Royer, Aurélien, Bruxelles, Laurent, Capdepon, Eugénie, Discamps, Emmanuel, Faivre, Jean-Philippe, Guérin, Guillaume, Holliday, Trenton, Lacrampe-Cuyaubère, François, Lahaye, Christelle, Lejay, Mathieu, Gueut, Erwan Le, Maureille, Bruno, Michel, Alexandre, Muth, Xavier, Sirieix, Colette, Texier, Pierre-Jean, White, Randall, and Laffont, Rémi
Cette contribution a pour objet de retranscrire l’histoire du site paléolithique de La Balutie (Montignac-Lascaux, Dordogne, France). L’histoire de ce site très tôt oublié, n’est ni sensationnelle, ni exceptionnelle, mais s’avère retranscrire l’atmosphère caractérisant les débuts des explorations des gisements préhistoriques de Dordogne. On y retrouve de grands noms de la Préhistoire de Dordogne qui n’ont légué que peu d’écrits sur le site, du mobilier trié (surtout lithique) du Paléolithique moyen et supérieur qui a alimenté de nombreuses collections privées avant d’être dispersé au sein de diverses institutions, et un contexte local compliqué et agrémenté de conflits. Notre connaissance de La Balutie, ponctuée de nombreuses lacunes tant temporelles que factuelles, est à l’image de nombreux autres sites régionaux, qui ont été fouillés très (trop) tôt et qui pour autant ont participé à l’essor des recherches préhistoriques. Over the course of 150 years of prehistoric research in the Périgord, numerous fossil-bearing deposits were excavated with the goal of recovering artifacts and human remains, identifying archaeological cultures and their succession, or characterizing the lifeways of prehistoric societies and their evolution. Since this research began, scientific approaches and excavation methods have continuously evolved, which has led to sites being regularly re-excavated and to the reevaluation of previously excavated assemblages in light of new developments in the field. While over the years some sites have become reference sites, others were partially or even completely destroyed, emptied, or at times simply forgotten due to a lack of interest – either real, or due to the history of science and its actors.The site of La Balutie is one of these sites that has been partially forgotten over time. Located on the hill of Lascaux on the left bank of the Vézère River, southeast of the village of Montignac-Lascaux, the site lies about 500 m south of Lascaux and Regourdou. First described by Alain Reverdit (1873, 1878) just a few years after Lartet and Christy’s explorations in the Périgord, La Balutie comprises a cave, a rocky ledge, and two rock shelters spread along a roughly 100 to 150 meters long and 5 to 6 meters high limestone outcrop. Reverdit’s observations, by far the most complete to date, describe a complex site with lithic industries attributable to the Magdalenian (which is equivalent to today’s Aurignacian), Solutrean, and Mousterian. These lithic industries were not found in association with each other, nor were they superimposed; rather, each was found in a different locus of the site. La Balutie is mentioned in a variety of sources and prehistoric studies from the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, alongside sites that are today considered reference sites. With the aid of Michel Hardy, Reverdit brought to light an important collection of material, primarily lithics, which was subsequently dispersed among some 20 institutions in France and abroad. This scattering of archaeological objects from La Balutie perfectly illustrates the manner in which prehistoric material circulated from the end of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. This circulation happened soon after the excavations and was probably intensified due to the numerous contacts Hardy had at the time. It also reflects the importance given to personal collections during this period and the multiple ways of acquiring them, including commercial transactions by antiquarians, donations, exchanges of material, or simply sold for financial gain. The collections from La Balutie underscore the interest of Reverdit and other prehistorians of the time had in the Upper Paleolithic lithic materials from the site, including a variety of “beautiful pieces.” However, these pieces are now of only limited interest, as they lack both contextual information and a precise provenience.La Balutie therefore appeared to be relatively famous and frequently visited during the end of the 19th and first quarter of the 20th centuries. Among the visitors during this period was Marcel Castanet, an excavator of Louis Didon, who visited the site on his behalf. Castanet convinced Didon to lease the Blanchard site from his neighbor in 1910, beating out Jean Leyssales, who was also interested in the site on behalf of Otto Hauser. Multiple exchanges between Castanet and Didon show that Castanet considered La Balutie promising, eventually “scratching its surface” to better evaluate its potential. Nonetheless, in this particular prehistoric field war, Castanet and Didon were in the end beaten out by Hauser and Leyssales, who