Caractérisations pétroarchéologiques, provenances et aires de circulations des industries moustériennes différentes du silex en Région du Rhin Supérieur, entre la Moselle et le Jura : stations de Mutzig et Nideck (Alsace, France), de Lellig (Luxembourg),

The rock shelters of Felsbourg is located on terraces of the Vosgean sandstone (commune of Mutzig,
the Low-Rhine). It revealed a prehistoric occupation on about fifteen horizons of successive rhythmic
habitats with hearth feature, with Mousterian lithic industry and osseous remainders of consumed
fauna (herbivorous mammals).
Neanderthals that inhabited the valley during the Middle Paleolithic period used volcanic and
volcanogenic siliceous Paleozoic rocks, or slickenside and metamorphic rocks of the Vosgean
sandstone with rollers.
Workshops with paleolithic industry in Nideck, to 15 km upstream, confirm the local origin of the rocks.
The technique of cutting up on rhyolite is there specifically of Discoïde type: it is an opportunist
adaptation to the selected siliceous rock, function of its structuring in outcrops and modules of the
exploitable blocks.
The prehistoric Man of the Bruche valley hunted game mainly reindeer and horse, also mammoth,
buffalo, aurochs, saïga antelope, megaloceros (giant deer), stag, roe-deer, fox, wolf. He consumed his
huntings for Felsbourg, as testify some to the hearths with carbonized osseous remainders.
A local provisioning and of average outdistances in rocks "not-flint" is dominating in the Bruche valley.
It finds in other close stations with "quartzit-quartz" industry as in Lellig (Luxembourg), mainly on
standard quarzit plates from Taunus and rollers natives of the Moselle region and the Ardennes. In
Alle Pre-Monsieur (the Swiss Jura), the Mousterian people privileged the cretaceous flint nodules. One
finds there significant tools in Vosgean rocks, abandoned with the profit of flint: thus Neanderthals
came from the south of the Vosges mountains.
The paleo-socio-economic organization is completely autarkical: from the Bruche valley or regional to
the Paleo-Rhine. The output rocks outline circulations and provisioning. The Mousterians groups
surfaces of establishment around Mutzig is spread out between the Rhine and Vosgean mountains.