Cave debitage 1

One of the weirder things I have been doing over the past two years is trying to recreate a Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian/Levallois) cave debitage pile.

Here is one picture of my debitage pile, it has bones (lamb, deer, bear, caribou and fox) wood, leather, the bulk is lithic waste material with a few failed projects.

Close up picture of one end of the lamb bone, if you look closely you can see it is raw bone and still has some fat on it.
This bone, along with all the others were worked with only stone tools. I tried to keep all the debitage in the pile one hundred percent "primitive" or natural.
Picture two of a lamb bone, in this picture you can see just how overwelling the lithic waste material truly is, but a reading with a keen eye will also have noticed the failed hand axe that sits right in the forefront If the image, they would also have noticed the piece of brich tree (that was part of my brich tar project late 2020) or the deer mandible that has been broken to retrieve the teeth and marrow.

These next few images will be a few failed lithics. In order they are a Levallois core, backed knife and a broken hand axe.

This was something that I wanted to experiment with as it seems no "professionals" have tried it before, it's not the most natural environment as it is in my basement window, but once I manage to find a cave you can bet I will be restarting this experiment in a more natural environment.

Rodents, Rodents... Mice, Skunk, raccoon and opossum (yes I know not a rodent) frequently visit the debitage pile, if you look closely at this deer mandible you can see the tiny new marks from what I assume is a mouse. I would much rather deal with a 1ounce mouse than a 300lb spotted cave hyena, which frequently visited Neanderthal waste piles!
Herbs and wild plants.

 I am very new to wild edibles however, I usually throw a few of the plants that I am familiar with in the pile such as tansy, Daisy, soap root, turkey tail mushrooms, wild carrots and lots more!

I feel like I have crammed too much into one blog so, I hope you stay tuned and wait for part two next week on let's say Wednesday.

Thank you all for reading. Your favourite Neanderthal - Joe

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