Multi-method (TL and OSL), multi-material (quartz and flint) dating of the Mousterian site of Roc de Marsal (Dordogne, France): correlating Neanderthal occupations with the climatic variability of MIS 5e3 Guillaume Guérin a, i, * , Emmanuel Discamps b , Christelle Lahaye a , Norbert Mercier a , Pierre Guibert a , Alain Turq c , Harold L. Dibble d, e, f , Shannon P. McPherron e , Dennis Sandgathe d, g , Paul Goldberg h , Mayank Jain i , Kristina Thomsen i , Marylène Patou-Mathis j , Jean-Christophe Castel k , Marie-Cécile Soulier l a UMR 5060 CNRS-IRAMAT-CRP2A, Université Bordeaux 3, Maison de l’archéologie, 33607 Pessac Cedex, France b UMR 5199-PACEA, CNRS/Université Bordeaux 1, Avenue des Facultés, 33405 Talence Cedex, France c Musée National de Préhistoire, Les Eyzies, PACEA, UMR 5199 du CNRS, France d Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA e Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany f Institute for Human Origins, Arizona State University, USA g Human Evolution Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada h Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, USA i Technical University of Denmark, Center for Nuclear Technologies, Risø Campus, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark j UMR 5198 du CNRS, Département de Préhistoire e Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, 1 rue René Panhard, 75013 Paris, France k Museum d’Histoire naturelle, route de Malagnon, CP 6434, 1211 Genève 6, Switzerland l Université Toulouse-Le Mirail, TRACES-UMR 5608, France article info Article history: Received 9 December 2011 Received in revised form 10 April 2012 Accepted 11 April 2012 Keywords: TL OSL Middle Palaeolithic Climate variability Palaeoenvironments abstract Roc de Marsal has yielded numerous remains of Mousterian occupations, including lithics, fauna and combustion features. It was made famous by the discovery of the skeleton of a Neanderthal child. Given the need to date the sequence, TL and OSL were applied on heated flints and quartz, and OSL on unheated quartz. Chronological results combined with palaeoenvironmental data e faunal remains and micro- morphological features in the sediments from the cave, pollen proxies and faunal remains from the region e allowed us to place climate variations in southwest France on a numerical time scale. Denticulate Mousterian occupations were dated to the middle of MIS 4 (65e70 ka) and Quina layers either to the very end of MIS 4 or to MIS 3. Interestingly, a faunal pattern showing a mix of red deer, roe deer and reindeer was found to have occurred during MIS 4, which was shown to be consistent with data from other similar sites in southwest France. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction During the Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 5e3, Neanderthals had to face dramatic changes in climatic and environmental conditions, well documented in ice-core 18 O variations and marine-core pollen data, faunal remains from archaeological sites and geological signatures in sedimentary deposits. Lithic produc- tion also varied during the period spanning MIS 5e3 as seen in variations in the technology of blank production and in changes in the emphasis of certain retouched tool categories. These variations have led to the creation of the Mousterian techno-complexes including Denticulate Mousterian, Typical Mousterian, Quina Mousterian, and Mousterian of Acheulian tradition, among others. Interplay between cultural and environmental changes has been at the centre of many debates in archaeology, including how envi- ronmental changes might have triggered innovations in cultural productions through demographic changes (e.g. Chase, 1986; Henrich, 2004; Stiner et Kuhn, 2006; Richerson et al., 2009) and how they impacted the selection of hunted prey by past hominins (e.g. Grayson et al., 2001; Grayson and Delpech, 2002; Discamps et al., 2011; Delagnes and Rendu, 2011). However, the scarcity of * Corresponding author. Radiation Research Division, Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Frederiksborgvej 399, Building 201, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark. E-mail address: guillaumeguerin@ymail.com (G. Guérin). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas 0305-4403/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2012.04.047 Journal of Archaeological Science xxx (2012) 1e14 Please cite this article in press as: Guérin, G., et al., Multi-method (TL and OSL), multi-material (quartz and flint) dating of the Mousterian site of Roc de Marsal (Dordogne, France): correlating Neanderthal occupations with the climatic variability of MIS 5e3, Journal of Archaeological Science (2012), doi:10.1016/j.jas.2012.04.047