Use and re-use: Re-knapped flakes from the Mode 1 site of Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Andalucía, Spain)

The presence of some flaked flakes at the Mode 1 site of Fuente Nueva 3 (1.2 Ma) poses the problem of the use and re-use of flakes as cores for obtaining smaller cutting tools. The industry is characterized by small flint flakes and cores, as well as by numerous limestone heavy-duty tools. Both of the raw materials were collected from local alluvial and colluvial sources. The assemblage presents a significant dimensional dichotomy with, on the one hand, large-sized limestone percussion tools and, on the other hand, small-sized flint debitage. Flint plates, blocks or nodules were obtained from local secondary deposits. There are very few flint cores and the average flake size is only 3 cm. Some of the flakes display opposite ventral surfaces indicating that they were obtained from larger flakes used as cores. In addition, a few intensively exploited flint cores conserve convex surfaces corresponding to their original flake matrices. No appreciably large-sized flint flakes have so far been found at the site suggesting that some phases of the knapping sequences were carried out further away. However, a few flakes could have been expediently re-knapped in situ. What can this behavioural choice tell us about early hominin behaviour at Fuente Nueva 3? The re-use of flint flakes as makeshift cores implies a two-step operative scheme involving the choice of a suitable blank that was further reduced on-site. This raises questions about raw material transport during the earliest periods of European Mode 1.