The Castelnovian burial of Mondeval de Sora (San Vito di Cadore, Belluno, Italy): a specialised flint knapper’s grave?

The recent re-analysis of the burial goods from the Castelnovian grave of Mondeval de Sora has allowed several previously unexplored peculiarities of this unique discovery to be highlighted. Particularly the techno-economical and functional studies of the rich lithic and osseous assemblages have stressed the importance of a group of items indicating strict connections to specialised flint-knapping practices. As it has been suggested for a burial from the Neolithic necropolis of Mehrgarh, Pakistan (VI millennium B.C.), showing similar characteristics and dating back to a slightly more recent period than the burial of Mondeval (second part of the VII millennium B.C.) these features suggest that the man was at least a technically if not an economically specialised blade knapper . The man of Mondeval seems thus to embody a social role which will be also present in some Neolithic societies and the existence of which appears as a consequence of the introduction, during the Late Mesolithic, of new knapping techniques for blades and bladelets extraction (punch and pressure techniques).