Une sépulture mésolithique douteuse sans relation archéo-stratigraphique dans la grotte du Rond-du-Barry (Polignac, Haute-Loire, France)

A new excavation zone – numbered 139 – set back from the cave porch, was opened in 2019 at the foot of the north wall in the Rond du Barry cave. Beneath the pottery levels, a layer over one meter thick has delivered a lithic assemblage with lamellar and small laminar components, associated with evidence of large-scale wildlife consumption and antler and bone artefacts. It evokes the Mesolithic but has been dated on bone and charcoal to the very Early Neolithic. While earlier excavations eliminated any direct stratigraphic relationship between Zone 139 and the area where a human fossil was found in 1986, then considered Magdalenian I (Badegoulian) in age but since reattributed to the Mesolithic, another human remains found earlier in Layer D shows a similar Mesolithic age. These new elements call into question the reality of the “secondary” burial identified in 1986, raise the question of the greater presence of post-glacial occupations inside the cavity, and enrich the archaeo-sequence of this emblematic site of prehistoric Velay.