Good and Bad Knappers Among Neanderthals

Abstract

One of most recent Mousterian sites discovered in Madrid (Spain) is El Cañaveral-Area 3 archaeological site, an open-air raw material quarrying site occupied during the MIS 3. In this site, we have excavated a total surface area of around 164 m2 of coluvionar sediments affected by edaphic processes that have had an impact on the distribution of the original knapping zones. However, several refits were discovered as a result of rapid sedimentation. From a technological point of view, the lithic production was mainly focused in the production of levallois points after a centripetal decortication of flakes and blocks. In this paper, we present and analyze some examples that indicate, with no doubt, the existence of a wide variety of technological levels in the knapping authors, as a possible result of social changes that occurred in the MIS 3 Neanderthals communities.