Rod debitage by extraction: An overview of different cases identified for the Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic in Europe

Abstract

One of the objectives of the CNRS European Research Group GDRE PREHISTOS is to look for cases of “debitage by extraction” on the European continent from the Paleolithic to the First Iron Age. We will thus be able to fill the gaps in our knowledge by first describing each case in technical and economic terms and by identifying new variants of this method. The rod production by extraction is a major invention in the working of osseous materials and it is conceptually similar to the laminar debitage procedure in stone working in that it allows blanks of a similar shape, artificial and standardized, to be produced. The “baguette”, whose shape is close to that of blades, is the best known of these types of blanks. This capacity to produce series of blanks with a sometimes exactly similar morphology and then finished objects led to the standardized mass productions that characterize the evolution of some categories of objects, such as projectile points. This debitage by extraction appears globally during the first half of the Upper Paleolithic (being present in the Early Gravettian of Western Europe). The aim of this paper is to give an overview of different cases identified in the last years for the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic, especially in Europe.