Another Mousterian Debate? Bordian facies, chaîne opératoire technocomplexes, and patterns of lithic variability in the western European Middle and Upper Pleistocene

Lithics of the late Middle Palaeolithic: Post MIS 5 technological variability and its implications

“…In the case of the chaîne op eratoire approach they perceive a number of methodological problems, including the inconsistency in the definitions used by different lithic analysts and the arguably ad hoc definitions of technocomplexes. Instead, Monnier and Missal (2014) highlight temporal variability in some key technological variables at sites in Western Europe. This exercise reveals some interesting patterns, such as the continuous presence of bifaces from the Lower Palaeolithic through the Middle Palaeolithic.…”

“…The picture which emerges reflects the complexity of the Late Middle Palaeolithic record and the diverse origins and characteristics of Late Palaeolithic industries. Monnier and Missal (2014) argue that the 'Mousterian Debate' of the 1970s has been revived in the form of discussions of 'technocomplexes'. They suggest that taxonomic units, however they are defined, conflate multiple sources of variability.…”

“…This exercise reveals some interesting patterns, such as the continuous presence of bifaces from the Lower Palaeolithic through the Middle Palaeolithic. Whatever one's opinion on higher level taxonomic units (see also Shea, 2014), it is hard to disagree with Monnier and Missal's (2014) contention that rather than comparing types of assemblage we should emphasise comparing actual lithic traits. They also provide extremely useful summaries of key western European sites and of recent syntheses of lithic variability, particularly those of the chaîne op eratoire school.…”

On the local Mousterian origin of the Châtelperronian: Integrating typo-technological, chronostratigraphic and contextual data

“…Even though it finds much stratigraphic support, it remains difficult to demonstrate independently with radiometric dating whether these claimed technological entities consistently reflect strict chronological successions or not Vieillevigne et al, 2008;Richter et al, 2013b). In general, it assumes that Mousterian variability falls into discrete, well defined packages (Tostevin, 2009;Shea, 2014;Monnier and Missal, 2014), which is demonstrably not the case for typological classifications and is still surrounded by interpretive problems for many of the bifacial and blank production technologies that now form the developing framework (Turq et al, 2013). In other words, one of the difficulties in examining the Mousterian to Châtelperronian link is that while Upper Palaeolithic assemblages are generally regarded as conforming to a cultural historical framework based on type fossils, there is no consensus that the Middle Palaeolithic, or particularly the late Middle Palaeolithic (see also below), is similarly organised.…”

“…For a myriad of reasons, not all these assemblages, coming from varying geographic and chronological contexts have, or can be, attributed to the MTA-A, further raising questions about the exact definition of the MTA (Jaubert, 2010;Monnier and Missal, 2014). In her work on the MTA, Soressi (2002Soressi ( , 2004Soressi ( , 2005 argues for a specific technological homogeneity among the MTA-A and refines the definition of an MTA handaxe.…”