Context, curation, and bias: an evaluation of the Middle Paleolithic collections of Combe-Grenal (France) Harold L. Dibble a, * , Shannon P. McPherron b , Dennis Sandgathe c , Paul Goldberg c, d , Alain Turq e , Michel Lenoir f a Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA b Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany c Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada d Department of Archaeology – Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215, USA e Muse ´e National de Pre ´histoire, Les Eyzies, France f Universite´ Bordeaux, UMR 5199 du CNRS (PACEA), Institut de Pre ´histoire et de Ge ´ologie du Quaternaire, 33405 Talence, France article info Article history: Received 25 November 2008 Received in revised form 6 July 2009 Accepted 9 July 2009 Keywords: Curation Combe-Grenal Mousterian Middle paleolithic France abstract The site of Combe-Grenal is arguably the reference site for the Mousterian of southwest France. Bordes excavated the site over a period of 13 years and generated a large collection of lithics and fauna from a deep series of 64 Lower and Middle Paleolithic levels. Though Bordes only partially published his work at the site, its long stratigraphic sequence and particularly its collections have been subjected to numerous studies over the years and have figured prominently in several long-running debates con- cerning the Mousterian. Recently, the authors undertook a project to inventory and analyzed these collections along with the documentation of their archaeological context. In so doing, however, a number of serious problems became apparent with the collection in its current state, problems that cannot easily be resolved given the state of the available documentation. These problems have important implications not only for results of studies based on these collections, but more generally, they also point to problems in terms of how archaeological collections are curated. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Combe-Grenal lies in a small tributary valley near the southern limit of the Dordogne river (Fig. 1). It consists of a small cave, today completely empty, and an extensive talus. The extent and depth of its deposits make it one of the largest Paleolithic sites of its kind in southwest France, and it is one of the very earliest sites investigated by researchers interested in the Paleolithic. System- atic, albeit small, excavations began at the site as earlyas 1816 and it was one of the caves investigated by Lartet and Christy for the seminal publication of Cavernes du Pe ´rigord (Lartet and Christy, 1864) that ultimately laid the foundation for subsequent Paleo- lithic research. Work was carried out at the site again in the early 1900s by the prominent French prehistorians of the time, Capitan and Peyrony. The latter also carried out a small-scale excavation there in the 1930s (Bordes, 1972). Combe-Grenal, however, is best known from the excavations by Bordes. In 1953, under the encouragement of Peyrony, he began a major excavation project at the site that lasted until 1965. Of the manyexcavations that he carried out in his career, this was, by far, the largest and turned out to be his most important in terms of its contribution to the Middle Paleolithic. In all, Bordes opened over 200 m 2 , excavated through 13 m of deposit, and identified 64 layers: 54 of these are Mousterian and overlie a number of layers that Bordes classified as so-called Meridional Acheulian (Bordes, 1955, 1972, 1973)(Fig. 2). Based on his interpretation of the geology and climatic data, the site’s deposits span the majority of the Late Pleistocene including the last interglacial (OIS 5e) up to late OIS 3. If Bordes, and subsequently Laville (1975) were correct, it may also include a portion of the penultimate glacial period (OIS 6) (Bordes, 1966, 1972, 1973; Bordes et al., 1966). Because of its long sequence and also the richness of its lithic and faunal assemblages, Combe-Grenal has played a central role in many of the dominant issues in Paleolithic research over the last half century. The lithic assemblage contributed significantly to Bordes’ definition of major variants in Middle Paleolithic stone tool frequencies that became the well-known Mousterian facies * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 215 898 7073. E-mail address: hdibble@sas.upenn.edu (H.L. Dibble). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas 0305-4403/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2009.07.010 Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 2540–2550