La variabilità tecnica del Musteriano della Grotta di Santa Croce (Bisceglie - BT)

The technofunctional study of lithic assemblages from the Mousterian layers of the talus located at the exterior of the cave have highlighted the co-occurrence of two main operative chains: the discoid and the volumetric laminar ones. According to the use wear analysis, products from the volumetric system show a higher degree of standardization and a more specialized function which was mainly aimed at processing hard/medium-hard material. Conversely discoid items were devoted to more differentiated activities. Interestingly both management flakes and exploited cores were opportunistically used as tools, thus being, in every respect, ascribable to the category of discoid production objectives.