Ch telperronian was the earliest industry of the Upper Palaeolithic in central and south western France.
It appears to have been derived from the earlier, Neandertal, Mousterian industry as it made use of Levallois cores and represents the period when Neanderthals and modern humans occupied Europe together. It lasted from between c. 35,000 and c. 29,000 BP. The industry produced denticulate, or toothed, stone tools and also a distinctive flint knife with a single cutting edge and a blunt, curved back. It may also have produced jewellery which has been used to support theories regarding the sophistication of the Neanderthals.
It was superseded by the human Aurignacian industry indicating that the Neanderthals disappeared around 29,000 BP.
However, it was the excavations of Otto Hauser that brought the most attention to the site when in 1909 he recovered the almost complete skeleton of a modern Homo sapiens in what he thought was a level containing a Chatelperronian industry.
Unfortunately, the excavation techniques employed by Hauser at the time were not very rigorous and there has been much debate as to the exact provenience of this find; this debate will probably never be resolved because there are virtually no deposits left at this locale.
The stratigraphic succession appears to have included Chatelperronian, Aurignacian, Gravettian, and Solutrean, but it has been published in many different versions.
Resharpening reduction is most apparent among tools from Aurignacian assemblages, and less so for tools from Chatelperronian and Mousterian of Acheulian type B assemblages.
These observations are used to formulate an explanatory hypothesis for the variability in tool type proportions found among assemblages belonging to the Aurignacian and Chatelperronian industries.
It is suggested that a major proportion of the variability in tool type proportions in these industries reflects the high proportion of resharpened reduced tools in the Aurignacian, and lower proportions of these tool types in the Chatelperronian.
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