364 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1949 
detailed studies of the fauna and the soil samples will yield interesting 
and important data on the environmental conditions that prevailed 
in the region during the time when the La Colombiére terrace was 
being formed. 
While the deep central trench was being driven through to the bed- 
rock at the archeological site, Professor Bryan and Dr. Judson made 
an intensive study of the Late Pleistocene deposits of the Jura region 
in the vicinity of La Colombiére. This work led to an extremely 
satisfactory and convincing tie-in of the 20- to 23-meter terrace of 
the Ain with a series of well-marked end-moraines near Nantua, a 
town approximately 11 miles due northeast of Poncin. In order to 
accomplish this it was necessary to leave the Ain Valley at the town 
of Croiselet and follow the valley of the Oignin River southward to the 
Nantua Basin. In this manner it was definitely established that the 
La Colombiére terrace was formed at the time when the front of the 
glaciers was located near Nantua. This may certainly be regarded 
as a late episode during Wiirm (Fourth Glacial) times, but on the basis 
of the present evidence it is impossible to be more precise. 
As regards the Upper Aurignacian occupation layers overlying the 
20- to 23-meter terrace of the Ain at La Colombiére, it was not only 
possible to identify all the levels reported by the original investigators 
of the site (see pl. 2), but also to establish the intimate and direct 
association of them with the uppermost portion of the thick deposits 
of river-laid sands and silts so clearly exposed in the main central 
trench. Very fine sections (pl. 4, fig. 2) clearly showing this relation- 
ship were revealed in both the western and the eastern portions of 
the site. In the latter sector the main occupation layer was for the 
most part intact. Although rich Upper Aurignacian (Gravettian) 
deposits were reported by! Mayet and Pissot in the former locus, almost 
no archeological material was found there during the course of the 
1948 season. The deposits in the eastern half of the rock-shelter, 
however, proved to be very much richer. 
As previously stated, the Magdalenian® layer was chinnptetely 
removed during the 1912-13 season by Dr. Mayet and M. Pissot; 
nevertheless a small patch of gravels that had accumulated during 
Late Pleistocene times was found in the base of a cleft in the rear 
wall of the eastern part of the site. In addition to a small collection 
of vertebrate remains, these gravels yielded the broken piece of an 
interesting broken bone object (pl. 5, fig. 1), which is possibly the 
perforated end of a so-called “baton de commandement.” In any 
case, the geometric decoration—chevron pattern, crossed on one side 
by parallel lines—is typically Magdalenian. The object, which is 
' The Magdalenian is a prehistoric culture which attained the peak of its development during the closing 
stages of the Ice Age, some 10,000 years or so after the Aurignacian, 
