The flintknapping errors at the service of learning

The flintknapping mistakes is helpful for recognizing beginners flintknappers and, through the stigmata on the stone-tools, the peculiarities of the theoretical and practical knowledge, of the manuality skill ("knowledge and know-how” Harlacker 2006 ), of savoir-faire, which fit into the broader framework of the flintknapping learning process. The presence of mistakes in an archaeological record allows to recognize the presence of beginners flintknappers in a prehistoric site; hence the need to distinguish between error and accident. An accident is something unexpected, that produces a different morphology precluding the stone-tool functionality (Baena, 1998) and that implies a chance that can happen to a skilled person in the act of doing what it can do. The error term is used instead to highlight a feature found in the different phases of the learning process and therefore attributable to a beginner flintknapper (Shelley, 1990): thus, the error is due to inexperience and incompetence and it happens to those who lack the skills to perform a particular action doing it in a wrong way. The distinction between accident and error allows to understand the causes related to the various mistakes recognized in a lithic assemblage also on the grounds of the comparison between archaeological and experimental material. The two case studies, Ca 'Belvedere di Monte Poggiolo (FC) (Peretto et al., 1998) and Guado San Nicola 1 (IS) (Arzarello et al., 2009), allow to individualize peculiar errors for the different débitage methods, since they are two different contexts of the Lower Paleolithic.