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Abri du Bois-du-Roc

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Site type:
Shelter
Lat/Long:
45.68, 0.42
Country:
France
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The Abri du Bois-du-Roc, or Abri André Ragout au Bois-du-Roc, is a prehistoric rock shelter located in the commune of Vilhonneur, 30 km east of Angoulême, Charente (France).

The shelter was protected by a rocky overhang that gradually collapsed. The vault at the bottom of the shelter collapsed during the Magdalenian.

The upper layer includes many reindeer bones, and Bronze Age elements mixed with elements of the underlying layer dated to the Early Magdalenian. The next layer shows traces of Solutrean foci. It is separated by a silty layer from a Gravettian layer.

The excavations yielded many characteristic shards of Bronze Age ceramics, hence their name Bois-du-Roc ceramics. The ceramic objects are a spindle whorl, a sherd with incised decoration, and a fragment of a bell-necked vase.

Two fireplaces are present on the Magdalenian floor, which is an ancient Magdalenian with raclettes. The objects are chisels (112 found during the 1956 excavations), drills (6), scrapers (22), scrapers and blades with folded edges, and some bone objects including a pendant.

The notched points present in the Solutrean layer are the same as those found in the Placard cave, less than a kilometer away. The materials used are varied: flint, quartz, and jasper.

The oldest layer includes points of the Gravettian type, notched points, laurel leaf points, bladelets with fallen edges, and Noailles burins, the smallest pieces from the Upper Palaeolithic, here measuring between 18 mm and 54 mm. These Noailles burins are made of flint and jasper for 21 of them. They are of various types: 71 single on flakes, 47 double, double on flakes, bilateral on bladelets, adjacent biterminals on bladelets, opposite biterminals on bladelets, and 9 triples on bladelets.

The ornaments and other objects are a pierced tooth, a shell, a needle, and incised bones.