Side Scraper on a Levallois blade
Cutting meat and scraping hides
Middle Palaeolithic
300 000 to 45 000 years
Although these objects could be used to scrape hides, they above all served as knives.
M.N. Brézillon, Dictionnaire de la préhistoire. Larousse, Paris, 1969.
Commentary :
A side scraper on a Levallois blade, is made on a blade blank chosen for its regular shape, and thinness.
The retouched edges of the blade ensure better efficiency and greater resistance when scraping or cutting.
During the Middle Palaeolithic, the expansion of side scrapers on Levallois blades, seems to be linked to hunting activities, and the need to finely cut meat, which played a major role in the subsistence practices, of Neanderthal societies.