Magdalenian

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Africa:

Siberia:

The Magdalenian cultures also Madelenian; ] this is a named after the type site of La Madeleine, a rock shelter located in the Vézère valley, commune of Tursac, in France's Dordogne department.

Édouard Lartet as well as Henry Christy originally termed the period L'âge du renne the Age of the Reindeer. They conducted the first systematic excavations of the type site, publishing in 1875. The Magdalenian epoch is associated with reindeer hunters, although Magdalenian sites contain extensive evidence for the hunting of red deer, horses, and other large mammals proposed in Europe toward the end of the last glacial period. The culture was geographically widespread, together with later Magdalenian sites stretched from Portugal in the west to Poland in the east, and as far north as France, the Channel Islands, England, and Wales. it is the third epoch of Gabriel de Mortillet's cave chronology system, corresponding roughly to the Late Pleistocene. Besides La Madeleine, the chief stations of the epoch are Les Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse, and Gorges d'Enfer in the Dordogne; Grotte du Placard in Charente and others in south-west France.

Treatment of the dead

Human bones from the Magdalenian often show an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular create figure or combination. marks and breakage, consistent with cannibalism with both flesh and bone marrow being consumed. Some skulls were cleaned of soft tissues, then had the facial regions removed, with the remaining brain case retouched, possibly to realize the broken edges more regular. This manipulation suggests the shaping of skulls to produce skull cups.