It is believed that the Asturian tool was used for seafood gathering, and the sites where they are found are associated with very large shell-middens (concheros in Spanish), which can fill caves to the ceiling.
[4] The Asturian pick-axe tool is made from quartzite cobbles on average 8.5 cm long, which have been given a point at one end, which patterns of wear show was the part brought into contact in use.
[5] There are also shell-middens in Azilian sites, but the geology is somewhat different, giving abundant flint but not quartzite, as well as broader river estuaries with mussels and oysters, easier to collect, and more palatable, than limpets.
There was a suggestion that seafood was exploited in late winter and early spring, when other food was scarce,[7] and that the population may have moved elsewhere at other times, although as yet there is little evidence of inland sites (in contrast to the Azilian and the Magdalenian before that).
The name was proposed by the German archaeologist working in Spain, Hugo Obermaier, in his 1916 book El Hombre fósil (translated into English in 1924).