| Affiliation: | (1) Department of Anthropology, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA;(2) Critical Writing Center and Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA;(3) Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA |
| Abstract: | First identified 100 years ago, the Iberomaurusian is an Epipaleolithic industry that was described from a number of sites across western North Africa. One of these is Grotte des Contrebandiers (Smugglers’ Cave) in Morocco, where Abbé Jean Roche recovered Iberomaurusian materials in excavations in the late 1950s. Although the lithics were published in the early 1960s, subsequent changes in methods and in assessing the interpretive potential of lithic assemblages necessitated a restudy of these collections from Contrebandiers. This study led to a better understanding of the lithic types present and of the use of particular stone raw materials. Iberomaurusians emphasized lithic strategies that maximized use of fine-grained stone to the extent that pièces esquillées should be, among others, a defining criterion for this lithic industry. |
