Tag Archives: Levallois

Middle Paleolithic of the Oise Valley

  This is a Mousterian convergent scraper, made on a non-Levallois flake (9 cm long), found in the OiseValley in the Picardy in N-France. The Picardy is a rather flat territory and the highest peak – Mont Watigny – lies … Continue reading

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Misleading Typology

This is a paleolithic stray find from Chambonniere (Auvergne). If cordiform, triangular or small bifaces are found without a datable context, they are assumed being part of a “MTA”-ensemble, dated to OIS 3. Such assumptions represent a sort of circular reasoning and … Continue reading

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Handaxe from the Leine Valley

 This is a  handaxe (10×7,5×2,3 cm) from the gravels at Hannover / Döhren found in the 1930ies. During the beginning of OIS8 at about 300 k.a. BP, hand axe bearing industries appear in Central Europe which contain numerous Levallois forms … Continue reading

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A Handaxe from Kathu Pan and the chronology of the ESA /MSA in South Africa

Handaxe made of banded ironstone, Kathu Pan, McGregor Museum, Kimberley Photo © Michael Cope This Handaxe was found embedded in an exposed stratigraphic sequence in a sinkhole at Kathu Pan in the Northern Cape, South Africa, and dated by association … Continue reading

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A Quina scraper from the Somme

This is a flat cortical flake with “Quina” retouche coming from the Somme valley. Such tools in the North European Plain are rare. The artifact would much better fit into the Middle Paleolithic of the Aquitaine. We should ask for … Continue reading

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Middle Paleolithic Points from France

 There are three established methods to look on an artifact:  The typological Method The chaine operatoire Approach Microwear analysis A Mousterian point is typologically defined by a triangular flake with the presence of a retouch on one or two sides … Continue reading

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Levallois Blade Core

Levallois Blade Core (a field finding from Meyrals, a wonderful small town between Sarlat and Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne) During the last 30 years it became clear, that the production and use of blades in West and Middle Europe … Continue reading

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Sangoan / Lupemban : Core axe from Katanga

The Sangoan and Lupemban of Central Africa and the Eastern Lowlands are MSA- technocomplexes dated roughly between 400-150 k.a BP. They can be identified on the basis of “heavy duty” core axes and picks (Sangoan) and smaller and parallel sided … Continue reading

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Quina scrapers from the Carrière Chaumette

Principally all variants of the Quina reduction sequence share the principle of exploiting two surfaces of a core, which intersect at a low angle. The core reduction is recurrent and unidirectional.  The blanks of this strategy are often thick, short … Continue reading

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Large Game Hunting by Neanderthals. Update 2012

After the discovery of the spears of Schöningen by Thieme in 1995, there can be no doubt, that early humans were sucessful hunters, and not disabeled scavengers, as once thought. Here I review the evidence that H. Neanderthaliensis hunted large … Continue reading

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