Tag Archives: MTA

Transport of raw materials during the Middle Paleolithic

This is a 5 cm long  Handaxe from Fontmaure ( Vienne; France). The large and intensively occupied site was located directly on exposure of high quality jasper (secondary colored Upper Cretaceous flint; color oscillating from red to yellow, often multicolored). … Continue reading

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Middle Paleolithic from Scheden; Lower Saxony

This is a small (6 cm long) Handaxe from a field at Scheden (Southern Lower Saxony, near Dransfeld). In southern lower Saxony, between Kassel and Göttingen, there are numerous outcrops of middle and fine-grained Oligocene / Miocene quartzites on the Dransfeld … Continue reading

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The Middle Paleolithic of Northern Hessen

This is a slightly asymmetric Micoquian “Faustkeilblatt” (7 cm long) with a br0ken tip, made of quartzite from a field near the classic Middle Paleolithic site of Lenderscheid near Kassel / Germany, found in 1982. Keilmesser (backed bifacial tools) together with … Continue reading

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Fontmaure and the “Moustérien typique final à lames”

These are blades from the Fontmaure site putatively assigned to the upper Mousterian level detected by Luis Pradel in 1938. The Fontmaure site was first recognized in 1905, plundered by amateurs until 1935 ,and finally destructed by quarry operations. Fontmaure … Continue reading

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The meaning and biographies of collected objects

Two MTA Bifaces from Versigny (http://www.aggsbach.de/2012/03/versigny/) Not only persons, but also objects have biographies, as they are integrated into interactions across time and space and were embedded and later removed from their original context. As objects gather biographies for themselves … Continue reading

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The Denticulated Mousterian in S/W-France

Three denticulated tools from the Middle Paleolithic of the Dordogne (the left one from Combe Capelle, 6-7cm long). The Backing of tools in the MTA-B and the Chatelperronian and a similar geographical distribution of both technocomplexes is highly suggestive that the … Continue reading

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Versigny and the MTA of Northern France

When I visited “le nord” in the 1980ies, people of this part of France appeared to me alarmingly impoverished. At this time I could not imagine, that decreasing wealth would be a common phenomenon during the coming years for many … Continue reading

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A Quina Handaxe from Saint- Maixent – l‘ École (Charente)

This is a handaxe from a assemblage of Quina Mousterian tools from Saint- Maixent – l‘ École (Charente). Bifacial tools (usually scrapers) are always present in small quantities in Quina-ensembles. Bifacial Quina scrapers and MTA bifaces offer a similar functional … Continue reading

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Reworked MTA Biface from Indre-et-Loire

Stone tools are the most common and durable evidence of Middle Paleolithic behavior, but are also among the most enigmatic. They are, obviously, technological artifacts, produced by a set of mechanical processes beginning with raw material acquisition followed by its … Continue reading

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Technique at Le Moustier

These are two elongated Levallois flake / knifes made from typical dark Senonian flint from Le Moustier G. The MTA assemblage from Le Moustier layer G (TL-Date: 50-55 k.a. BP) shows an ensemble that is characterized by a recurrent centripetal … Continue reading

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