A 36,200-year-old carving from Grotte des Gorges, Amange, Jura, France.

ABSTRACT: The earliest European carvings, made of mammoth ivory, depict animals, humans, and anthropomorphs. They are found at Early Aurignacian sites of the Swabian Jura in Germany. Despite the wide geographical spread of the Aurignacian across Europe, these carvings have no contemporaneous counterparts. Here, we document a small, intriguing object, that sheds light on this uniqueness. Found at the Grotte des Gorges (Jura, France), in a layer sandwiched between Aurignacian contexts and dated to c. 36.2 ka, the object bears traces of anthropogenic modifications indicating intentional carving. Microtomographic, microscopic, three-dimensional roughness and residues analyses reveal the carving is a fragment of a large ammonite, which was modified to represent a caniformia head decorated with notches an

SUBMITTER: d'Errico F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10412625 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature