Opportunities and limits of a cleaver’s technomorphometric approach: the cases of Menez-Dregan I (Finistère) and Lanne-Darré (Hautes- Pyrénées)

Résumé En

Researches relating to cleavers can help the characterization of the technocultural landscape of Middle Pleistocene in Western Europe. A technomorphometric approach of this tool could bring key elements about the interpretation of its technocultural implication. Opportunities and limits given by this type of analyses are tested here through the study of two series coming from distinct chronological and geographical contexts: the cleavers from Menez-Dregan and Lanne-Darré. When the studied entities are the entire tools, technomorphometric links are rarely perceptible. Attribute them to specific intent to use are moreover impossible in the current state of knowledge. On the edge-scale analysis, significant and recurrent relations between technical choices and shape are highlighted on the cleavers from both sites. Nevertheless, the structural analyses highlight heterogeneous organizations of these technofunctional units, cleavers from Menez-Dregan showing a clear systemic uniformity while four technofunctional groups are identified on those from Lanne-Darré. The technomorphometric convergences observed on cleavers from Menez-Dregan could reflect specific intent to use. However, the anecdotal nature of this production, combined to the low technical constraints required, does not allow us to reject for certain the environmental determinism. The situation is quite different for cleavers from Lanne-Darré: if the transversal cutting edge directly coming from the debitage of the blank, specific to cleavers, clearly shows morphologic and morphometric similarities on all pieces, differences are observed in the other techno-functional units organization. Many questions relating to the relevance of the tested approach in the case of cultural traditions study are raised after those results. Finally, it is clear that the technomorphometric approach provides us to grasp the functional potential of cleavers efficiency, although the criteria defined to measure its techno-functional variability require to be specified.