The Prepared Core Technology
Around 320,000 years ago a new flaking technology came to dominate the toolkit of early humans in Europe, marking the beginning of what we call the Middle Palaeolithic period. Named after the Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret, where this type of tools were first discovered, the Levallois technology heralds a significant change in stone age culture and implies an increasing cognitive ability of the tool maker.
When compared to earlier technologies such as the pebble chopper toolkit, consisting of sharp flakes detached from pebble cores that were used chopping/cutting tools, or the handaxe, created by careful bifacial flaking on both sides of the core, the new technology presented a significant step change to early toolmakers.
The process of prepared core production is very different from the previous lithic technologies and requires the toolmaker to imagine the shape and size of the end product and maintain that image while conditioning the stone to produce the desired flake or point. The first step would have involved the flaking of a cobble around its perimeter in a radial fashion until its outline resembled a oval dome-shaped core, also referred to as a tortoise shell core. The core's upper surface was subsequently carefully flaked to determine the outline and size of the final product. Often, a lateral edge of the core was then removed to produce a facetted striking platform that was used to remove the flake in one blow from the top surface of the core. Shown above is a residual prepared core from the Sahara desert (Mauretania) that was discarded after the preferential flake was removed.
The illustrations above show how variations in the core preparation can produce either rounded flakes (left) by using centripetal flaking, or points (right) using a unidirectional convergent flaking method.
I recommend to also check out these animations:
The image below shows topviews of three discarded Levallois cores looking down on the flake removal scars (point of percussion at bottom of the picture). Shown from left-to-right: a Saharan flake core (Mauretania; L=5cm); a convergent unidirectional point core from the Meuse valley (Limburg, The Netherlands), and a flake core from the Avon valley (Somerset, UK). Also shown are the facetted striking platforms of two of the levallois cores.
Three Levallois flake end products are shown below. From left-to-right: a denticulated mousterian point made from lustrous grey quartzite (Bois du Rocher, France; L=9cm); mousterian point from the Oise valley (France) and a Saharan levallois flake (Mauretania). All these levallois flakes bear the scare of a small waste flake that was removed before the main preferential flake was struck off the prepared core.
These two great examples of centripetally chipped levallois flakes are from the open-air site of Bois du Rocher (Rance valley, Côtes-d'Armor, Brittany, France), a site famous for its handaxes produced from a lustrous grey quartzite. Few Levallois implements have been found on the site and the scapers shown here are exceptions. The large flake (top; L=12cm) has a steep scraper edge (left) and a sharp cutting edge on the right. The striking platform (bottom) bares evidence of facetted flaking. The smaller flake at the bottom (L=6cm) has a rounded scraper edge located at the top of the artifact.
As indicated above, these quartzite implements originate from a site that is dominated by cordiform (heart-shaped) handaxes which have all but disappeared into numerous collections accumulated over the last century and a half. My previous post on 'the handaxe' features an example of a Bois du Rocher biface from an old collection.
Levallois origins
The preferred core technology is first found in the later stages of the Lower Palaeolithic and came to dominate the early human toolkit around 325,000 years ago, hailing the start of the Middle Palaeolithic period. The oldest Levallois artefacts are thought to have evolved from bifacial sites in Europe and are known to occur over most of Europe, the African continent and Western Asia. Although this technique has been associated with Neanderthals the manufacturers of Levallois conservatively include at least three hominin species including late H. heidelbergensis and early Homo sapiens in some parts of Africa and South-West Asia. Levallois has revolutionised stone age tool technology by its efficient use of the available material, flexibility of flake size and shape and standardisation of flake tools. The widespread use of this technology may have resulted from the transportability of the levallois cores, making early humans more mobile and less dependable on reliable sources of knappable stone and enabling them to prosper in unexplored and previously less attractive habitats.
Middle Palaeolithic toolkit variability
In contrast with the Lower Palaeolitic toolkit, the Middle Palaeolitic has generated a large variety of stone implements and, what appear to be, distinct cultural traditions. Handaxes and bifacial technologies are the defining hallmark of the Lower Palaeolithic Acheulean and although there is a significant decline in their use during the early Middle Palaeolithic, linked to the emergence of the Levallois technology, they remain a regular component in some Neanderthal traditions. The three traditions that have been identified include, 1) Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition (MTA), a biface dominated culture in combination with Levallois techniques found west of the Rhine and in Southern France, 2) Keilmessergruppen (KMG), a tradition found east of the Rhine with few handaxes, some Levallois flakes and a large proportion of bifacial backed knives. 3) The third tradition is called Mousterian with Bifacial Tools (MBT) and is 'characterised' by assemblages that do not fit the MTA and KMG cultural traditions, found in the South of the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France.
As with the handaxe technology, many scholars have debated that the technological predetermination of the Levallois industries provides evidence of advanced cognition and linguistic capacities in the extinct hominids that produced them. Lithic technology on the whole may not be the best indicator for cognitive and linguistic capabilities but recent discoveries of Middle Palaeolithic ornaments and cave art suggest that Neanderthals may have possessed symbolic behaviour and, by implication, language. Some of these have also been refuted and I am sure that this discussion will continue for some time to come.
Further reading:
Eren, M & Lycet, SJ. Why Levallois? A Morphometric Comparison of Experimental ‘Preferential’ Levallois Flakes versus Debitage Flakes (2012). Plos One.
Ruebens, K. Regional behaviour among late Neanderthal groups in Western Europe: A comparative assessment of late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tool variability. (2013). J Human Evol. 65, 341.
Mellars, P. Neanderthal symbolism and ornament manufacture: The bursting of a bubble? (2010). PNAS 47, 20147-20148
