Numerous Palaeolithic sites yield bone remains with marks produced by percussing or retouching activities. Thanks to actualistic experiments, these bone fragments, named ‘bone retouchers', are known from the Lower Palaeolithic and are among the first bone tools discovered. Our recent experiments on green bone breakage have shown that marrow recovery by percussion techniques could produce marks similar to those observed on bone retouchers surfaces. Thus, those results suggest that it is necessary to pay attention to the type of marks (pits, scores), their morphology and their intensity and extent on the retouched area to discriminate the two types of causes, i.e. retouching activities on lithic tools or marrow recovery processing by percussion. These experimental traces imply to reconsider some retouching used marks by questioning their systematic interpretation as marks of bone retouchers, and instead by interpreting them as being rather incipient percussion marks or anvil caused by the counter blow. Systematic experiments comparing mimic traces produced by the marrow extraction and by the retouching of lithic tools need to be carried out to explore this new hypothesis.
| Type : | : | poster |
| Langue du texte intégral | : | anglais |
| Thématiques | : | Session posters |
| PDF version | : |  PDF version |
