Industrial.
Coup de poing (decadent), hand-stone.
ovoid.
heart-shaped.
sharp-pointed.
Hachette, chopper.
Grattoir, planing tool.
Perçoir, drill, borer.
Couteau, knife.
Racloir, scraper.
knife-edged.
curved-out edge.
saw-edged.
double-edged.
beak-shaped.
many-edged.
Pointe, 'hand-point.'
Percuteur? hammer-stone?
War and Chase.
Pointe, 'hand-point.'
Pointe double, spear head?
Coup de poing, hand-stone.
Pierre de jet, throwing stone.
Couteau, knife.

There are five or six well-defined varieties of the racloir, or scraper, carefully fashioned out of flakes. The principal form is crescentic in shape, with outward-curved edge. Other forms are saw-like with straight edges or knife-edged. Another form with very neatly and symmetrically incurved borders has its edges sharply retouched, as if for the smoothing down of bone or wooden shafts. The borer is also fashioned of an elongate flake and sometimes finished with a very fine point at one of its extremities. It is noteworthy that the grattoir, or planing tool, so well developed in the Upper Palæolithic industries, appears only sporadically in Mousterian times. For example, at La Quina, in the closing stages of the Mousterian industry, out of 220 implements collected at hazard, there were 166 scrapers of six different forms, 45 'hand-points' of five different forms, and 5 double points, as compared with 5 grattoirs, or planing tools. There are very few knife-shaped forms. It would appear that the racloir and the perçoir were the principal implements employed in the preparation of skins for clothing.

In early Mousterian times the coup de poing may still have been used by the Neanderthals in the chase, and the fine, spear-headed 'point' and the rarer 'double point' may have been developed in response to the needs of hunters, who now ventured the chase of the bison, the urus, the wild horse, and the reindeer.

The most striking features of all the implements which may have been used in the chase are: first, the absence of any definite proof of their attachment to a shaft or handle; and second, the absence of any barbed or headed type of point. The use of the barb, as we shall see, appears to be a relatively recent discovery of the later cultures of Upper Palæolithic times.

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Fig. 130. Late Mousterian implements, after de Mortillet, one-quarter actual size. 109, 110—Point, finely retouched at one end, from Seine-et-Marne, France. The reverse shows a retouch on the flaked surface which suggests the double-face Solutrean retouch. 111, 112—A very large racloir, or scraper, from La Quina, Charente, France; part of the bulb of percussion has been chipped off. 113—Double-ended point from Le Moustier, retouched on both surfaces. 114, 115—Combination point and scraper from Le Moustier, Dordogne, France. 116—Double scraper, or racloir, with grattoir, or planing end.

The transition from the Mousterian to the Aurignacian appears in the Abri Audit, which also lies in the valley of the Vézère. Here we still find irregularly fashioned coups de poing, decadent followers of the heart-shaped types of the earliest Mousterian industry; this is nearly the last phase in the decline of the old coup-de-poing manufacture. While the lance-shaped coup de poing of the late Acheulean never appears in any true Mousterian industry, the shorter, more heart-shaped type of Combe-Capelle traverses the entire Mousterian and, after further stages of degeneration, passes into the Abri Audit culture and even lingers into the early Aurignacian. At this latter station the typical Mousterian 'points' are almost wanting.

The Mousterian, observes Schmidt,[(75)] which preserves the traditions of the Lower Palæolithic coup-de-poing culture, is one of the most interesting phases in the development of Palæolithic industry, in that its successive stages exhibit the very last phases of the great coup-de-poing industry, of which only the almond and oval scraper types appear, and that very rarely, in the early Aurignacian. On the other hand, in the late Mousterian we observe a trend toward the blade (lame) industry of the Upper Palæolithic. Careful study and observation of the subdivisions of Mousterian culture have thus far been limited to central and southern France, and they have not yet been traced in Spain; but in the grottos of Belgium and England the early, middle, and late Mousterian types are known to exist.

Bone anvils, fashioned out of the hard surfaces of the foreleg and foot bones of the bison and horse, were discovered at La Quina in 1906. They show a flattened surface with cross incisions too regular to be accidental and too far from the articulation to be the result of an inexpert attempt to sever the joint.[(76)] This was not the only use of bone in Mousterian times, however, for primitive pointed implements of bone are occasionally found in Dordogne, mingled with Mousterian flints. A variety of rudely fashioned bone implements also occurs at Wildkirchli, in Switzerland.