The earliest Palaeolithic bifacial leafpoints in Central and Southern Europe: Techno-functional approach

Abstract

Bifacially worked leafpoints are often treated as a kind of “index fossil” for MP/UP transitional industries in Central Europe. In some cases, their presence determines if a given inventory is assigned to a leafpoint industry. For the last 50 years, research has established the oldest leafpoints in Central and Southern Europe. As a result, a few dozen sites can be recently ascribed as leafpoint assemblages older than transitional Szeletian or Jerzmanowician assemblages. This article was designed as a point in the ongoing debate on the legitimacy of treating leafpoints as the main culture indicator of such assemblages. It challenges the notion that the tools called “leafpoints” in the whole of Central and Southern Europe illustrate a similar tool concept, in terms of their technology. In total, 17 collections of leafpoints from 8 countries were analysed by a scar pattern analysis in order to reconstruct the chaîne opératoire. The results show that the analysed artefacts are not coherent from the perspective of the technology, and one can distinguish at least few different techno-functional concepts of tools. On the basis of the analyses, the manuscript presents a technological definition of the leafpoint as a tool which has two symmetrical edges converging at the tip; both edges were treated in the same way in the course of knapping; the tool is symmetrical and was made to be such.