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Chapter 7: The Asinipodian at Pech

Asinipodian artifacts Perhaps one of the most interesting stone artifact assemblages at Pech IV is that of the Asinipodian. Most of the Mousterian Middle Paleolithic industries, such as the Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition and Charentian Mousterian, have relatively large-sized tools. In contrast, the Asinipodian is characterized by very small flakes and cores in addition to large flakes. We know that Neandertals wanted to make these very small artifacts because of several lines of evidence. To begin with, we do not find many large retouched tools in the Asinipodian, and those that we do find tend to be used to make small stone flakes.

A second clue comes from the size of the cores from which the flakes were struck. These cores are only about 3-4 centimeters in size and the negative scars of flakes that were removed from the cores are often much less than 2.5 centimeters in size. The cores include ones that have special preparation, such as the Levallois technique. Because Levallois technique requires preparing the core by removing flakes according to a particular pattern, we can be certain that Neandertals wanted to make very small Levallois flakes. In addition to the small Levallois cores, there are also other small radially prepared cores from which small flakes were removed during flintknapping.

A truncated-facetted tool A third line of evidence comes from a tool type called truncated-facetted. These are flakes that likely have been used as cores to manufacture small flakes because the interior surface of the truncated-facetted flake shows that small flakes have been removed from it. Combined with the knowledge that small Levallois flakes were deliberately produced, we can be fairly confident that truncated-facetted artifacts are more likely to be cores rather than tools.

A Kombewa core Finally, we also find Kombewa cores in the Asinipodian industry. These cores are another specialized way to make small flakes from a larger flake that is used as the core. They are thus analogous to truncated-facetted pieces. In the case of Kombewa cores, the small flake struck off the interior surface is used to remove the bulb of percussion (SHOW ME the features of a flake) from the larger flake. The small flake that is removed is called a Kombewa flake and has the unusual feature of having two bulbs of percussion.

We suspect that the small flake technology represented by the Asinipodian is quite frequent at Neandertal sites. This is because the various types of Mousterian industries can contain small Levallois flakes, Levallois cores, truncated-facetted pieces, Kombewa cores and flakes, and radial cores and the flakes removed from them, but the presence of the larger tools and cores in these assemblages is more easily noticed than the smaller pieces. In the context of these other types of Mousterian industries, then, the small flake tradition represented by the Asinipodian does not stand out in any particular way. The fact that we have such a clear distinction at Pech IV is due to our Asinipodian layer consisting almost entirely of small flakes and small cores, along with the large, unretouched flakes. What we do not know at the moment is why Neandertals wanted small flakes. That is to say, we would like to figure out how these flakes were used in order to better understand this aspect of Neandertal behavior. To do this, we will need to examine the range of activities or tasks that would have been best done by using small flakes and then test these ideas to see which interpretations are most likely.


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