Insights into the prehistoric toolkit: traceological analysis of lithic assemblages from Meso-Neolithic contexts in the NW Mediterranean

The traceological analysis of archaeological artefacts has a great potential in prehistoric studies. Apart from defining the functionality of determinate categories of objects, traceological analysis can strongly contribute to the understanding of the overall economic organization, of the productive processes which took place in each site and of the role they had in the overall site organization. During the last decade, the study of an increasing number of archaeological contexts of Neolithic and Mesolithic period, has allowed to establish comparisons between settlements of diverse functionality and cultural affiliations. As result, both Mesolithic and Neolithic ‘toolkits’ have been investigated by means of traceological analysis. In this communication, we are going to present the results of the traceological analysis realized on the chipped stone assemblages from a number of case studies dated to the VII-VI millennium calBC, in the Western Mediterranean. Our aim is to highlight which are the key-elements that can help us understanding the site functionality and its cultural affiliation. All the lithic collections considered, have been studied through an integrated approach, including also data from technological and provenance analysis. Typical ‘Neolithic’ tools are for example harvesting tools (among which the so-called sickle blades), tools associated with hide processing (endscrapers or blade scrapers) or related with working processes on clay/ceramic. On the contrary, ‘Mesolithic’ toolkit is generally characterized by a much larger production of projectile inserts (e.g. geometric tools), but also by notched blades often related with crafting activities on wood or bone/antler materials and a large set of scarcely elaborated blanks related to butchering and animal substance processing. Even if some qualitative differences can be remarked both from a technical and functional point of view, it is not always easy to establish a clear boundary between a ‘Mesolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ assemblages. The patterns of resource exploitation can vary notably from site to site during Neolithic and Mesolithic, depending from the economic organization, the site functionality, the geographical and environmental settings.