US DOLLAR
EURO
AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR
CANADIAN DOLLAR
POUND STERLING
Product Description
SEE MORE UPPER PALEOLITHIC TOOLS
This is an EXCEPTIONALLY RARE offering for the most discriminating collector of rare Paleolithic artifacts. This Magdalenian Upper Paleolithic flint microlith flake tool was found in the famous Cro-Magnon art site of Gourdan Cave, in the Haute-Garonne department of France. More information about this unique Cro-Magnon site can be found HERE and HERE. Home to a number of intricately carved bone art objects, most famous is the "Rangee d'individus marchant", an incredibly unique art object showing what is believed to be an image of people walking in a row. The engraving was made on the polished end of a reindeer rib, and shows what appear to be a row of hunters walking, draped in leather cloaks (possibly prehistoric hunting camouflage?), and carrying weapons. Other engraved bone art was also found in this cave and is shown at the links earlier in this paragraph. The microlith flint carving flake tool offered here would have been used to achieve the unusual carved designs on the art found at this site.
This specimen is a MICRO-GRAVETTE. It was made on a microblade with one end retouched to a sharp point for engraving. The edges would have also been used to cut lines in soft organic materials such as bone, wood or ivory. Based on the highly unusual art objects recovered from this site, it is intriguing to think of this former rock shelter as being the home and studio of a highly-gifted Cro-Magnon prehistoric artist! This is the FIRST TIME we are offering a very small collection of stone tool artifacts from this site and once sold, we never will have more!
The condition of this flint tool is complete as found, and it has intact original sediment deposits still attached to authenticate its prehistoric origin. The original ink hand-written site label is on one side indicating its discovery in the Gourdan Cave site.
HISTORY
A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimeter or so in length and half a centimeter wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Microliths are produced from either a small blade (microblade) or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouching, which leaves a very typical piece of waste, called a microburin. The microliths themselves are sufficiently worked so as to be distinguishable from workshop waste or accidents. An exceptional piece of evidence for the use of microliths has been found in the excavations of the cave at Lascaux in the French Dordogne. Twenty backed edge bladelets were found with the remains of a resinous substance and the imprint of a circular handle (a horn). It appears that the bladelets might have been fixed in groups like the teeth of a harpoon or similar weapon.
Two families of microliths are usually defined: laminar and geometric. An assemblage of microliths can be used to date an archeological site. Laminar microliths are slightly larger, and are associated with the end of the Upper Paleolithic and the beginning of the Epipaleolithic era; geometric microliths are characteristic of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Geometric microliths may be triangular, trapezoid or lunate. Microlith production generally declined following the introduction of agriculture (8000 BC) but continued later in cultures with a deeply rooted hunting tradition.
Laminar microliths date from at least the Gravettian culture or possibly the start of the Upper Paleolithic era, and they are found all through the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras. "Noailles" burins and micro-gravettes indicate that the production of microliths had already started in the Gravettian culture. This style of flint working flourished during the Magdalenian period and persisted in numerous Epipaleolithic traditions all around the Mediterranean basin. These microliths are slightly larger than the geometric microliths that followed and were made from the flakes of flint obtained ad hoc from a small nucleus or from a depleted nucleus of flint. They were produced either by percussion or by the application of a variable pressure (although pressure is the best option, this method of producing microliths is complicated and was not the most commonly used technique).
Regardless of type, microliths were used to form the points of hunting weapons, such as spears and (in later periods) arrows, and other artifacts and are found throughout Africa, Asia and Europe. They were utilised with wood, bone, resin and fiber to form a composite tool or weapon, and traces of wood to which microliths were attached have been found in Sweden, Denmark and England. An average of between six and eighteen microliths may often have been used in one spear or harpoon, but only one or two in an arrow. The shift from earlier larger tools had an advantage. Often the haft of a tool was harder to produce than the point or edge: replacing dull or broken microliths with new easily portable ones was easier than making new hafts or handles.
