Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

In the valley of the Somme Commont[(74)] has observed the three following stages in the advance of the Mousterian industry:

3. A late Mousterian culture which lies on the upper layers near the top of the same gravel deposit and which shows entirely new technical elements. The old coup-de-poing culture is no longer valued, and all the implements found here are of flakes worked only on one side and with an extraordinarily fine retouch.

2. A middle Mousterian horizon which lies in the lower layers of a gravel deposit, belonging to the 'newer loess,' and which contains only one small coup de poing.

1. An early Mousterian, with quite numerous lance-shaped coups de poing, lies at the base of the 'newer loess,' showing that the coup-de-poing tradition still lingers and the coup-de-poing type is still preserved. With these are associated the new types of implements and especially the 'hand-points,' which are so typical of the Mousterian industry.

The more recent levels (2, 3) contain longer flakes, which already exhibit a tendency toward the blades, or 'lames,' of the Upper Palæolithic.

In the shelters and caverns of Dordogne the same industrial sequence may be observed, although the chronological succession of the strata is not always clearly defined. At the grotto of Combe-Capelle the heart-shaped coups de poing retain most strongly the old traditions, but even here these are outnumbered by the well-fashioned Mousterian 'points,' chipped only on one side.

The further development of the Mousterian industry may be observed in the type station of Le Moustier, where the lower levels show a primitive Mousterian consisting mostly of very fine, irregularly fashioned flakes, made into small scrapers, triangular points, borers, and disks. The overlying layer includes very carefully worked Mousterian points which are frequently retouched on one side over the entire surface; here the Mousterian technique reaches its highest development, so that Schmidt designates it as 'high Mousterian.'[(75)] Above this layer, again, is a level of typical late Mousterian forms, quite unlike the small primitive flakes of the lower level and resembling the characteristic forms of La Quina, the dominant type being the finely shaped La Quina racloir. The few diminutive coups de poing which occur in this level at Le Moustier furnish the only distinction between the industry here and that of La Quina, where no coups de poing are found. At Le Moustier also occur the typical bone anvils which were first recognized at La Quina.

The Mousterian industry of the Neanderthals was thus devoted mainly to the development of the smaller forms of implements, for the most part retouched on one side only, and with a constant improvement of technique. Yet the chief types of Mousterian implements remain the same as in Acheulean times, as shown in the accompanying table.

The implement known as the pointe, or the 'hand-point,' is a principal and very characteristic Mousterian form further perfected from its Acheulean stage. It is spear-headed in shape and chipped on one side only, and continues into late Mousterian times, being still found in the Mousterian levels of Spy, in Belgium.

The pointe double, a double-pointed, spear-shaped form, at times almost attains the elongate shape of the Solutrean pointe de laurier, though never its slenderness, symmetry, and perfection of technique.