Continuity and replacement in flake production across the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition: a view over the Italian Peninsula

An assessment of the role of flake production across the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition produces many similarities across the Italian peninsula. From the northern belt of the Po plain up to the southern Apennines, several lithic assemblages that date to the very final Mousterian, the Uluzzian and the Aurignacian reveal either continuities or abrupt replacements in the procedure of core exploitation for the extraction of flakes. Final Mousterian tradition in Levallois flake/blade production is replaced during the Uluzzian by innovations developed to extract different kinds of flakes, such as the use of new inventories of tool sets, including arched backed tools, end scrapers and splintered pieces. The appearance of the Proto-Aurignacian may have led to a complete rupture of this system or have maintained some continuities that will be discussed in terms of raw material exploitation and the significance of tool use. Flake production, even if subordinate to the blade and bladelet systems, makes its reappearance in the early Aurignacian as independent reduction sequences.