ESCARGUEL Solène

Biographie

Career

After graduating from the Ecole du Louvre (France) in 2022, Solène Escarguel obtained a Master¿s degree in European and African prehistory and protohistory from the University of Toulouse (France) in 2024. During her Master¿s, she had the opportunity to study a Mousterian lithic collection from Gatzarria Cave (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), under the supervision of François Bon, Marianne Deschamps, Sylvie Philibert and Emilie Claud. The topic of her Master¿s thesis was « Entre Technologie et Traces : les Racloirs Enveloppants du Paléolithique moyen Quina de la Grotte Gatzarria (Ossas-Suhare, Pyrénées-Atlantiques) - Regards croisés entre analyses techno-morpho-fonctionnelle et tracéologique » (Between technology and traces : the Middle Palaeolithic Quina scrapers from Gatzarria Cave (Ossas-Suhare, Pyrénées-Atlantiques) - A techno-morpho-functional and traceological cross-analysis), and enabled her to acquire the basics in lithic technology and use-wear analysis.

Since 2016, she has been involved in several excavations, post-excavation and prospection campaigns in France, notably at the Palaeolithic sites of Le Rozel (Normandie) and Gatzarria Cave (Pyrénées-Atlantiques).

She joined the University of Liège in September 2024 to work as a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Veerle Rots.

PhD Project

This doctoral thesis focuses on the study of the lithic collection from the early Middle Palaeolithic site of Biache-Saint-Vaast (Pas-de-Calais, France). This site is located in the Scarpe valley and was discovered in 1976. It revealed a Neanderthal occupation dated around 220 ka, which yielded a very large number of lithic tools, as well as animal bones and Neanderthal human remains, including teeth and skulls.

The lithic collection, mainly of Levallois technology, was the subject of a technological study by Dr. David Hérisson (Hérisson 2012), and of a traceological study of a significant sample of the retouched artefacts by Dr. Veerle Rots (Rots 2013), which showed that some tools were already hafted at such an early date. The aim of the present study is to examine the complete lithic assemblage, including both the unretouched and the retouched pieces. The emphasis is often placed in the literature on the fine retouched component of lithic assemblages, and more rarely on the expedient unretouched tools. The aim of this study is therefore to gain a better understanding of the functional complementarity of expedient and finely retouched tools within a specialized lithic toolkit.

Furthermore, in order to take advantage of the exceptional preservation of this early Middle Palaeolithic material, this work will also attempt further methodological developments focusing on edge damage mainly. The TraceoLab reference collection TRAIL will be exploited, but also new experiments will be carried out.

Hérisson, D. (2012). Étude des comportements des premiers Néandertaliens du Nord de la France. Les occupations saaliennes des gisements de Biache-Saint-Vaast et de Therdonne (Doctoral dissertation, Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille III).

Rots, V. (2013). Insights into early Middle Palaeolithic tool use and hafting in Western Europe. The functional analysis of level IIa of the early Middle Palaeolithic site of Biache-Saint-Vaast (France). Journal of Archaeological Science, 40(1), 497-506.