 In the last decade, the different modalities of exploitation of coastal resources in ancient prehistory have became one important topic, because it's allowed to speak about human evolution. It's a central in human evolution. For being connected to cerebral development, for have allowed ancient humans, homo sapiens, to be adapted to specific ecological niches that have opened new migration routes out of Africa. And because ethnography tells us that the exploitation of coastal areas is, in many cases, related with complex social behaviors and dynamics. Shells, for example, in ethnographic contexts are related with specific aesthetic, the search for specific aesthetic aspects, or it's related with ontology. And demography of groups that are well-adapted to coastal area is high difference from demography processes and dynamics of groups that are more adapted to the Inla. So the questions are when, where, and with which modality these exploitation of coastal resources appeared along human evolution. And in particular, it's interesting, and it's generating quite a high debate, the comparison between homo sapiens and Neanderthal population. This is why Mediterranean area is being central on this topic. First of all, we must define what coastal adaptation is. In my opinion, these terms have been used in an uncritical way in the last year. So the presence of one shell allowed to speak about coastal adaptation. Looking at biography, we must identify an enduring tradition, something that is standardized a long time and it makes also visible for us as archaeologists. And the exploitation of coastal resources must not be just centered in diet and in consumptions of these elements, but taking consideration also technology. The use of coastal raw material must have been incorporated in the social technology of the group and the science in the more general social system. So technology is really a central aspect to investigate this topic because it allowed the economic growth of a group. The technological innovation and the diffusion of idea, which includes also the exploitation of novel resources, is a collective phenomenon. And it promotes specific social dynamics. The problem is that shell assemblages have been traditionally always collected during excavation. In many cases, not very well treated because they have been cleaned with quite aggressive processes. And then they were put in bags and give to archaeologists. They were the evidence of human consumption. But if we want to check, if shell were used during ancient prehistory as raw material, we must look at them with different methods, with different questions, applying a lot of taffonomic and microscopic analysis. And once we started to look at these objects with these new eyes and with new questions, we started to identify shell tools more or less all around the world. The photos that you have about the El Fuego is an ethnographic tool. At present, the most ancient shell tools came from Trinil in Java and are dated at approximately 400,000 BP. In the Mediterranean, we have a quite long Neanderthal tradition of the exploitation of shell for tools, starting in MIS-5E, and during all the long MIS-4 and in some cases in Liguria, North and Italy, also in MIS-3. We know 13 sites, mostly along Italian coast. We have at present also one site in southern Greece, Calama Chia cave, where shell tools have been identified. And it's interesting to notice that these tools, in which retouch it quite well visible and clearly visible on, have been identified since 60s, but have been always just catalogized as typological scrapers. They have been put within the typological list, but no study have been ever done on these objects, try to identify the criteria of selection, the technological procedure to achieve them and their functional application. So we started with the analysis of the taxes. That's Neanderthal in all the sites, selecting one specific taxa to be transformed into tools. The answer is yes. They just use Calistaglione valves. And in many cases, these valves were also associated with other taxa that were not modified, at least not modified. We didn't yet use our analysis on all the collections. Clearly the development of methodology was a very relevant aspect of the words because these are specific from Ethereum. We must mix together elements from natural sciences and elements from lithic technology in order to use firms and methods that allow us to compare not only the shell assemblages within them, but also the shell assemblages with the lithic assemblages that were associated in the archeological record. For that we use sites in Southeast Italy, Grotto de Cavallo as reference sites because the excavation were more recent with a high micro stratigraphic recording of all the material. The surface excavated was a little bit larger than the excavation made in the previous years, which means around 10 square meters that allowed to collect more than 100, there are 126 shell tools closed in one single layers, which means an homogeneous and closed context that was interesting for us to create a sort of work of reference. As you can see in this layer, we have different taxes that we have found that suggests the fragmentation of the coast by Neanderthal, but just Calisagione was retouched. Here you'll have some example of these tools. Clearly the first works was to check if this modification that you can see on the external ledge were related to anthropic retouch, anthropic modification or to trampling or activity related to the opening of the valves. We could exclude natural phenomenon or any other anthropic activity, which was not retouched. These