Located some 10 km at the south-east of Liège the Walou cave entrance faces the north-west, 25 m above the Magne, a tributary of the Vesdre river. Excavations were conducted at the site from 1985 to 1990 and then from 1996 to 2004, revealing numerous successive prehistoric occupations. Its extensive stratigraphic sequence is the best documented for a Belgian Upper Pleistocene karst site. Thanks to a multidisciplinary approach the chronostratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental framework of the occupations is well understood. Out of the 45 layers of the sequence 25 yielded archaeological material. There are traces of the Neolithic (Layer A2) and the Mesolithic (Layers A4 and A5) at the top. The cave also revealed several Upper Palaeolithic occupations: Federmesser (Layer B1), Gravettian (Layer B5) and Aurignacian (Layer CI-1). The lower half of the sequence, which encompasses the Last Interglacial and the Weichselian Early Glacial, includes 9 Mousterian occupations; 6 reworked layers also yielded some artefacts from that culture. A Neandertal tooth was found in Layer CI-8, which contains the richest Mousterian occupation of the site. All lithic material was made from flint probably sourced in secondary position near the cave. Only the Gravettian and Aurignacian occupations yielded other man-made materials: antler spearheads and animal and mineral non-utilitarian artefacts from the Aurignacian. Numerous faunal remains were also found; among them: cave bear, cave hyena, horse, fox, bison/aurochs, woolly rhinoceros, deer, mammoth, chamois, hare, small rodents and a few birds. The study of the fish remains revealed that fishing took place at the site, as much during the Middle Palaeolithic as during the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic.
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Acoustic interaction theory and observation highlight the strong relation between the acoustic signal responses and the physical and biological processes acting on the seafloor and in the water column. Several descriptors such as sediment texture, porosity and surface roughness are identified as the main factors affecting the acoustic reverberation and backscatter signals. Shells can influence if not dominate the scattering on the seafloor(Jackson et al., 1986; Stanic et al., 1989 and Zhang, 1996). Scattering from both inclusions and partially buried shells on the sea-floor is described by Stanton (2000), and scattering from shells as a potential mechanism explaining the scattering above 200 kHz is highlighted by Ivakin (2009). In order to improve the knowledge on this matter, several institutions with different expertise are cooperating to integrate mathematical modeling and experimental results to better quantify the influence of shells and shell debris on the acoustic signal and scattering of sonar images. Mathematical 3D models of shell objects in a sediment matrix will be used to simulate the influence of the shells on acoustic signal and scattering. The physical arrangements of shells and their spatio-temporal population trends are also considered in the modeling. The models will be supported by direct sonar measurements of seafloor areas on the Belgian Continental Shelf, combined with sampling, visual observations, classification and shape analysis of the shells and shell debris.
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