TESTING THE EFFICIENCY OF SIMPLE FLAKES, RETOUCHED FLAKES AND SMALL HANDAXES DURING BUTCHERY* A. B. GALÁN and M. DOMÍNGUEZ-RODRIGO† Department of Prehistory, Complutense University, 28040 Madrid, Spain Handaxes, simple flakes and retouched flakes are three types of stone tools whose adaptive advantages are highly debated. Interpretations of these technologically different tools suggest that their adequacy for butchery is uneven. Although some experimentation has been made in this regard, further research is needed to understand which of these tool types are more efficient for butchery, thus granting adaptive advantages to the hominins who used them. The present experimental work shows that small handaxes provide higher return rates in butchery activities than simple and retouched flakes. Efficiency (measured in time) is significantly positive in handaxes compared to the other tools when defleshing. In contrast, when compar- ing the three stone tool sets (simple flakes, retouched flakes and handaxes), the return values obtained for disarticulation are very similar. This study also shows that cut marks do not occur randomly and are less stochastic than previously assumed. Defleshing leaves a preferential cluster of cut marks on mid-shafts from long bones and even on these sections, depending on element type, patterns are statistically demonstrable. KEYWORDS: CUT MARKS, HANDAXES, ACHEULIAN, OLDOWAN, FLAKES, RETOUCHED FLAKES INTRODUCTION The balance between energy and/or time investment during carcass processing and the caloric yield obtained in the process is known as the return rate. Experimental return rates measure the net benefit of nutrient extraction through the interplay of processing time and nutritional gain: the latter is expressed in various ways (from the weight of each type of edible resource to their net caloric yield, according to the element type). This approach to the study of efficiency (understood as a process that minimizes processing time per caloric unit) and energy gain (understood as the process that maximizes caloric yields) is founded on optimal foraging principles. Return rate studies have been applied to the Pleistocene (e.g., Lupo 1998; Madrigal and Holt 2002; Marean and Cleghorn 2003). However, the elaboration of return rate analyses has sometimes yielded contradictory interpretations for butchery processes (e.g., Lupo 1998; Madrigal and Blumenschine 2000). Likewise, no correlation has been found between return rate and bone transport at modern ethnographic sites (Marean and Cleghorn 2003), probably because return rates have been derived without contemplating taphonomic biases (Egeland and Byerly 2005). Composite return rates (calculated by considering defleshing costs associated with demarrowing costs) suggest that available experimentally derived return rate data are more adequate for addressing carcass processing decisions, instead of carcass transport to sites (Egeland and Byerly 2005). *Received 10 May 2013; accepted 17 July 2013 †Corresponding author: email m.dominguez.rodrigo@gmail.com Archaeometry 56, 6 (2014) 1054–1074 doi: 10.1111/arcm.12064 © 2013 University of Oxford