Research Article Geochemical Sourcing of Flint Artifacts from Western Belgium and the German Rhineland: Testing Hypotheses on Gravettian Period Mobility and Raw Material Economy Luc Moreau, 1,2, * Michael Brandl, 3 Peter Filzmoser, 4 Christoph Hauzenberger, 5 ´ Eric Goemaere, 7 Ivan Jadin, 8 H´ el ` ene Collet, 9 Anne Hauzeur, 6 and Ralf W. Schmitz 10 1 MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution, Schloss Monrepos, Neuwied, Germany 2 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom 3 OREA—Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology, Quaternary Archaeology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria 4 Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria 5 Department of Earth Sciences, Karl-Franzens-University of Graz, Graz, Austria 6 Pal ´ eotime, Villard-de-Lans, France, and cooperation partner of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium 7 Geological Survey of Belgium, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium 8 Anthropology & Prehistory, OD Earth and History of Life, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium 9 Service public de Wallonie, service de l’Arch ´ eologie en Hainaut, Mons, Belgium 10 LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, Rheinisches Landesmuseum f ¨ ur Arch ¨ aologie, Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte, Bonn, Germany Correspondence * Corresponding author; E-mail: lm704@cam.ac.uk Received 3 March 2015 Revised 9 August 2015 Accepted 19 August 2015 Scientific editing by Steven L. Kuhn Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). doi 10.1002/gea.21564 Identifying the geological and geographical origin of lithic raw materials is critical to effectively address prehistoric forager raw material economies and mobility strategies. Currently, Paleolithic archaeology in Belgium lacks a sys- tematic sourcing strategy to effectively substantiate detailed interpretations of prehistoric hunter-gatherer behavioral change across time and space. This pi- lot study evaluates the potential to “fingerprint” flint from the Mons Basin, western Belgium, using the laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) technique and a multivariate statistical analysis of 87 geological samples and 39 Gravettian period chipped stone artifacts. We reappraise two hypotheses raised by previous scholars based on visual raw material identification: (1) the Gravettian occupants of Maisi ` eres-Canal sup- plied themselves with “black flint” from one single source; (2) the sites Rhens and Koblenz-Metternich yielded artifacts indicative of long-distance transfer of western Belgian flint into the German Rhineland, ca. 260 km from the pri- mary source area. Our results demonstrate the validity of LA-ICP-MS data with flint and compositional data analysis for fingerprinting discrete geological for- mations from the Mons Basin. We suggest multiple source provisioning for Maisi ` eres-Canal. Geochemical characterization of other potential flint sources is required to validate the long-distance transfer hypothesis of western Belgian “black flint” into the German Rhineland. C  2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. INTRODUCTION Stone tools are the most abundant source of evidence about human evolution. However, while stone tools are such a rich source of information, they are not simple to interpret. Among the factors considered to have exerted significant constraints on chipped stone assemblage char- acteristics of prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, mobil- ity and raw material characteristics including availabil- ity, quality, and size, along with other terrain variables, have received particular attention (e.g., Andrefsky, 1994; Kuhn, 1995, 2004; Roth & Dibble, 1998; Brantingham et al., 2000; Turq, 2005; Kelly, 2013; Wilson & Browne, 2014). The sourcing and reliable characterization of lithic resources holds the key to deriving meaningful infer- ences and formulating testable hypotheses regarding the interaction of past hominins with their environment in terms of technological decision-making, economic terri- tory, procurement strategies, long-distance transfer, and social network (e.g., Whallon, 2006; F ´ eblot-Augustins, Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 31 (2016) 229–243 Copyright C  2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 229