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Jacques Pelegrin
from a comparative study of the morphological characteristics and technical
stigmata from the reference collection and from the archaeological mate
rial. In this matter of techniques, one can only recognize what one already
knows.
Thus, while the recognition of methods is a simple inductive approach, as
it consists of a synthesis of the reading of the archaeological pieces, the iden
to that of medical diagnosis. Our analogy can thus be extended to the nature
frequencies of symptoms (organized in syndromes) of a cause; it is primarily
you can hardly diagnose and treat diabetes without understanding the func
tion of insulin). The same goes, I believe, for the diagnosis of knapping
techniques: a technical understanding of fracture based on systematic ex
periments is more effective than complex statistics. In this way we mechani
cally bind the morphological characters and technical stigmata to the initial
technical parameters.
Presentation of the techniques
Ideally, we should here discuss the characteristics of all the techniques that
can produce long blades, thus taking into consideration the direct soft per
cussion and soft stone percussion techniques, but this would be of little inter
est for the topic of large elegant blades from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic.
We will therefore limit our discussion to the distinction between indirect
percussion and lever pressure.
Indirect percussion
This technique appears rather late during Prehistory. A few scholars, after
Bordes (1968, 1969), believed they had recognized it since the Early Upper
archaeological collections, do not support this assumption. At the moment,
indirect percussion seems to appear and quickly spread around 7800 BP in
duction of regular bladelets for a part used as blanks for the fabrication of
trapezes. It was then generally used during the Neolithic for the production
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