to visit megaliths in that neighbourhood and copy the decorations on them. I was astonished to note, amongst the chipped stone tools in the museum there, a very small yellowish flint bifaced implement picked up by Zachary Le Rouzic on the island of Téviec, noted for the excavations and magnificent Mesolithic discoveries of M. and Mme. St.-Just Péquart. This, of course, was not a tool from their Mesolithic site, but was a stray find from the island, where it was found by Le Rouzic in the gravelly section near the neck of land joining the Quiberon peninsula. Téviec consists of two islands divided by a narrow channel of sea. The section is opposite to the mainland, on the bigger island forming the edge of this channel. It shows threé beds of sea-worn pebbles of medium and small size; the upper two beds are separated by red sand. In the uppermost bed, the pebbles have taken a vertical position, similar to those in the upper part (the so-called head) of the lower raised beaches of the English Channel. This phenomenon is due to the cryoturbation during a glacial period. The upper bed is pre-Würmian, though not necessarily very much so, for it suffered through cryoturbation during the Würmian stage. The angles of the stone implement are sharp, i.e. it had not been rolled—and it came therefore from the red sandy bed, that is from a late stage in the Riss-Würm, when the sea slightly retreated between two periods of slight rises in sea-level. This implement thus has some importance owing to its geological position. I visited the site with Zachary Le Rouzic on the ioth October, 1936, but I found no sign of worked stone tools in any of these levels, which are very slightly above the modern sea-level

Archaeology · Channel (broadcasting · Geography · Glacial period · Mainland · Megalith · Mesolithic · Peninsula · Section (typography · Archaeological and Geological Studies · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geology · Paleontology · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

• Une nouvelle station du paléolithique inférieur à Saint-Colomban (Carnac, Morbihan)

  Jean Laurent Monnier, R Le Cloirec•Bulletin de la Société…•1979

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