Engineered ‘landmarks’ associated with Late Paleolithic engraved shelters
Résumé
Although more than 2000 shelters with non-figurative carvings ascribed to a Mesolithic style are known within
the quartzitic sandstone megaclast lag deposits in the southern Paris area, only three shelters with figurative
representations of Late Paleolithic style have been recognized. Upright megaclasts are rare in the regional lag
deposits but two upright quartzitic sandstone megaclasts occur close to two of these Late Paleolithic shelters.
Detailed morphological surveys of these megaclasts allow us to suggest that they were erected by humans. The
fortuitous conjunction of finding an upright megaclast close to two Late Paleolithic shelters is infinitesimally
small in term of probabilistic considerations. Thus, the Late Paleolithic engraved shelter – upright megaclast
pairs are not likely to be independent but are probably linked by culture, and so the megaclasts are expected to
date from the Late Paleolithic. We suggest that they were ‘engineered landmarks’ erected to mark places that had
cultural significance for Late Paleolithic hunter-gatherer people. The energy dedicated to erect the megaliths is
an indication that shelter - megalith pairs probably had important spiritual and symbolic significance. We suggest
that both contributed to locate and anchor stories to landscape features. Indeed, these shelter-megalith pairs
were in the hinterland of the large open-air camps settled on fords on game migratory routes crossing the Seine
River. These specific markers could have encompassed a storyline about landscapes as the support for learning
routes through them. One possibility is that they had a timed relationship with herd migration.