Porphyry pebble
300.000-120.000 BC
Cau del Duc (Torroella de Montgrí - Baix Empordà)
The trihedral pick, also known as the Montgrí Pick, is a convergent distal stone partially carved on one face. These tools were cut from triangular, oval or quadrangular-shaped river pebbles. They have pointed non-centripetal tips with deep or very deep bilateral single-angled extractions with a convex tendency, a straight or incurving edge and bilateral symmetry. According to the analytical logic system their analytical formula is: U [2c,mp,1a (cx)] recte sy.
The Montgrí pick is a Palaeolithic stone tool identified for the first time at the Cau del Duc archaeological site (Torroella de Montgrí, Baix Empordà, Girona) on the southern slope of Santa Caterina mountain, below Montgrí Castle, an unfinished 13th-14th-century castle in the municipality of Torroella de Montgrí.
The cave was discovered and first excavated by Pericot and Pallarès and this object was described for the first time in their 1923 publication. At the time it was confused with the Epipalaeolithic Asturian pick from the Upper Palaeolithic Holocene, some 10,000 years ago. It is currently believed to be from the Middle Pleistocene, probably some 300,000 years ago.
Eudald Carbonell
