Every hunter needs a knife: Hafted butchering knives from Maisières-Canal and their effect on lithic assemblage characteristics

Despite the central role butchering tools have had in the origins and development of human technologies, they have been overlooked in technological and functional studies with few exceptions. We use new results on the Gravettian assemblage from Maisières-Canal (Belgium) to illustrate how butchering knives were integrated in lithic production sequences and how the hafting, use and maintenance of these tools have affected the characteristics of the resulting lithic assemblage. The detailed low and high magnification analysis of a sample of knives, previously characterised as “tanged points”, “Maisières points”, and “tanged scrapers”, shows that these hunting knives were nearly always used hafted and had extensive use-lives. They were therefore an important component in the toolkits of the Gravettian hunter-gatherers occupying the site and are partly responsible for some of the most idiosyncratic traits of the lithic assemblage. These results underline the importance of maintaining a broad view of different tasks and needs to which toolkits responded, and encourage future studies to approach lithic assemblages from this perspective instead of prioritising projectile armatures.