In Western Europe, several major events occurred during the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition, including the development of modern behavior. The emergence of the Upper Palaeolithic is most of the time discussed through material culture analyses but, due to a persistent lack of data, less often through zooarchaeological studies. The faunal remains studied in this work come from four sites of southwestern France frequently integrated in the debates surrounding the appearance of the Upper Palaeolithic (la Quina aval, Roc-de-Combe, les Abeilles, Isturitz). The corpus is constituted by more than 37,000 artifacts from nine assemblages attributed to the Chatelperronian, Protoaurignacian and Early Aurignacian. This work comprises descriptions of hunting strategies (discussion on mortality profiles and seasonality data, comparision with species ethology) and carcass processing techniques (by analyses of the frequencies, localization and signification of butchering and technical marks). Previous models on predation strategies are challenged by the identification of an important shift in hunting practices between the Mousterian and the Early Upper Palaeolithic. Besides, observation of cut-marks highlights differences in butchery gestures compared to more recent stages of the Upper Palaeolithic. With the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, faunal exploitation became more complex, with a technical and symbolic utilization of faunal remains. The integrated analysis of alimentary refuses, bone tools and adornments shows that the selection of blanks had influences in acquisition choices and carcasses processing. Dietary, technic and symbolic spheres appear thus strongly interconnected. These data, coupled with the other markers of the material culture, allowed us to propose the definition of distinct territories and to discuss mobility strategies of Early Upper Palaeolithic human groups. This work thus offers a renewed vision of subsistence behavior at the emergence of the Upper Paleolithic.
