SESSION 3 – Stone tool production and processing techniques
Knappers of the Bajo Deba. The Upper Magdalenian lithic production dynamics at the Aizkoltxo Cave (Mendaro-Gipuzkoa)

The Bajo Deba is a geographical area with a large density of sites ascribed to the Upper Paleolithic. Aizkoltxo Cave is located in the municipality of Mendaro (Gipuzkoa) and was discovered in 1927 by J.M. de Baraniarán and lead to excavations that began in 2003. At this conference we will present the study of lithic material recovered up to 2010, for which we have been able to reconstruct the technical process of the lithic production. In this sense it has been possible to characterize this manufacture sequence and the different raw materials exploited by the hunter-gatherer groups.

This this study has three points of analysis:
1. The technological characterisation of the processes of the volumetric reduction of the lithic material
2. The typological characterisation of the configurations for the retouched artefacts and the choosing of different blanks for the configurations
3. The identification of different raw materials used, in which different processes of knapping were identified within the overall dynamics of managing the flint.