The lithic industries on the fossiliferous outcrops of the Late Pliocene Masol Formation, Siwalik Frontal Range, northwestern India (Punjab)

The Quranwala zone (QZ) in the sector near Masol (Siwalik Frontal Range, Punjab) has been known since the 1960s for yielding freshwater and terrestrial vertebrates living during the late Pliocene on the sub-Himalayan floodplain. The fossils and quartzite cobbles are constantly unearthed from the core of an anticline. The basal member of QZ is about 130 meters below the Gauss/Matuyama paleomagnetic reversal, i.e., 2.588 Ma. Since 2009 the Indo-French Program of Research ‘Siwaliks’ has surveyed 50 hectares and highlighted a dozen localities on outcrops where artefacts in quartzite occur with fossil bones, of which a few show butchering marks. A few cobble tools and a flake were unearthed from a trial trench opened along the same boundary between silts and sandstones (Masol 2) as the one that provided a bovid tibia shaft bearing cut marks (Masol 1). Some 250 artefacts were collected mainly from the surface, sometimes in the slopes of outcrops recently eroded. These were mostly heavy-duty tools that comprised a majority of choppers, end choppers rather than side choppers, among which the “simple choppers” (shaped by one single removal) are common. The light-duty tools consist of flakes that are seldom retouched. The cores are very few and the flakes generally result from the shaping of choppers, except the larger flakes that are complemented by split cobbles. The consistency of the lithic assemblages among the localities supports their chronological homogeneity. Their features do not reflect any lithic technical tradition known in the region, neither Acheulean nor Soanian (in which the choppers are usually classical, not “simple”). La zone Quranwala du secteur de Masol (chaîne frontale des Siwaliks, Pendjab) est connue depuis les années 1960 pour ses vertébrés terrestres et d’eau douce, vivant dans la plaine d’inondation sous-himalayenne à la fin du Pliocène. Des fossiles et des galets de quartzite sont exhumés en permanence des affleurements du cœur d’un anticlinal, situés 130m sous la limite paléomagnétique Gauss/Matuyama, datée de 2,588 Ma. Depuis 2009, le programme de recherche franco-indien « Siwaliks » a mis en évidence une douzaine de localités où des artefacts lithiques sont associés en surface aux ossements fossiles, dont certains, de bovidés, portent des traces de boucherie. Quelques galets taillés et un éclat ont été mis au jour dans un sondage ouvert dans la même limite limon/grès (Masol 2) que celle d’où provient un fût tibial portant des traces d