2016-10-29 14:28:19 • ID: 1526
The local MSA - The forgotten Paleolithic heritage of Tunisia (II)
Strange enough some of the Gafsa surface findings fit into a well-developed Ferrassie Mousterian (Levallois Mousterian with heavily reworked scrapers) characterized by an astonishing abundance of well-made scrapers, often convergent and multi angled with Quina retouche.
The S’baikian (Sbaikian), a variant of the local MSA has recently entered again into the discussion after the term was abandoned more than 50 years ago (more about that during a later post).
The small scatter, shown here, was found by a Belgian collector during the 1930 and shows discoid cores, a classic Limace and scrapers with a foliate character. There are no indications for a Levallois technical system, otherwise common during the Tunisian MSA.
In many respects the artefactual spectrum of Tunisia differs from the Maghreb and it will remain thrilling to evaluate what factors caused these “abnormalities “ compared to the MSA in N-Africa.
Figure 2: View to Gafsa (Wikipedia Commons)
Provenance: Collection P. Vabre
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