Contributions and Limitations of a Technomorphometric Approach for Cleavers: The Case of Lanne-Darré (Hautes-Pyrénées)

ABSTRACTResearch relating to cleavers can help to characterize the Middle Pleistocene European technocultural landscape, via a technomorphometric approach that provides insights into this tool’s composite involvement. A sample of 47 cleavers from the Lanne-Darré site were observed through two scales of technomorphometric analyses. When the studied entities are the entire tools, technomorphometric links are rarely perceptible; moreover, attributing them to specific usage is impossible given the current state of knowledge. Edge-scale analysis, however, is able to highlight significant relations between technical choices and shape. The transversal cutting edge specific to cleavers, directly resulting from the blank’s debitage, revealed recurrent morphologic and morphometric similarities, though differences remained in the nature and organization of other cleaver's parts. Four technico-structural tools groups were determined from these heterogeneous organizations, that differ from J. Tixier’s technotypology. Finally, the proposed technomorphometric approach provides new elements for understanding the structural place of cleavers in technical systems .KEYWORDS: Lower palaeolithiclithic technologycleaversLanne-Darréstructural analysisgeometric morphometryangle measurements AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank Anne-Lyse Ravon and Vincent Mourre for their supervision of Juliette Capdevielle's Master degree, from which this work results. We would also like to thank the entire teaching staff of the ASE2P Master at the Université of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, as well as all the members of the TRACES laboratory. Special thanks to Thomas Perrin for his help with the statistical analyses, and to Marianne Deschamps for giving us the opportunity to make 3D scans of the Lanne-Darré cleavers and for training us in the AGMT-3D software, as part of the Fyssen Morph-Axe project. Thanks to Paula García-Medrano and Antoine Muller for their help in choosing the best tool for measuring edge angles, and in using the Artefact-3D software. Thanks to Jill Cucchi for the help with the translation, and to the ChroTAll project for the support. We would also like to thank the two reviewers for their pertinent feedback, which helped to improve the article considerably.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).