Subspheroids in the lithic assemblage of Barranco León (Spain): Recognizing the late Oldowan in Europe Titton, Stefania Barsky, Deborah Bargalló, Amèlia Serrano-Ramos, Alexia Vergès, Josep Maria Toro-Moyano, Isidro Sala-Ramos, Robert García Solano, José Antonio Jiménez Arenas, Juan Manuel All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Lithic material inventories and basic analyses may be consulted in the Field Season Reports that the Orce Research Team delivers yearly to Junta de Andalucia, which are freely available by request. The studied material is preserved in the Archaeological and Ethnographical Museum of Granada (Andalucía, Spain). The lithic assemblage of Barranco León (BL), attributed to the Oldowan techno-complex, contributes valuable information to reconstruct behavioral patterning of the first hominins to disperse into Western Europe. This archaic stone tool assemblage comprises two, very different groups of tools, made from distinct raw materials. On the one hand, a small-sized toolkit knapped from Jurassic flint, comprising intensively exploited cores and small-sized flakes and fragments and, on the other hand, a large-sized limestone toolkit that is mainly linked to percussive activities. In recent years, the limestone macro-tools have been the center of particular attention, leading to a re-evaluation of their role in the assemblage. Main results bring to light strict hominin selective processes, mainly concerning the quality of the limestone and the morphology of the cobbles, in relation to their use-patterning. In addition to the variety of traces of percussion identified on the limestone tools, recurrences have recently been documented in their positioning and in the morphology of the active surfaces. Coupled with experimental work, this data has contributed to formulating hypothesis about the range of uses for these tools, beyond stone knapping and butchery, for activities such as: wood-working or tendon and meat tenderizing. The abundance of hammerstones, as well as the presence of heavy-duty scrapers, are special features recognized for the limestone component of the Barranco Leo´n assemblage. This paper presents, for the first time, another characteristic of the assemblage: the presence of polyhedral and, especially, subspheroid morphologies, virtually unknown in the European context for this timeframe. We present an analysis of these tools, combining qualitative evaluation of the raw materials, diacritical study, 3D geometric morphometric analysis of facet angles and an evaluation of the type and position of percussive traces; opening up the discussion of the late Oldowan beyond the African context. 2020-01-31T11:35:28Z 2020-01-31T11:35:28Z 2020-01-30 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Titton S, Barsky D, Bargalló A, Serrano- Ramos A, Vergès JM, Toro-Moyano I, et al. (2020) Subspheroids in the lithic assemblage of Barranco León (Spain): Recognizing the late Oldowan in Europe. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0228290. [https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228290] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/59333 10.1371/journal.pone.0228290 eng EC/H2020/702584 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España Public Library of Science (PLOS)