Bone retouchers from two north Italian Middle Palaeolithic sites (Riparo Tagliente and Grotta della Ghiacciaia, Verona)

The use of retouching tools made on hard animal materials has a broad chronological and geographical distribution throughout the Palaeolithic period in Europe. The earliest evidences of such tools are found in the Late Mousterian culture. In Italy, the analysis on retouchers are not particularly numerous. The present work aims to present the preliminary results obtained from the study of 78 retouchers recovered from two settlements located in northern Italy (Riparo Tagliente and Grotta della Ghiacciaia, Verona). Results from the site of Riparo Tagliente are statistically significant. They provide both qualitative and quantitative data as the sample is more abundant and spans several occupation levels with a great variability of traces on the cortical surfaces of these bone tools. The site of Grotta della Ghiacciaia yields only qualitative data because of a small sample size. Overall, the samples analyzed are mostly made on bone shafts of medium to large sized mammals, especially red deer and cervids, which were the most commonly hunted animals but also on small sized mammals such as roe deer. This variability can contribute to the identification of such tools and to better define a methodology for their analysis.