Retouchers at the centre: quantifying attention bias and methodological change in middle palaeolithic bone-tool research in Europe

Abstract Research on Palaeolithic bone tools has increasingly emphasised methodological refinement and interdisciplinary approaches, yet systematic quantitative assessments of scholarly attention and bias remain limited. This study presents a quantitative synthesis of 137 publications aimed at analysing patterns in tool-type focus, geographic coverage, and methodological change in European Palaeolithic bone-tool research. Within the Middle Palaeolithic context, retouchers emerge as the continuously foregrounded discrete category, while other artefact categories, often characterised by subtler traces or more ambiguous manufacturing and use traces, remain marginal. Using descriptive statistics, Fisher’s exact tests, and logistic regression, we identify a pronounced and persistent attention bias: retouchers constitute a dominant focus and are more likely to be analysed with functional methods (use-wear, experimentation, 3D imaging). Geographically, research is heavily concentrated in Western Europe, with France and Italy accounting for nearly half of all studies, while Spain shows a distinct association with retoucher-focused work. Temporally, we document a measurable shift from typological description toward techno-functional and interdisciplinary analysis, a trend that is statistically significant but unevenly distributed across tool types and regions. These findings underscore how research priorities, validation strategies, and regional academic traditions shape the archaeological narrative of early bone technology. Over time, this imbalance may narrow reconstructions of Palaeolithic bone technology toward activities closely aligned with lithic production, inadvertently downplaying other domains of bone use such as hide processing, plant working, composite tool manufacture, or percussive tasks unrelated to stone-tool maintenance. The issue is therefore not simply one of bias, but of epistemic filtering: certain behaviours become more visible because they align with dominant validation strategies, while others remain under-represented. We argue that future studies should extend high-resolution functional analyses beyond retouchers, broaden geographic and chronological representation, and adopt more standardised reporting to advance a more balanced understanding of Palaeolithic bone-tool behaviours.