Bone Tool Proxy Evidence for Coiled Basketry Production in the North African Palaeolithic

Abstract

Bone tools from Taforalt Cave constitute the largest North African Later Stone Age (LSA) bone tool technocomplex recovered to-date. Use-trace analyses show that the small, pointed forms which dominate the assemblage show microtopographic patterning consistent with ethnographic bone tools used to make coiled basketry. The presence of coiled basketry likely scaffolded emergent cultural forms reflected in increased sedentism, resource intensification, and greater population density at Taforalt. This study explores the relationship between coiled basketry and archaeologically co-occurring technologies. Ethnographic analogies derived from Indigenous Californian groups provide a model for how resource-specific collection, processing, storage, and preparation requirements may have been supported technologically.