Couteaux de Rouffignac: A new insight into an old tool

Davide Visentin (1) , Sylvie Philibert (2) , Nicolas Valdeyron (2)

1 UniFE - Università degli Studi di Ferrara = University of Ferrara
2 TRACES - Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés

At the entrance of the Rouffignac cave (Dordogne, France) an important and complete Mesolithic sequence was identified during the excavations of C. Barrière in the middle of the last century. What was brought to light from the Early Mesolithic layers is a very peculiar assemblage characterized by the uncommon dimensions of the production and a great variety and percentage of tools. Among the other peculiarities of the site is the presence of the so-called “couteaux de Rouffignac”, backed knifes characterized by basal notches. A new techno-functional analysis has been carried out on this specific tool in order to understand its role in the lithic assemblage and verify its correlation with a specific activity as proposed in the typological definition of the tool itself.

Keywords: Sauveterrian; backed knifes; use-wear analysis; plant processing

Domains: Archaeology and Prehistory; Social Anthropology and ethnology

Davide Visentin, Sylvie Philibert, Nicolas Valdeyron. Couteaux de Rouffignac: A new insight into an old tool. Meso2015. The ninth international conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, B. Dusan, S. Sojfija, A. Dragana, M. Bojana, Sep 2015, Belgrade, Serbia. ⟨hal-01996817⟩