Neanderthal retouched shell tools and Quina economic and technical strategies: An integrated behaviour Francesca Romagnoli a, b, c, * , Javier Baena d , Lucia Sarti e a IPHES, Institut Catal a de Paleoecologia Humana i Evoluci o Social, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain b Area de Prehistoria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avinguda de Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain c Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia, Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo, Cattedra di Paletnologia, Universit a degli Studi di Firenze, Via S. Egidio 21, 50122 Firenze, Italy d Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Universidad Aut onoma de Madrid, Carretera de Colmenar Viejo, Km 15, Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain e Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche e dei Beni Culturali, Universit a degli Studi di Siena, Via Roma 56, 53100 Siena, Italy article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Quina techno-complex Neanderthal Shell tool Mobility strategy Technical innovation Technical gesture abstract Neanderthal shell tools have been discovered in several coastal sites along the Mediterranean Sea in the past 50 years. These technological artefacts have rarely been investigated, and only typological consid- erations have been published. Recent studies have investigated retouched shell tools at Grotta del Cavallo with a new multidisciplinary methodology, and they have found that the use of Callista chione valves was not related to subsistence strategies but rather to the search for a specific cutting edge, reconstructing the whole chaîne op eratoire. In this paper, we focus on some technical aspects of shell tool production that have not been investigated to date: (i) the technical reaction of the shell to retouching on the basis of its microstructural and physical properties, (ii) the identification of technical gestures used during pro- duction and (iii) the economic value of shell technology from a technical perspective. The experiments were conducted along with the analysis of the whole lithic assemblage and the economic, technological and technical characteristics of the lithic techno-complex are presented. The results of shell analysis and shell integration within the stone tool techno-economical strategies clearly show that at Grotta del Cavallo, this Neanderthal technical adaptation to coastal resources could be considered an expression of the Quina system. The data presented in this study are discussed in relation to Middle Palaeolithic behavioural variability, and we emphasise four primary, strictly interdependent concepts: mobility strategies, flexibility of the Quina techno-economic system, social organisation and cognitive features of human groups. The Quina shell technology is the result of a complex modality of adaptation to envi- ronmental diversity, and it is related to the Neanderthal capacity for innovation. In this paper, we discuss how and why the innovation of shell technology might have occurred within the Quina system. The data presented in this study represent the first investigation of the technical modalities of Neanderthal adaptation to the seashore. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The range of variability of Middle Palaeolithic assemblages has been discussed since the mid-twentieth century when Bordes defined four cultural facies based on the typological features of Mousterian assemblages in south-western France (Bordes, 1953, 1961; Bordes and de Sonneville-Bordes, 1970). Subsequently, different interpretations have been proposed to explain Neander- thal assemblage variability as related to functional activities carried out in the site (Binford, 1973), to chronological stages (Mellars, 1969), to climatic and environmental changes (Rolland, 1981), to successive stages of tool reduction (Dibble, 1984) or to shifts in mobility and resulting variability in raw material availability (Geneste, 1985). Today, it is widely accepted that none of these interpretations alone is sufficient to understand Neanderthal behavioural variability. Hunteregatherer mobility is a central issue in technological diversity and has been investigated from several points of view (raw material availability, tool curation, strategies of provisioning * Corresponding author. IPHES, Institut Catal a de Paleoecologia Humana i Evoluci o Social, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain. E-mail address: f.romagnoli2@gmail.com (F. Romagnoli). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.07.034 1040-6182/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e16 Please cite this article in press as: Romagnoli, F., et al., Neanderthal retouched shell tools and Quina economic and technical strategies: An integrated behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.07.034 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Atributiu- NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0