Mousterian tips

11 Mousterian tips with a superelevated touch, deep, direct, bilateral and invading. Typical instrument of the Neanderthal man, they were found along with other types of flint instrument in the Cattìe estate in the countryside near Maglie, in an urgent recovery made by the museum in 1980. The use of flint, raw material not present on the territory, makes the site of cattie extremely particular. Indeed, it is almost completely absent in the other sites of the middle salentino Palaeolithic period, where the man made his instruments mainly from limestone chips or from flint limestone pebbles. The systematic dig of the site, made the year after under the direction of Giuliano Cremonesi, brought to light a significant Neanderthal deposit in the rocks in a large cave along the internal flanks of a great doline, from which also two rare findings of bones belonging to this human species come: two teeth of sub-adult individuals, one of which is exhibited in the museum.