Scholars who have a reductive view of the cognitive abilities of Neandertals have often considered that they were incapable of using sophisticated techniques specifically conceived for bone materials, based not just on percussion but on shaping by cutting, scraping, grinding and polishing. The evidence presented in this paper suggests, in contrast, that there is no reason to assume that the Buran-Kaya III artisans were AMHs just because they produced bone tools. The fact that similar objects are found in the Aurignacian should not be automatically considered, as it has in the past, as proof that Neandertals were acculturated by Aurignacian moderns. This interpretation, not supported by the archaeological record, is based on the assumption that technocomplexes such the Châtelperronian and the Uluzzian are contemporary with the first Aurignacians or even that they developed after the arrival of AMH. This contemporaneity, however, neither seems demonstrated by the stratigraphic, nor by the radiocarbon evidence. The Buran-Kaya III stratigraphic pattern, with a thick Kiik-Koba Middle Palaeolithic assemblage separating the Aurignacian from the level which has yielded the worked bones, provides further corroboration that, if made by Neandertals, level C worked bones might represent the material expression of an independent cultural development of Eastern European late Neandertals.< Leer menos