Fülöp Éva – Cseh Julianna szerk.: „Die aktuellen Fragen des Mittelpaläolithikums in Mitteleuropa”. „Topical issues of the research of Middle Palaeolithic period in Central Europe”. Tata, 20-23 October 2003. (Tudományos Füzetek 12. Tata, 2004)

Viola T. Dobosi: Pebble tools from Tata-Porhanyó

The differentiation between standard and non-standard tools was finally determined at the analysis and typological determination of the pebble industry of the Lower Palaeolithic site of Vértesszőlős.

2 The standard category contains the tools that can be fit into the conventional archaeological typology. After the flake had been removed from the raw material (nodule or core) or after the pebble had been split, a working edge was created in the same way and on the same place, which had an identical function. Thus the tools form large series and the diversions in the parameters of the objects of the same category are insignificant. It is not simply a semantic question if some of the independent tool types distinguished in the typological system by morphological traits can really significantly be differentiated, if the place, number and relationship of the working edges are important from the respect of the producer of the tools or if the only aim was that the tool should be suitable for the designated function. The high proportion of non-standard tools makes this problem even more emphatic in the case of pebble cultures. The more than 50 types in Vértes' list of the Lower Palaeolithic industry of Vértesszőlős probably did not actually mean so many tool types. Non-standard tools: (usually) pebbles split to regular geometric shapes without further elaboration. The working edge was the ad hoc working edge offered by the natural edge or point created by splitting. The proof of the pre-meditated and conscious production is the place of the occurrence: the culture-bearing layer, the undisturbed archaeological feature that evidences long-range human settlement with all its criteria (typical tools, waste of tool production, the scattered remains of the butchered pray animals, and, in lucky cases, the spots of hearths with charcoal and burnt bones), and the large series of objects produced with identical methods. DOBOSI-CSEH excavation 1996 Item number percent Standard tools 235 5,3i Geometric tools 293 6,62 Blade-like flakes, cores, pebble-fragments, debris 3898 88,07 Total 4426 100,00 Excavation material from 1996 Regarding the traditional types of the standard tools we find that the extremely high proportion of the Middle Palaeolithic types as compared to the Lower and Upper Palaeolithic types unilaterally determines the cultural and chronological position of the site. The differentiation of the group of choppers and chopping-tools among the Lower Palaeolithic tools is important because they offer a possibility to compare the mate2 VÉRTES 1990. 68