Rekem. A Federmesser Camp on the Meuse River Bank.

By combining various research methods, the authors of this two-volume book present a reconstruction of prehistoric life in one of the largest Palaeolithic camp sites excavated in NW Europe: the Federmesser camp at Rekem (near Maastricht), situated on a sand ridge on the left bank of the river Meuse. Following careful excavation and the individual mapping of some 25,000 stone artefacts across an area of 1.7 ha, the 13,000-year-old assemblage has been subjected to a range of laboratory analyses. Refitting of several thousand artefacts (tools, tool waste, and debitage) in their original sequence of knapping, shed light on lithic manufacturing, tooling, and maintenance processes. Use-wear analysis of 2,500 pieces has unveiled a series of activities performed at and away from the camp area: hunting and arrow manufacture, butchery, hide fleshing and currying, bone and antler work, etc. These results were systematically tested with appropriate experiments. Lastly, extensive spatial analyses of all the above observations allowed for a neat reconstruction of the chain of activities performed in this hunter-gatherer settlement, where the locations of the work areas, in the dwellings, near communal hearths or at specific work shops, also hint at fascinating aspects of social and ritual life in a Lateglacial environment.