2016 - Protoaurignacian Retouched Bladelets: Where do we stand? (original) (raw)

The Protoaurignacian is a blade-bladelet dominated industry. Both products are often described to be obtained from the same cores, often of pyramidal or prismatic morphology, through a continual reduction sequence (Bon and Bodu 2002), even if several are the exclusive bladelet cores identified in Fumane, Isturitz and Arbreda (Broglio et al. 2005; Normand 2006; Ortega et al. 2005). Among the tools, retouched bladelets are the most attested type, followed by end-scrapers and few retouched blades (Bon 2002). In Europe there is little evidence for bladelet production in Mousterian (Peresani et al. 2013; Slimak and Lucas 2005) and Châtelperronian assemblages (Roussel 2011). It is with the advent of the Aurignacian, and during the later Upper Paleolithic, that those tools start to accomplish a primary role in the hunter-gatherer societies. This is why lithic analysts address at the stabilization of lamellar-based elements as the major break from the previous stone knapping traditions (Bon 2005). Despite the long standing interest on those elements, a careful inter-regional comparison, stressing similarities and divergences, has not yet been attempted. The issue that there is no general agreement on their typological characterization, is precisely imputable to the lack of well-structured morpho-metrical studies, that took into account comparable criteria. Moreover, the identification of a major tool type, the Dufour sub-type Dufour bladelet (Demars and Laurent 1992) ended up homogenizing the general picture. Therefore, the lamellar collections of three main sites across Europe, Grotta di Fumane (Fig.1), Grotte d’Isturitz and Grotte des Cottés, have been analyzed to better understand the morpho-metrical characterization of the retouched bladelets during the Protoaurignacian, without a preconceived typological approach. In order to perform morphological and dimensional comparisons among the three assemblages, various attributes have been selected: flaking direction, butt and bulb morphology, number of scars, curvature of the profile, blank morphology, basal and distal shape, retouch and final size (length, width and thickness). Several differences have been found among Fumane, Isturitz and Les Cottés, even if it appears certain that all lamellar products belong to shared stone knapping traditions, which characterize the Protoaurignacian and more in general the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic in Western Eurasia. It has finally been argued that two main categories of bladelets can be highlighted: retouched points and lateralized bladelets and that the feature that better discriminate Protoaurignacian assemblages across Europe is the presence and the relative variability of retouched points. We consider this a first contribution to help deconstruct the monolithic picture of the Aurignacian, that in our opinion has been built up to easily track the spread of modern humans across Western Eurasia, and not to make proper inference on the structures and organization of the hunter-gatherer societies that inhabited Europe at the threshold of the Upper Paleolithic.