are retouched elements modified and it was interesting then the toponomic study and all the technological procedure that we realized for the study of this material, suggested that the valves that were after retouched were collected on the beach after the death of the mollusk, so they were not related to human consumption. The modification, the retouch that is always located on the internals of phase was in many cases and mostly of the cases done on a shell that were collected on the beach and that were collected wool or quite wool valves. The interest of Neanderthal was not for the latherality left of right valves, but for the dimension of the valve. They were looking for at least nine centimeter shells looking at the anterior posterior axis. We did several experiments to reconstruct the technique and the technical gesture for the production of these tools and we could identify the application of two different technical gestures on this tool using both the lateral rounded surface and the flat surface of very little and flat limestone pebbles. The pictures that you have here is of one of these archeological retouchers that we have found in the archeological layer where the pits and the striation of both digester are tested. This technical gesture mixed with the internal structures of the shell and the specific straights of the shells allow to produce a very cathartistic stepped retouch which is well known and typical of some lithic Neanderthal industries is known as a kinar stone retouch and it was interesting that when we started to look at the associated stone tool assemblages we have found this type of retouch on nine of the sites where shell tools are attestives. Located at Grotto de Moscherini in the Latium and in Apulia and several sites in the southeast of Italy. So this technical gesture was already known by this group and was applied to a different raw material which has specific contraint with proposed specific contraints but that was well known by this community. It's interesting when we start to do techno-economic analysis of these lithic assemblages we see some specific behavior, we see recycling, we see a high fragmentation of the chenote d'attoir which tell us about a high logistical mobility, the capacity of planning for different activity in different places and the search for a tool with a high maintenance potential and long life. So a quite stable and enduring tradition which is somehow integrated within the technological behavior of this community and so it promotes somehow some specific social dynamic and we started to do functional experiments and to look at use where on the archeological collection. We have seen that shell tools has a very long use life they have very high strengthness of the shell and high potential for resharpening. They are very useful in different tasks over different raw materials and a preliminary use where analysis that we have done on a very little sample of archeological material suggested they were really used on different tasks and different raw material. So how can we really improve this research line and better understand the adaptation of miandetal in the central Mediterranean and in general in coastal areas? The first is the visibility of shell tools. The need of develop microscopic systematic analysis on these assemblages and that means also to treat these objects and these raw material with specific protocols. The other is to find a more comprehensive way to study technology, ancient technology in order really to access to social behaviors to the methods of transmission of knowledge and the dynamics of innovation which are related also to the dimension of the groups and the demographic processes. And the third important point is to enlarge the geographical and chronological area in which we study coastal adaptation and ancient prehistory. We have several evidence from MIS-6 in Southern Africa and from MIS-5 in Northern Africa of almost sapiens coastal adaptation within middle stone age complex culture. So how these modern humans adapted to coastal area which were the different modality between miandetal and modern humans and which were the way in which these innovation diffused around these costs. For this reason we started to create international network to share data and ideas and the working group have been created within the international research network of Tafen within the CNRS where we are trying to develop novel projects which are from one point of viewing to look at still at Shell has archeological collection and to try to enhance Tafenomics study studies from an archeological point of view which means also to look for indirect evidence of Shell tools. Cut marks for example during battery or made with Shell tools are different or can we differentiate them from stone tool for example, objects. And also we are trying to develop Tafenomic projects for better understand the processes and the dynamics that alter the surface of the Shells and how these can alter a use where on them. Also looking at different systematically at different possible Tafenomic agents like trampoline and water and so on. This is a quite novel research line especially for ancient pre-history. Usually Shell were looked for ornaments and speaking about social complexity starting from aproposolithic but in the last year we have several evidence of the use of Shell tool also in for example Mesolithic and Neolithic context in Europe and we are looking at them in ancient period in order really to reach a novel definition of cultural units and the novel understanding of the relationship between these cultural units. Thank you for your attention.