ANTH 1131 Lecture Notes - Le Moustier, Infant
Document Summary
Le moustier, france in 1908 and 1914. No sediments left of site at the time, they were only looking for skeletons. Fourth child found in 1973 later on. Re-dating the sediment layers show that they are from c. 50,000 years old. Claims that they were intentional burials, once again. There used to be a large cave mouth by the excavation site; but it collapsed much before the neanderthals arrived. The two adults found separately from the children all distributed across the site. Found more or less on the same sediment level. Claims that the children were placed into purposefully dug pits. Pretty sure that adults were placed in intentionally created pits as well, because they were all more or less intact. Of course, this doesn"t really make logical sense. The sites were filled with stone tools, such as flint scrapers. Some of the depressions that the skeletons came from were natural, however naturally-created depressions from the ice.