leased the site in 1910.Questions remain as to whether Hauser ever excavated at La Balutie. In 1911, he lists it as one of his sites, mentioning that it had not yet been excavated. Little information from La Balutie is known between this time and his hasty departure from France at the beginning for the First World War, after which both his possessions and land were sequestered. Material from the sites of « la Balutie » and “la Balucie” is mentioned as having been seized from Hauser and Leyssales by the French state in 1921, which could correspond to the objects curated in the Capitan collection of the National Museum of Archaeology in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. These objects bear labels with the inscription “Baloutie,” the spelling primarily used by Parrot and Hauser. If the question of whether Hauser and Leyssales excavated at La Balutie seems anecdotal, it nevertheless had a non-negligible impact on the subsequent history of the site. In 1925, Franck Delage investigated the area of La Balutie that had not been leased by Hauser, the cave, which gave rise to his 1939 paper describing a cave in which nothing was preserved. However, he was unable to continue his work at the other areas of the site, due to Hauser and Leyssales’ lease. There is no evidence of any new work at the site in the year after the start of the excavations, demonstrating no new excavations were permitted. In addition, the new property owner wanted to use the land as he see saw fit and likely refused to allow any other archaeological excavations, despite Denis Peyrony’s attempt to convince him otherwise.While the last known “official” excavations at La Balutie occurred in 1925, the site continued to be visited and even explored. These new visits were in part tied to the discovery of two additional sites on the hill, Lascaux Cave and Regourdou. Abbé Glory worked at Lascaux between 1952 and 1963 and lived for some time at Regourdou, where he advised Roger Constant and dug at La Balutie. He visited the site on numerous occasions, including at least once with Henri Breuil and Constant. During this visit, they collected a fragment of a bovid epiphysis that bore traces of gnawing, which they interpreted as being left by a Neanderthal, following the bone having been slowly roasted. In the spring of 1955, Glory returned to Lascaux for a new campaign. Correspondence between Constant, Glory and a certain D. Vrammont discusses a new excavation project at La Balutie during the summer of that same year, and also mentions surveys that had already been carried out and which yielded faunal material. Of these operations, only three photos dated to August 1955 taken by members of the Nantaise Prehistoric Society attest to the work of Glory at the second rock shelter of La Balutie.The site of La Balutie was classified as an historic monument by a 28th of December 1960 decree by Max Sarradet, with the last studies of portions of the material uncovered at La Balutie dating to the 1960s (de Sonneville-Bordes 1960; Smith 1966) and uniquely focusing on the Upper Paleolithic material.The present contribution aims to provide both an inventory of the available information concerning the site in order to retrace its history, at the heart of which lie those who participated in the study of the two neighboring sites, Lascaux and Regourdou, and better understand the site’s place in the history of the prehistory of the region. Finally, we attempt to discern the possible reasons for the site having been largely forgotten. La Balutie is amongst the sites that marked the beginning of the history of prehistory in the Périgord. While not totally forgotten, the site was gradually abandoned, likely in part due to the early date of the excavations, the absence of a notable archeo-stratigraphy, legal problems and very likely following the successive discoveries, first of Lascaux, which garnered worldwide scientific attention, and then but to a lesser extent, of Regourdou. In addition to the geographic proximity of Lascaux, Regourdou, and La Balutie, this contribution also shows that these three sites share in part a common history through the visits of the same prehistorians. While many prehistorians passed by, few left any evidence of their presence. These rare clues transcribe a fragmented history of a poorly documented site, which is probably far from having revealed all its secrets. Despite these difficulties, the site provides evidence for the repeated occupation of the hill of Lascaux during the Upper Pleistocene, very likely due to its geographical context. Surprisingly, the Mousterian material from this site has not been revised since Reverdit’s excavations, and no faunal remains were collected, despite their being mentioned by Reverdit. This site biography is part of a larger project to reopen excavations that had begun in 2016 with the aim of better understanding the potential of the Mousterian occupations of the site and to characterize Pleistocene faunal communities.