This name is given to an Upper Palaeolithic prehistoric culture of western Europe. Solutrean culture s very distinctive traits within the Upper Palaeolithic, theoretically amounting to almost a break in its development the Aurignaco-Perigordian and the Magdalenian. Two points stand out especially in the Solutrean, according to Ph. E. L. Smith (1966: 370): the extremely limited spatial distribution of the culture (confined almost exclusively to the Iberian Peninsula and France—and even there, to very restricted territories), and the remarkable conservatism of its toolmaking traditions, which last for some three millennia with scarcely any change (except for the supposed evolution of some of its characteristic “index fossils”: foliate pieces and points made with flat retouch). Today it is impossible to solve the riddle of the origins of these instrumental forms on the basis of a few suggested source areas (the North African Aterian, the Szeletian of eastern Europe, …).
In any case, in southwestern Europe the Solutrean appears in an apparently abrupt manner, with its characteristic working of flint by means of a careful flat, “peeling” retouch that completely covers the blades (on one face at first, then on both), shaping them into various types of “points” with foliate outlines (“laurel leaves,” “willow leaves,” concave-based points, points with a lateral notch, …). Prehistorians have been troubled by the relatively fleeting nature of these classes of tools: they appear in the general history of technology without any secure formal and technical antecedents having been identified, and they disappear, at the end of the Solutrean, without leaving any trace in the rest of Palaeolithic times.
Since the beginnings of the Solutrean coincide with a climatically cold and dry phase—the period marking the end of Würm III and the start of Würm III/IV—it gives the impression that the establishment and subsequent development of this culture in southwestern Europe was concentrated in fairly small areas: from central Dordogne, shifting toward the Cantabrian Cornice and along the Levantine coast, while its presence in the Pyrenees was low. In fact, this traditional view held by authors of European prehistory syntheses seems likely to require correction in light of very recent dates and stratigraphic controls obtained at Solutrean sites in the Iberian Peninsula.
According to Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, several climatic fluctuations occurred during the Solutrean in the Southwest. Overall it is a dry period, but it is interrupted by phases of greater humidity. While steppe landscapes are common in southwestern Europe, small woodlands are also recognized, combining holm oaks, walnut trees, birches, and even beeches. In line with Smith’s ideas, the Solutrean of southern France and the Cantabrian littoral truly expands in what he calls its “middle” stage (circa 17,000–16,000 BC). It is preceded by a kind of “incubation period” (“Proto-Solutrean” and Lower Solutrean: from 19,000 to 18,000 and then to 17,000), and followed by the Upper and Final Solutrean (until beyond 15,000).
It is likely that Solutrean culture endured on the Cantabrian coast, while the Magdalenian began in Dordogne–Charente. Thus, in the northern strip of the Iberian Peninsula, the Final Solutrean is replaced (directly overlying it in stratigraphy) by the Lower Magdalenian (or III), according to F. Jordá’s thesis, accepted by almost everyone. In any event, the great similarity—both in lithic typology (excluding, of course, those flat-retouched elements typical of the Solutrean) and in bone assemblages or portable art— the deposits of that Final Solutrean and those of this Lower Magdalenian is striking, according to arguments recently reappraised in detail in L. G. Straus’s dissertation (1983).