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A Middle Palaeolithic bone tool from Crimea (Ukraine)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Ariane Burke
Affiliation:
Département d'Anthropologie, Université de Montréal, BP 6128 Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7, Canada
Francesco d'Errico
Affiliation:
Institut de Préhistoire et de Géologie du Quaternaire, CNRS UMR 5199 PACEA, Université Bordeaux 1, avenue des Facultés, F-33405 Talence, France

Abstract

A fragment of equid tibia found with a Mousterian assemblage in a rockshelter in the Crimean peninsula is carefully examined. The authors show that it has been knapped like flint to produce a tool probably at a time when stone resources were becoming exhausted. This tool is thus the product of a Neanderthal response to a local need as well as proof that the technological properties of bone were known.

Type
Research
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2008

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