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 Subalyuk scraper is characteristic of the lower culture-bearing layer (developed Mousterian) of the eponymous Subalyuk cave. The archetype is a right-angled triangular scraper measuring 50-60 mm. The more-or-less straight cutting edge was made on the hypotenuse of the massive flake. The Tata version is half the size. The Yabrudian is a tool assemblage measuring 10-12 cm in length in average according to A. Rust's classical monograph. The Yabrud scraper is a right-angled double scraper prepared on the wide and flat Clactonian flake. The Tata version is hardly one-third of this size. About 8% of the scrapers in Vértes' Tata publications is composed of the so-called Tata-scrapers, It is a basically regular slice scraper with an arched edge and as such it is the characteristic type of all the industries that used lemon slices as blanks (Fig. 2, 6-8). The type is not unique in itself nor is it so profoundly characteristic of a site that this term could be justified. It is actually an evident derivation of a choppingtool. The evaluation of the arched cutting edge made with bifacial chopper retouching is subjective. It can be either a fine chopping tool or a coarse scraper. The shape or the execution of the tools of the Upper Palaeolithic type group is near to or even reaches the technical level that can be expected or that generally appears in younger settlements. The working edges of the end-scrapers were prepared with fanshaped retouching. The burins are usually not independent tools, they appear combined with various scrapers at either terminal of the flakes. Another Upper Palaeolithic trait is the oblique truncation of the distal end of flakes with a single blow, which probably substituted the retouched truncation. Blade-like flakes often appear among the flakes (Fig. 3, 1-2), Their technical parameters are close to those of classical blades. This could be regarded as the early appearance of one of the significant elements of the technique, while numerous other elements match the cultural level or they are even archaic. Similarly to bifacial elaboration, the elongated, narrow flakes cannot be associated with the genetic forerunners, the contemporary contacts or the possible descendants of the culture/industry. They are the results of a refined and standardised technology that evolved to an extremely high level. The pebble raw material, which according to Vértes "...the blow executed on the smooth pebble surface... leads to the detachment of "premeditated" flakes just like when a prepared Levallois core is used"

3 could support this trend. The mammoth tooth lamella, which is carefully and uniformly polished on the edges and polished on the surfaces attests to developed manual skills. We will not discuss its spiritual significance, which can be estimated only from forced ethnographic analogues, nevertheless, the quality of the execution is obvious. M-H. Moncel made the detailed analysis of the pebble working technology (see her article in this volume). The general description can be summed up in the followings. The elaboration method is varied and extremely fine on silex raw material, while the quartzite tools are coarser. It means that the coarser execution was not caused by an inferior skill, it came from the coarse, granulous structure of the raw material, 3 VÉRTES 1965,108. 70