PONE-D-22-30527On the Quina side: A Neanderthal bone industry at Chez-Pinaud site, FrancePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baumann,

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"The Chez-Pinaud excavation is funded by the Ministère de la Culture under the supervision of the Service Régional d’Archéologie of Nouvelle Aquitaine, Poitiers. We are grateful to the Conseil Général of the Charente-Maritime for its financial and logistic support. The field work will not be possible without the major help of the Communauté de Commune de Haute Saintonge and Jonzac Municipality. This research was supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement #839528).  This article is part of the ERC QuinaWorld project (Starting Grant #851793). The Chagyrskaya Cave study have been supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Grant agreement #21-18-00376). We are thankful to the joint Russian-French Scientific Project of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant agreement #19-59-22007) and the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) for financial support of the microtomographic analysis. These collaborations were initiated in the framework of the International Research Laboratory ARTEMIR. "

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: The article “On the Quina side: A Neanderthal bone industry at Chez-Pinaud site, France” by M. Baumann et al presents results of original research finalised to the identification of a Neanderthal bone industry in the Quina Middle Palaeolithic site of Chez-Pinaud. The study presents new results comparable with other contemporaneous sites, and the authors cite the existing literature accordingly. Data are presented in sufficient detail, especially raw data in the Supplementary Information section. The authors should be praised for the quality of the figures, which is truly remarkable.

However, I recognise some issues regarding the structure of the article: unnecessary data and unclear sentences, particularly in the first part of the manuscript, somehow shift the focus from the aims of the research. I would recommend the publication of this article only after a general polishing of the manuscript and the addition of more structured, clear statements regarding the aims of the research. Consequently, the Discussion section should be restructured accordingly.

Introduction

This is the most problematic part of the manuscript. Although the authors give an excellent framework of the gaps currently affecting the study of Middle Palaeolithic (MP) bone technologies, they do not state clearly enough what is their proposal to fill these gaps. Is the aim of this research to address the lack of ‘shared criteria’ in the study of MP bone industries by proposing a new analytical methodology (micro-CT)? More specifically, is it to give guidelines to other researchers to identify (in the words of the authors) a ‘genuine bone industry’? Or is it to replicate the methods previously proposed by the authors (Chagyrskaya) and to apply those methods to a Neanderthal context in Western Europe, since Chagyrskaya and Chez-Pinaud are both Quina sites? Some structure and rephrasing are necessary. I suggest, among other things, (1) giving a clear, technical definition of what the authors mean by ‘bone tool’ and ‘bone industry’, (2) giving a summary of methods and results applied in the study of the Chagyrskaya bone industry, and state why we should follow a similar approach for Chez-Pinaud, and (3) use a more dubitative tone throughout the Introduction, to communicate that previous works do exist and are valid, but need updating. The authors have done excellent work with the Supplementary Information, and most of what is missing from the manuscript can be taken from there.

Following, are some specific comments:

• Line 66: the sentence is unclear. Do you mean, it is the only bone industry surely made by Neanderthals? This is the part where I believe a clear definition of ‘bone tools’ would be appropriate. In lines 65-81 there is a list of previously identified bone tools ‘categories’, but it results as a mix of retouchers, lissoirs, scrapers, etc without ever addressing the general definition of ‘bone tool’. We all agree that Neanderthals can make a ‘proper’ bone industry -- but what is a ‘proper’ bone industry in fact? Because it is such a big question, citing previous research addressing this issue might not be enough in this case.

• Line 78: ‘most of them recently investigated’ might be more appropriate.

• Line 91: I would rather say that a proper study of MP bone tools (not bone industry) is anecdotal. It might be true that bone industries are only sporadically present in the MP -- we actually don’t know it because we never created a methodology to investigate bone tools! I believe the key to this sentence should be to critique the previous approaches to the study of bone tools, in fact anecdotal and most of the time borrowed from lithic studies.

• Line 92: ‘mode of manufacturing’ sounds confusing. Maybe ‘manufacturing techniques’? There is also a grammatical discrepancy (plural ‘their’ / singular ‘bone’).

• Line 94-96: give some literature references to other studies highlighting the issue of the lack of shared identification criteria (some are cited elsewhere in the Introduction).

• Line 98: briefly summarise the results from your previous study. Moreover, ‘evidence in the literature’ might be more appropriate than ‘bibliographic data’.

• Line 99: ‘genuine’ is somehow a foggy term, I suggest rephrasing it.

• Line 100: ‘primary use of percussion’ is also a little foggy. What do you mean by ‘primary’?

• Line 107-108: like in my previous comment (line 98) please openly state what the ‘Chagyrskaya analytical framework’ is.

