Freshness of bone-retouchers: an experiment to discriminate use of bone with divers degree of time exposure to retouch lithic tools - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2022

Freshness of bone-retouchers: an experiment to discriminate use of bone with divers degree of time exposure to retouch lithic tools

Résumé

Long bones fragments were used as retouchers during the middle Palaeolithic. Their morphology and the characterisation of the marks left by the work of lithic tools are well studied. Some studied focus on the use of fresh or dry bone fragments to retouch lithic tools to highlight the dry bone have lost the elasticity and seem to be less efficient. This problematic of the use of fresh bone as retouchers is important because it influence the identification of intentional and controlled production of blank or the use of butchery waste. We performed an experiment using shaft fragments of long ones to manufacture and retouch lithic tools. To test the freshness of the bone fragments, we expose to the weather one sample during one year and one sample used a few times (one week) after the animal death. To avoid an inter-individual variation, only one lithician used all the bone tools. We would like to verify the hypothesis of the lesser efficiency of the dry blanks than the fresh ones. Besides, as the typology of the retouch marks are well known, our study focus on the morphology of the traces depending on the freshness of the blank. Our preliminary results show main differences regarding the retouch marks and areas, both on morphology features and traces numbers. We observe more scaled areas on the dry bone fragments. In this study, we attempt comparing our results on experimental retouchers with archaeological ones from Riparo Tagliente, Italy (MIS 4-3) to identify if retouchers used were fresh or dry. This comparison could bring some evidence of the specific cognitive behaviour regarding bone tools and probable preformation of the blank.
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Dates et versions

hal-03942749 , version 1 (17-01-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-03942749 , version 1

Citer

Delphine Vettese, Marta Arzarello, Brunella Muttillo, Ursula Thun Hohenstein. Freshness of bone-retouchers: an experiment to discriminate use of bone with divers degree of time exposure to retouch lithic tools. EAA Budapest 2022, Aug 2022, Budapest, Hungary. ⟨hal-03942749⟩
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