“A lithic workshop along the way”: the Upper Pleistocene site of Oued Charef (Eastern Morocco)

Abstract

A joint research project between the University of Oujda (Morocco) and Institut Català de Paleocologia Humana i Evolució Social and Universitat Rovira I Virgili (IPHES-URV) (Spain) has been developed since 2005. During this time a large number of archaeological localities belonging to the Pleistocene and the Holocene have been discovered. Oued Charef is an open air site located on the edge of the Oued Charef River. During the 2007 fieldwork a 5 m2 area has been excavated yielding about 300 lithic remains, with some charcoals and burned bone fragments (with smaller than 1 cm specimens recovered during the sieving of the sediments). All of the remains have been recorded using Cartesian coordinates (X, Y and Z). Grids of 1 m2 were established for the excavation, following the natural paleorelief, as well as the sedimentary context and archaeological remains to determinate spatial patterning and site limit. All of the lithic remains have been studied following standard technological analysis, refits and spatial patterning. The preliminary study of the reduction sequences shows that the lithics have been knapped on the spot, which was also confirmed by the large number of the refits and the spatial patterning of the remains. The technological behavior shows an expedient tool production with the use of local raw materials, which is assessed based on the very casual and least complex reduction sequences (short series from 1 to 4 removals obtained by orthogonal strategies) and by the low number of retouched pieces. These characteristics could allow us to interpret this open air site as a workshop located on the landscapes of the hominid groups that inhabited eastern Morocco during the Upper Pleistocene.