How to place the site of Station de l'Hermitage (Huccorgne, prov de Liège, BE) in the Early Gravettian of Western Europe?

The structuration and conception of space in Upper Palaeolithic societies appear to be closely dependent on the degree of mobility of individuals and / or groups. To apprehend these different aspects, it is thus essential to replace the archaeological site within a territory that is by nature composite, composed of active zones (areas of interest) and passive zones (weakly or non-frequented areas), and dynamic (evolving in time).

“Station de l’Hermitage”, which in this contribution is the heart of our analysis, is an open-field site located in the valley of the Mehaigne (tributary on the left bank of the Meuse), at the interface between the massif of Ardennes and the vast loessic plateaus of the Hesbaye. Excavated several times since the end of the 19th century, it has provided industries of the Neolithic, Upper Paleolithic and Middle Paleolithic. The typo-technological characters of the lithic remains, as well as several radiocarbon dates, make it possible to attribute the Upper Palaeolithic level to a recent phase of the ancient Gravettian, later than the Maisièrien, which in Belgium characterizes the initial phase of the Gravettian. This level would testify to one or more occupations probably close in time, and associated with a same technical tradition.

Based on the data of petroarchaeological and lithic technology analysis, the approach of restitution of the past territories in the form of a network of places that we propose has already brought fundamental results with regard to the second half of the french Upper Paleolithic. Applied to the ancient Gravettian of the Middle Meuse Valley, this approach makes it possible to hypothesize a vast network of places, which links Belgium and Paris Basin within the same territory (in the geographical sense of the term)., but whose socio-economic mechanisms still remain to be determined by the development of large-scale interdisciplinary approaches.