Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/71

Rh the degree of culture disclosed by the relics found on certain stations which he regarded as typical. His classification at first consisted of four epochs, viz.,—Acheuléen, Moustérien, Solutréen, and Magdalénien, names derived from Saint Acheul (Somme Valley), the cave of le Moustier (Dordogne), the rock-shelters of Solutré (Saône-et-Loire), and la Madeleine (Dordogne). Subsequently, on the discovery, in 1878, of the famous gravel-beds at Chelles (Seine-et-Marne), which contained flint implements supposed to be of an earlier and purer type than those of Saint Acheul, he used Chelléen as his first epoch, but still retained Acheuléen, as a later phase of it.

(4) Professor Fraipont of Liége thus defines the classification of the Palæolithic period, which he adopted in his writings:—

(a) L'époque de Elephas antiquus et du Rhinoceros merckii, correspondant à l'époque Chelléenne de M. G. de Mortillet.

(b) L'epoque du mammoth et du Rhinoceros tichorhinus, correspondant à l'époque Moustérienne de M. G. de Mortillet.

(c) L'époque du renne, correspondant à l'époque Magdalénienne de M. G. de Mortillet. (Les Cavernes et leur habitants, p. 57, 1896.)

At the Monaco meeting of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology (1906), M. l'Abbé Breuil advocated the revival of the term Aurignacien to represent certain well-defined relics, which he regarded as pre-Solutréen rather than Magdalénien a distinction formerly recognised by Lartet and Hamy (Précis de Paléontologie Humaine, p. 257).

As this addition to Mortillet's nomenclature is based on recent discoveries, it has only lately come into general use among French archæologists. With this addition I consider Mortillet's classification the most practicable that has hitherto been suggested. As it is essential to have precise ideas associated with the different phases of culture represented by the terms of de Mortillet's nomenclature, we will now proceed to give a brief description of the typical stations from which they have been derived, as well as of a few of the most representative objects found in them, or in stations which are supposed to belong to the same phase of culture.