Paléoenvironnement et paléoclimatologie de la Catalogne durant près de 30 000 ans (du Würmien ancien au début de l'Holocène) d'après la palynologie du site de l'Arbreda (Gérone, Catalogne)

Abstract

An important excavation was opened in the filling of the Arbreda Cave (Serinyà, Gérone, Catalonia) through archaeological levels of middle and upper Palaeolithic. The station lies in the mediterranean area. The palynological diagram gives global informations on the vegetal palaeoenvironment of the fossil man in Catalonia during about 30 000 years (archaeologically, from recent Mousterian to a stage of an indeterminate post-Solutrean palaeolithic and geologically, from the end of the early Wiirm, isotopic stage 3, to the beginning of the Holocene, stage 1): open and herbaceous vegetation with steppic characters, where are emerging some Pines and Cupressaceae. The sequence divided in 11 pollinic zones, shows some short periods of climatic ameliorations, or interstades, during the wurmian glaciation. The results are not perhaps very convincing but however well corroborated by the studies of charcoals, rodents and larges mammals, through a stratigraphy based on irrefutable chronological and geoarcheological results. On the countrary, the interstadial stages are well individualized with the utilization of the climatic index ; they are characterized by the sporadic and incomplete extent, from refuge zone, certainly close to the site, of mesothermophilous and (or) thermophilous vegetal associations, in the lap of more or less steppic vegetation settled during a cold climate still milder because of the mediterranean influence.