Break to Rebuild — the First European Evidence of a Fragmented Chaine Opératoire for Handaxe Production (OIS 14, Caune de l’Arago, France)

The presence of bifacial tools for more than 1.5 Ma in African and Eurasian archaeological assemblages raises questions as to why this was so successful. One of the explanations often put forward is the ability to resharpen or recycle these voluminous tools, allowing them to be used over a long period of time. An additional argument is that techno-economic analyses show that these tools are mobile within territories. However, if the mobility of bifaces seems to be a fairly global (but not systematic) behaviour from 1.5 Ma, the maintenance or recycling of these tools seems to be mainly expressed in northern Europe and in southwest Asia, on flint tools, from MIS 12. The petrographic and technological analysis of the bifacial shaping processes ( chaines opératoires ) of the archaeostratigraphic unit Q1 of the Arago Cave reveals the appearance of the mobility/maintenance or recycling of bifaces as early as MIS 14 in southern Europe. These behaviours are applied not only on flint shaped items, but also on quartz and quartzite bifaces. These results have implications for the understanding of how bifaces appeared or spread in western Europe. It also gives new insights on our perception of the management of the environment and the cognitive capacities of pre-Neanderthal populations in this area.