• Line 108: something like ‘a site characterised by Neanderthal occupation’ would sound better to the reader.

• Line 111: here ‘bone tool’ should be replaced with ‘bone industry’.

• Line 116-118: it is unclear to me why we should compare Chagyrskaya and Chez-Pinaud. If you want to apply the same methods from Chagyrskaya, why did you choose Chez-Pinaud and not any other site with Neanderthal occupation and previously identify bone retouchers and bone-bed?

Methods

In general, I would appreciate more depth in the methods, since the main aim of the authors is supposed to be to encourage the creation of a shared methodology for the study of bone tools. Particularly, I am confused about the criteria the authors used to isolate the 103 bone fragments from the faunal assemblage by giving them the definition of ‘tools’ and using them as materials for the whole study. As we understand from the Introduction, we do not have any shared criteria to do so at the moment, and the authors need to share the criteria they used. Most of the requested information is in the SI, but I believe stronger statements are needed here in the manuscript. The same goes for details on the experimentally produced bone tools. I do not think the whole experimental protocol belongs to the manuscript, but perhaps some justification of why you need the experimental bone tools within your analysis might fit well in the Methods section.

• Line 138-140: unclear sentence. Does it mean that during the last excavation lithics were recovered and subjected to preliminary studies which revealed they belong to Quina industries?

• Line 147-148: are there any other indicators of the cold, dry and open environment, apart from reindeer remains? If so, please cite them. Moreover, I am confused if these data refer to US 22 only, or a general description of the occupation of the site.

• Line 158-159: ‘bones anatomical connection’. Unclear. Do you mean ‘bones refitting’ or ‘bones which are anatomically connected (articulated) in situ’?

• Line 182-183: it seems to me somehow circular logic here. If the aim of the study is to identify bone tools among faunal assemblage by using a specific methodology, how can we state, in the methods, that 103 bone tools were found? Maybe this sentence belongs to the Results section.

• Line 202: what are the criteria used to select these 9 bone tools for the micro-CT? Did you choose one tool per ‘bone category’? Is it because of better preservation? Specific spatial distribution in the site? Please be more specific.

Results

I am confused by the description of bone tools from recent and old excavation campaigns. Do the results concern only recent findings (US 22), or do they also re-examine bone tools previously identified in older campaigns, but with the new ‘methodological framework’ proposed by the authors? Some clarification is needed. If, in fact, they do re-analyse bone tools previously identified, the authors should take time in the discussion to assess the validity of their new proposed methodology against the ‘unshared criteria’ used until now in the study of MP bone technologies. If the results of the present work mainly focus on bone tools coming from recent excavation, then I suggest deleting any reference to tools collected in previous campaigns, to avoid confusion. Perhaps in the future, the authors might want to consider undertaking a comparative study with bone tools described in the past to determine how their method is an improvement on what people did before, and how we can build new, shared criteria for the study of bone tools based on the methods the authors propose. Moreover, I found myself confused while reading the results about use-wear and manufacturing traces descriptions: it is not always clear if the authors are talking about traces observed on archaeological bones, rather than experimental bones, rather than results obtained in previous studies. Perhaps a more structured organisation of this section might be helpful, and comparisons within traces and tools might find a more suitable space in the Discussion.

• Fig. 2: a more schematic organisation of the identified tool ‘types’ might help the reader to get a visual understanding of the differences between the ‘types’ themselves.

• I question the use of the word ‘type’ to identify a tool showing specific features on which we can base the tool’s function (retouchers, smooth-ended tools, etc.). To me, the term ‘type’ carries too many reminiscences from the lithic typological approach (Bordes sensu), which several scholars consider nowadays an obsolete approach even for lithic technology. More importantly, it could be argued that the use of this terminology is inconsistent with what the authors stated in the Introduction, blaming the lack of proper methods for the study of bone tools on reckless borrowing from pre-existing lithic studies. The same goes for ‘tool category’. I suggest the authors might reconsider terminology here; for instance, in other parts of the manuscript, the authors use the term ‘morpho-functional category’, which I believe is the most appropriate definition the authors used so far.

• Line 255: a picture of these percussion marks and notches, even only in SI, could be appropriate. It could contribute to the debate regarding the attribution of percussion marks and notches to butchering activities rather than the use of bone blanks as retouchers (see: Delphine Vettese, Camille Daujeard. Le mythe du retouchoir en os : analyse d'un reste actuel / The myth of the bone retoucher: analysis of an actualistic bone referential. Colloque en hommage à Emilie Campmas "Sociétés humaines et environnements dans la zone circumméditerranéenne du Pléistocène au début de l'Holocène", Mar 2021, Toulouse, France).

