European Acheuleans: Critical perspectives from the East

Abstract

The question of European Acheulean diversity is currently widely debated. The obvious differences between northern and southern industries have led to several hypotheses regarding settlement dynamics. We propose to deal with this question from an off-centre perspective, by focusing on the data from Central Europe. Indeed, assemblages from this region can provide us with a different view of technical behavioural diversity during the Lower Palaeolithic in Europe. It is generally accepted that the Central European data are difficult to incorporate into the existing theoretical framework. Despite its location on the Out of Africa route towards Europe, this region is characterized by later settlement and the absence of handaxes before the Early Middle Palaeolithic. However, assemblage composition in Central Europe shares some features with sites from other regions, mainly in Southern Europe, such as the absence of handaxes and the presence of “small tools”.This study proposes to reconsider the diversity of tool blanks concealed within the term Acheulean through the analysis of five lithic assemblages. Three of them come from Central Europe (Korolevo VI in Ukraine, Vértesszőlős in Hungary and Bilzingsleben in Germany) and will be compared with two collections from Southern Europe (Cimitero di Atella and Ficoncella in Italy).