Late Mesolithic notched blades: tools for plant working ?

International audienceDuring the 7 th millennium BC, important changes occur in Western Europe. The lithic production focuses on regular blades, knapped by pressure or indirect percussion. These blades are often retouched with one or several notches, sometimes giving them a serrated appearance. We have studied a sample of notched blades coming from different late Mesolithic sites (7 th and 6 th millennium BC) in France and Belgium. The wear analysis of these tools shows that the notches are the result of a voluntary retouch and are used as scraping tools. The variability of the observed wear traces suggests that different materials have been scraped, among them different vegetal materials. This preliminary study presents our first results, some functional hypotheses and a discussion about the place of the notched blades in the lithic toolkit