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Iberomaurusian
The Iberomaurusian is a backed bladelet lithic industry found near the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is also known from a single major site in Libya, the Haua Fteah, where the industry is known as the Eastern Oranian. The Iberomaurusian seems to have appeared around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), somewhere between c. 25,000 and 23,000 cal BP. It would have lasted until the early Holocene, c. 11,000 cal BP.
The name "Iberomaurusian" means "of Iberia and Mauretania", the latter being a Latin name for northwest Africa. Paul Maurice Pallary (1909) coined this term to describe assemblages from the site of La Mouillah in the belief that the industry extended over the strait of Gibraltar into the Iberian Peninsula. This theory is now generally discounted (Garrod 1938), but the name has persisted.
In Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, but not in Morocco, the industry is succeeded by the Capsian industry, whose origins are unclear. The Capsian is believed either to have spread into north Africa from the Near East or to have evolved from the Iberomaurusian. In Morocco and western Algeria, the Iberomaurusian is succeeded by the Cardial culture after a long hiatus.
Mr. Luis Siret had already noticed in Southeastern Spain a Palaeolithic industry that included a microlithic toolkit: small and narrow instruments, variously retouched and with these, colouring substances, grinding tools, and hammerstones. However, this very industry, we have noticed it in the La Mouillah shelters, close to Marnia [western Algeria]: it includes hammerstones, cores, simple and backed [à bord retaillés] blades, notched blades, an excessive profusion of very small blades with retouch on their backs and very sharp points [très petites lames à dos retouché et à pointe très aigüe [sic]], circular endscrapers, disks, alterative flake pebbles, and a whole set of tools for grinding colours: pebbles in greenish rock, sandstone wheels, pebbles with median depressions, still impregnated with red colour, and as colouring substances, hematites, ocre, oligist iron. Finally, some boring tools in polished bone and objects of adornment: ellongated pebbles and shells pierced for suspension. But nothing in the way of polished stone or pottery.
[...]
What clearly distinguishes this industry is the smallness of the toolkit, especially the crescent-shaped backed blades of which one finds thousands of examples. True geometric pieces (in the shape of trapeziums) are excessively rare, barely three parts per thousand, whereas in the ancient Neolithic with pottery and polished stone, small pieces of flint with geometric shapes are very common.
I named Ibero-Maurusian the period that characterises this industry.
— Paul Pallary, Instructions pour les recherches préhistoriques dans le nord-ouest de l'Afrique (1909, pp. 45-46, translation)
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Iberomaurusian
The Iberomaurusian is a backed bladelet lithic industry found near the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is also known from a single major site in Libya, the Haua Fteah, where the industry is known as the Eastern Oranian. The Iberomaurusian seems to have appeared around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), somewhere between c. 25,000 and 23,000 cal BP. It would have lasted until the early Holocene, c. 11,000 cal BP.
The name "Iberomaurusian" means "of Iberia and Mauretania", the latter being a Latin name for northwest Africa. Paul Maurice Pallary (1909) coined this term to describe assemblages from the site of La Mouillah in the belief that the industry extended over the strait of Gibraltar into the Iberian Peninsula. This theory is now generally discounted (Garrod 1938), but the name has persisted.
In Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, but not in Morocco, the industry is succeeded by the Capsian industry, whose origins are unclear. The Capsian is believed either to have spread into north Africa from the Near East or to have evolved from the Iberomaurusian. In Morocco and western Algeria, the Iberomaurusian is succeeded by the Cardial culture after a long hiatus.
Mr. Luis Siret had already noticed in Southeastern Spain a Palaeolithic industry that included a microlithic toolkit: small and narrow instruments, variously retouched and with these, colouring substances, grinding tools, and hammerstones. However, this very industry, we have noticed it in the La Mouillah shelters, close to Marnia [western Algeria]: it includes hammerstones, cores, simple and backed [à bord retaillés] blades, notched blades, an excessive profusion of very small blades with retouch on their backs and very sharp points [très petites lames à dos retouché et à pointe très aigüe [sic]], circular endscrapers, disks, alterative flake pebbles, and a whole set of tools for grinding colours: pebbles in greenish rock, sandstone wheels, pebbles with median depressions, still impregnated with red colour, and as colouring substances, hematites, ocre, oligist iron. Finally, some boring tools in polished bone and objects of adornment: ellongated pebbles and shells pierced for suspension. But nothing in the way of polished stone or pottery.
[...]
What clearly distinguishes this industry is the smallness of the toolkit, especially the crescent-shaped backed blades of which one finds thousands of examples. True geometric pieces (in the shape of trapeziums) are excessively rare, barely three parts per thousand, whereas in the ancient Neolithic with pottery and polished stone, small pieces of flint with geometric shapes are very common.
I named Ibero-Maurusian the period that characterises this industry.
— Paul Pallary, Instructions pour les recherches préhistoriques dans le nord-ouest de l'Afrique (1909, pp. 45-46, translation)
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