The authors used knapping experiments to study the way that microburins are produced. Once thought of as signature pieces of the Mesolithic, these experiments suggest that they were by-products of a gradual technological development by knappers trying to make arrowheads that had no bulb of percussion — and were thus easier to haft. They make a case for an evolution already present in the late Palaeolithic and determined by practical, rather than cultural, social or environmental imperatives.