• Line 261-268: a comprehensive table of these metric data in SI might help future researchers to compare their bone industry with yours.

• Line 280-282: tibias indeed are the easiest to recognise, but they are also the easiest bone to fracture and the bone that usually produces the greatest number of blanks upon breakage. Perhaps your observations are not biased…

• Line 283 (and 289, 292, 316, 381…): I would move all the comparisons with other Quina sites in Discussion.

• Line 304-306: same -- I would move comparisons with retouched lithic tools in Discussion.

• Line 331-343: this section might belong to the Methods.

• Line 346: please give a definition of ‘simple and complex micro-cracks’ in the Methods.

• Line 364-375: explanatory parts of this section should be moved to the Methods, whereas actual data and results should be left here.

• Line 390-391: do you have any experimental evidence for this fracture to be resulting from the tool’s use?

• Line 412-419: this should be in the Discussion.

• Can the authors spend a few words explaining how we can distinguish the manufacturing marks associated with ‘retouched tools’ from the percussion marks associated with the bone breaking during butchering activities? Retouched bone blanks are widely present in Quina sites, and a reliable traceological identification protocol is needed.

• Line 533: can you elaborate on this hypothesis?

• Line 549: please reference previous studies or the authors’ experimental evidence for this use-wear in association with cutting soft materials.

• Line 601-602: ‘including the use of the retouched edge’. I would like to see an experimental test, followed by micro-CT, of the retouched edge after the use proposed by the authors. The discussion about internal damage due to use-wear and use of the retouched edge is fascinating and deserves to be verified.

• Line 620: ‘must’ might be a little strong…

• Line 649: this claim is a little too blunt and needs more justification. What use? Which bone? Which material is being worked?

Discussion

After working on the previous sections, I believe there will be several topics the authors will want to address in the Discussions. At the moment, this section is somehow meagre and disorganised. I suggest giving a proper structure to this section through thematic headings (e.g., comparisons with other Quina sites, the potential of the analysis of internal damage, multifunctionality/re-use of bone tools in Quina culture compared to the lithic industries, suggestions for the creation of ‘shared criteria’ to study bone tools…).

• Line 685: why is it important to state that the number of bone tools is equal to the number of lithic tools?

• Line 753-754: I would like to hear more details on this. Why not? What would be a better investment instead?

• Line 763-764: what is your hypothesis on this, based on your results, observations and comparisons with other sites? You somehow address it in lines 784-789, but a little of a ‘dreaming’ speculation here couldn’t hurt.

• Line 766-773: very interesting!

• Line 778: ‘pre-Upper Palaeolithic’ might be misleading. Please rephrase.

• Line 801: typo. Replace ‘narrow’ with ‘marrow’.

• Line 1255: correct spelling is ‘Martellotta’ :)

In conclusion, I believe this is much-needed work because we require a shared methodology in the study of MP ‘non-official’ bone tools, as well as a reliable methodology to assess the multifunctionality of these tools. Throughout the whole paper, I very much appreciated the focus on traceological descriptions and mechanical properties of osseous materials. The application of the micro-CT to traceological questions is a fascinating subject, and its brilliance could and should be more emphasised in the paper. The authors’ proposal to connect internal damage to different retouched industries is intriguing, especially in Quina contexts.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript presents the study of bone shaft fragments interpreted as bone tools from the Quina Mousterian US22 of the Chez-Pinaud site (Jonzac, France). I think the issue is relevant, as the use of bone tools in Pre-Upper Palaeolithic/Later Stone Age (LSA) periods has been a controversial issue ever since Dart (1957) proposed the existence of the Osteodontokeratic industry. Studies of bone tools have become important for understanding the technological and cultural development of human groups in the past. Thus, bone technology should be included as one piece of the “modern human behavioural" repertoire. I consider that the study deserves publication due to the topic it deals with, however some critical points should be addressed before its publication.

Bone has been used for many purposes since the beginning of the Pleistocene. Bones used for shaping stone tools are prevalent in late Lower Palaeolithic Europe and in the Levant as early as MIS 13. So, I don't think the question "Did Neanderthal produce a bone industry?" with which the authors begin the Abstract is appropriate. There are several pieces of evidence that show the use of bones not only by Neanderthals, but also by earlier hominids, and for this reason I advise the authors to delete this very strict sentence and relativize the exceptionality that Neanderthals used bones as tools. I think it is important that the authors reformulate the beginning of the Introduction making a distinction in the use of bones during the Pleistocene from a technological point of view by differentiating between 1) intentionally polished bones, 2) bones knapped by direct percussion (retouched edges or flaked), and 3) unmodified bones used for a particular purpose. I think the polishing involves an important step in the making and handling techniques of bone artefacts and maybe it could be highlighted.

