Mobility and the Importance of Bone and Bulb Retouchers in the Middle Palaeolithic of the Swabian Jura

Modifying the form of lithic artifacts through retouch represents a central technological feature of the Middle Palaeolithic, and retouchers made of a variety of materials appear frequently in the archaeological record. Bone and bulb retouchers are the most common types. The first, are often described as ad hoc tools with short use-lives, while researchers have tentatively iden-tified the second as curated artifacts included in the mobile toolkit. Here we present two bulb retouchers from the Middle Palaeolithic layers VIII/VII of Sirgenstein Cave in the Ach Valley of the Swabian Jura, and discuss their general characteristics together with bone retouchers re-covered from the same archaeological layers. The data on bone and bulb retouchers from Sir-genstein support the proposed complementary uses of the two types of retouchers. We suggest that the intrinsic properties of bone and flint, together with other aspects specific to the chaînes operatoires of these two materials, played a major role in determining the retouchers’ suitability within toolkits, and can help to explain the high variability in retouching techniques encountered in the Middle Palaeolithic record. Based on these considerations, our study highlights the im-portance of the organization of technology and the potential of retouchers for reconstructing past mobility and settlement dynamics.