Tata (Hongrie). Un assemblage microlithique du début du Pléistocène supérieur en Europe Centrale

The site of Tata, located in Hungary, has yielded two famous “artistic objects” dated from the isotopic stage 5. However, this site is also famous for its lithic assemblage, most of which is smaller than 30 mm. Other sites in Central Europe have yielded microlithic assemblages, which are not always related to specific raw material conditions. Few human remains provide evidence that Neanderthals were the authors of these assemblages. The settlements are often linked to water springs and the fauna assemblages are composed of one or two great herbivores (deer, horses, rhinoceros and elephants). The analysis of fauna remains suggests that some of these animals could be hunted. The low frequency of rhinoceros and elephants and the partial skeletons do not allow us to know whether these animals have been hunted or scavenged in most cases. But some sites have yielded a higher frequency of these herbivores, which are often young specimens. Are we dealing with programmed specialised settlements in favourable areas for animals, either dead or alive? The herbivore bones are associated with very small flakes, showing the diversity of the human technical behaviours adapted to all kinds of subsistence patterns. The technological analysis of the assemblages, in particular of the cores, provides new patterns about the technological choice for flaking, which seems to belong to a specific tradition. This hypothesis is indirectly confirmed by comparative studies of several microlithic industries from the OIS 11 to 4-3, such as Vèrtesszölös in Hungary, Külna and Predmosti II in the Czeck Republic or the Pontinian complex in Italy. The microlithic assemblages are associated with various environments and could be one of the human responses to organise the stone tool production. It could also be evidence of another technological conception of the tools. The small artefacts could be used alone or hafted separately or grouped, and perhaps even to prepare wooden tools. The discoveries of both bone and wooden tools in some sites prove that the Neanderthal industrial world could be complex and diversified.