To the Point. The Bone Tool Industry of the Ifri n´Etsedda, NE-Morocco

Abstract

This paper provides all bone artefacts recovered from the archaeological deposits of Ifri n’Etsedda, Eastern Rif, Morocco. Archaeological research has been carried out in the Eastern Rif since 1995 by a collaborative Moroccan-German research team. A major topic of the project is the transition from hunting-gathering to food production and related cultural developments. Innovations such as pottery, domesticated animals and the cultivation of cereals and pulses appeared around 7.6 ka calBP. Ifri n’Etsedda, a small shelter close to the lower reaches of the Moulouya river, is one of the most important sites in the area containing both Epipaleolithic as well as Neolithic deposits. While innovative technologies such as pottery production and cultivation indicate external influences during the Neolithic period, bone tools, similar to lithic artefacts, demonstrate local technologies of Epipaleolithic tradition. Therefore, the study of bone industries is crucial to understanding the nature of continuity and discontinuity between the hunting-gathering and agricultural populations in the Eastern Rif. The bone artefacts from Ifri n´Etsedda mainly consist of points. Despite their fragmentation and an intense transformation of the original bone, a techno-functional analysis provided information on raw material selection, production, use and maintenance. With the presentation of our results we intend to geographically extend the existing corpus of bone tool studies, which so far primarily focused on sites in present-day Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, by adding our assemblage from the Moroccan Rif region, and thus make a contribution to the knowledge on Epipaleolithic and Neolithic bone industries in North Africa.