A Techno-Functional Interpretation of the Lithic Assemblage from Fontana Ranuccio (Anagni, Central Italy): an Insight in
- PDF / 7,277,095 Bytes
- 23 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 76 Downloads / 140 Views
A Techno-Functional Interpretation of the Lithic Assemblage from Fontana Ranuccio (Anagni, Central Italy): an Insight into a MIS 11 Human Behaviour Stefano Grimaldi 1,2 & Fabio Santaniello 1,2 Luciano Bruni 1 & Fabio Parenti 1,3
& Diego
E. Angelucci 2
&
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The techno-functional approach has been employed to better understand one of the more relevant artifact types generally found in Lower Palaeolithic sites: so-called small tools. Particularly, some Italian sites, such as Ficoncella, Isernia and others, have been the subject of specialized studies which provide evidence of an unexpected complexity of technical behaviours mainly related to highly specialized functional properties of the small tools. In this paper, we aim to enhance the debate on the topic by presenting a technofunctional study of the entire lithic assemblage coming from one of the most renown Middle Pleistocene sites in southern Europe, the open-air site of Fontana Ranuccio (Central Italy). Five groups of retouched tools have been identified: cutting tools, where retouch is usually applied to isolate a cutting edge on the blank; pointed tools, where retouch isolates a pointed edge; scrapers; and few other types of retouched tools such as notches and denticulates. We discuss a reconstruction of the reduction sequence in association with the functional features of the produced stone tools in order to better understand these Middle Pleistocene hominin behaviours. Broadly speaking, retouch seems to be used as a real technical process, not distinguishable from the reduction sequence. What seems relevant here is the need to modify the original morphology of flakes and cores in order to shape them into the final objectives of the production. In this perspective, blank production (débitage) and tool shaping (façonnage) are tightly interconnected one on the other. Keywords Fontana Ranuccio . Italy . Middle Pleistocene . Lithic technology . MIS 11
* Stefano Grimaldi [email protected]
1
Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana, Anagni, Italy
2
Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, Università di Trento, via T.Gar 14, 38122 Trento, Italy
3
Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology
Introduction Recent studies have successfully demonstrated a previously unexpected, wide variability in lithic production during the Lower Palaeolithic (among others, Nicoud 2011; Chevrier 2012; Boëda 2013; Aureli et al. 2016). Following the so-called technofunctional approach (hereafter TFA; Lepot 1993; Boëda 1997, 2001; Bonilauri 2010), these studies recognize that in order to better understand hominin behaviour, the techno-functional structure of a tool must be depicted (Bourguignon 1997; Rocca 2013), and we need ‘to focus on the very essence of the technical system: reduction sequences, blank management, tool conception, etc.’ (Rocca et al. 2016, 404). Different from the traditional, typologically based approach, the TFA does not take into account either the presence/absence of a single type
Data Loading...
