New Excavations at La Ferassie (France)

在国家科学基金会的支持下，哈罗德·迪布尔博士和阿兰·特克博士与一个大型的国际跨学科团队合作，将在旧石器时代中期的La Ferrassie遗址（法国多尔多涅）进行三个季节的挖掘。 La Ferrassie的最初挖掘发生在20世纪初，揭示了一些尼安德特人和其他特征，这些特征表明遗址内的空间安排（可能具有象征意义）和故意埋葬尼安德特人遗骸。 此外，La Ferrassie是Ferrassie Mousterian的遗址，这是一种相对罕见的旧石器时代中期工业。在La Ferrassie的重新发掘将提供有关尼安德特人仪式和丧葬行为的新的详细信息，这是尼安德特人生活的一个重要但有争议的方面，对人类文化特征的进化具有重大意义。 尼安德特人对待死者的方式是一个在古人类学研究中争论了几十年的话题，但关于这个问题的大多数证据都是在现代挖掘和记录技术出现之前找到的。由于这种发现的罕见性，获得新数据通常更多地是由于偶然性，而不是明确的研究设计。 然而，很明显，La Ferrassie有可能就这一问题提供新的信息，从而对辩论作出重大贡献。新的挖掘工作将继续建立在最近其他工作的标准上，这些工作涉及数据恢复的精确度，准确性和完整性，以避免困扰早期发现的这种性质的模糊性。 该项目将明确鼓励来自世界各地的本科生和代表性不足的学生参与挖掘过程，为下一代考古学家提供重要的研究经验和培训。 还制定了通过网络和电影纪录片提供非正式公共教育的计划。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. Harold Dibble and Alain Turq, in collaboration with a large international, inter-disciplinary team, will spend three seasons of excavation at the Middle Paleolithic site of La Ferrassie (Dordogne, France). The original excavation of La Ferrassie, which took place around the turn of the 20th century, revealed a number of Neandertal individuals and other features that suggested both a deliberate arrangement of space within the site (possibly with symbolic significance) and deliberate burial of the Neandertal remains. In addition, La Ferrassie is the eponymous site for the Ferrassie Mousterian, a relatively rare Middle Paleolithic industry. The renewed excavations at La Ferrassie will provide new and detailed information on Neandertal ritual and mortuary behavior, an important yet controversial aspect of Neandertal life that has tremendous significance for the evolution of human cultural traits in general. Neandertal treatment of the dead is a topic that has been debated for decades in paleoanthropological research, but most of the evidence on this subject was recovered before the advent of modern techniques of excavation and documentation. Because of the rarity of such finds, having new data is usually due more to chance than it is to an explicit research design. It is clear, however, that La Ferrassie has the potential to provide new information on this subject and thus contribute significantly to the debate. The new excavations will continue to build on the standards of other recent work concerning the level of precision, accuracy, and completeness of data recovery in order to avoid the kinds of ambiguity that has plagued earlier finds of this nature. This project will explicitly encourage the participation of undergraduate and underrepresented students from all over the world in the excavation process, providing important research experiences and training for the next generation of archaeologists. Plans are also developed to provide informal public education through the web and film documentary.