It seems to me that the study is clear on a methodological and comparative level. However, I have to say that some bone morphologies shown in the manuscript are similar to those that resulted from my experiments in breaking bones to access the marrow with fresh bone. In my experience, bone morphologies can be highly variable depending on variables such as the size, type and morphology of the hammer-stone, the state of the bone at the time of breakage or the areas that are not clean of periosteum [an irregular distribution of the periosteum could produce differences in the propagation of the impact force on the bone, generating scalariform breakage planes, jagged fracture surfaces and sometimes beveled fractures (like e.g., fig.7,8)]. With this I do not mean that the interpretation of the authors is wrong, but rather that sometimes the variables play a critical role in the resulting morphologies, and especially in the cases in which the periosteum is only removed from some specific areas. In fact, the authors point out the importance of the variables on p.14. For this reason, I encourage the authors to continue along this working-line, expanding the experimental series and variables in a near future.

I would like the experiments to be explained in detail in the supplementary material (S5Text), especially those focused-on plant working (e.g., herbaceous harvesting), skin working (e.g., proto-tanning) and soil working (e.g., digging up roots), and see the specific bone damage associated with these activities (types of marks, affected areas, etc.) and the distinctive features depending on the development of one activity or another. I would like to know variables used (e.g., trained and non-trained individulas, duration of the process, etc.). I think the details in the supplementary material would greatly enrich the scientific story line.

In the S4Text the authors state: “The fractures considered as anthropogenic are those occurring on "fresh" bone, i.e., occurring shortly after the animal's death”. This statement should be clarified or slightly modified because human groups can also use and work dry or semi-dry bone.

As a curiosity, the presence of the fox arouses my interest. Do the fox bones have any marks that allow their presence to be related to some human or carnivore activity? Is it a natural intrusion? What anatomical parts are represented?

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Eva Francesca Martellotta

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-22-30527R1On the Quina side: A Neanderthal bone industry at Chez-Pinaud site, FrancePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baumann,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I am grateful to the authors for their responses to my concerns on the manuscript ‘On the Quina side: A Neanderthal bone industry at Chez-Pinaud site, France’.

Their responses clarified the main aim of the study, which was also clarified within the text. Although the first version of the manuscript was misleadingly drawing attention on the applied methodology, this new version has been toned down and it is more consistent with the actual aims of the authors. The same can be said for the role of the Chagyrskaya site in the context of present research, made much clearer by the authors in the revised manuscript.

Moreover, the manuscript is now much more structured, and the numerous details added by the authors fit well in the new structure of the article. I appreciated the addition of many details concerning the experimental protocol, inasmuch it makes the manuscript now consistent with the publication requirements of PLOS ONE.

In conclusion, I recommend the article for publication, however the text could beneficiate from a reread in order to address typos and rephrase some foggy sentences. I suggest here the ones I noted while reading.

Lines 67-68: Grammar here could be improved. Do you mean ‘To date, the Chagyrskaya bone tools provide the only example of a Neanderthal bone 68 industry *for which* the authorship of AMH cannot be considered’?

Line 67-69: I am confused by this statement. If Chagyrskaya is the *only* example of a Neanderthal bone industry, how can you state just after that it is *not an isolated* case?

Lines 80-81: This sentence is unclear. What does ‘others’ refer to? Other discoveries? Other industries? Please rephrase.

Lines 283-284: rather than ‘close’ striking angle I would say ‘acute’.

Line 383: replace ‘Bos/bison’ with ‘Bos/Bison’ (capitalised words and italic).

Line 415: ‘The US22’. Remove ‘The’.

Line 467: Adjust the grammar here. Change the sentence to either ‘the mode of use of *a* bone retoucher […]’ or ‘the mode of use of bone *retouchers* can also be revealed by *their* internal damage.

Line 468: replace ‘reciprocal effect of one on the other’ with ‘reciprocal effect on one another’

Line 564: replace ‘in the main axis’ with ‘along its main axis’.

Line 596: replace 2 and 4 with ‘two’ and ‘four’.

Line 710: replace ‘done by percussion’ with ‘produced by, resulting from, achieved through…’ percussion.

Line 853: correct spelling is ‘De Nadale’.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Eva Francesca Martellotta

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On the Quina side: A Neanderthal bone industry at Chez-Pinaud site, France

PONE-D-22-30527R2

Dear Dr. Baumann,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. After careful reading and checking of reference list, figures, tables and materials of SM section, I noted very few flaws which have been highlighted in the annotated pdf attached to this notification. Required integrations are very few and I recommend to carry out them during proof cheking.   

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Marco Peresani

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-30527_R2 Annotated MPeresani.pdf