Acheulean
Fauresmith industry |
Acheulean (
Acheulean tools were produced during the
History of research
The
Later,
In 1872,
Dating the Acheulean
Providing calendrical dates and ordered chronological sequences in the study of early stone tool manufacture is often accomplished through one or more geological techniques, such as
From geological dating of sedimentary deposits, it appears that the Acheulean originated in Africa and spread to Asian, Middle Eastern, and European areas sometime between 1.5 million years ago and about 800 thousand years ago.
Relative dating techniques (based on a presumption that technology progresses over time) suggest that Acheulean tools followed on from earlier, cruder tool-making methods, but there is considerable chronological overlap in early prehistoric stone-working industries, with evidence in some regions that Acheulean tool-using groups were contemporary with other, less sophisticated industries such as the Clactonian[13] and then later with the more sophisticated Mousterian, as well. It is therefore important not to see the Acheulean as a neatly defined period or one that happened as part of a clear sequence but as one tool-making technique that flourished especially well in early prehistory. The enormous geographic spread of Acheulean techniques also makes the name unwieldy as it represents numerous regional variations on a similar theme. The term Acheulean does not represent a common culture in the modern sense, rather it is a basic method for making stone tools that was shared across much of the Old World.[citation needed]
The very earliest Acheulean
Regionally subdivided end times of the Acheulean show that it persisted long after the diffusion of
Acheulean stone tools
Stages
In the four divisions of prehistoric stone-working,[16] Acheulean artefacts are classified as Mode 2, meaning they are more advanced than the (usually earlier) Mode 1 tools of the Clactonian or Oldowan/Abbevillian industries but lacking the sophistication of the (usually later) Mode 3 Middle Palaeolithic technology, exemplified by the Mousterian industry.[citation needed]
The Mode 1 industries created rough flake tools by hitting a suitable stone with a hammerstone. The resulting flake that broke off would have a natural sharp edge for cutting and could afterwards be sharpened further by striking another smaller flake from the edge if necessary (known as "retouch"). These early toolmakers may also have worked the stone they took the flake from (known as a core) to create chopper cores although there is some debate over whether these items were tools or just discarded cores.[17]
The Mode 2 Acheulean toolmakers also used the Mode 1 flake tool method but supplemented it by using bone, antler, or wood to shape stone tools. This type of hammer, compared to stone, yields more control over the shape of the finished tool. Unlike the earlier Mode 1 industries, it was the core that was prized over the flakes that came from it. Another advance was that the Mode 2 tools were worked symmetrically and on both sides indicating greater care in the production of the final tool.[citation needed]
Mode 3 technology emerged towards the end of Acheulean dominance and involved the
As the period of Acheulean tool use is so vast, efforts have been made to classify various stages of it such as John Wymer's division into Early Acheulean, Middle Acheulean, Late Middle Acheulean and Late Acheulean[18] for material from Britain. These schemes are normally regional and their dating and interpretations vary.[19]
In Africa, there is a distinct difference in the tools made before and after 600,000 years ago with the older group being thicker and less symmetric and the younger being more extensively trimmed.[20]
Manufacture
The primary innovation associated with Acheulean
Tool types found in Acheulean
Some smaller tools were made from large flakes that had been struck from stone cores. These flake tools and the distinctive waste flakes produced in Acheulean tool manufacture suggest a more considered technique, one that required the toolmaker to think one or two steps ahead during work that necessitated a clear sequence of steps to create perhaps several tools in one sitting.[citation needed]
A hard hammerstone would first be used to rough out the shape of the tool from the stone by removing large flakes. These large flakes might be re-used to create tools. The tool maker would work around the circumference of the remaining stone core, removing smaller flakes alternately from each face. The scar created by the removal of the preceding flake would provide a striking platform for the removal of the next. Misjudged blows or flaws in the material used could cause problems, but a skilled toolmaker could overcome them.[citation needed]
Once the roughout shape was created, a further phase of flaking was undertaken to make the tool thinner. The thinning flakes were removed using a softer hammer, such as bone or antler. The softer hammer required more careful preparation of the striking platform and this would be abraded using a coarse stone to ensure the hammer did not slide off when struck.[citation needed]
Final shaping was then applied to the usable cutting edge of the tool, again using fine removal of flakes. Some Acheulean tools were sharpened instead by the removal of a
Use
Loren Eiseley calculated[24] that Acheulean tools have an average useful cutting edge of 20 centimetres (8 inches), making them much more efficient than the 5-centimetre (2 in) average of Oldowan tools.[citation needed]
Use-wear analysis on Acheulean tools suggests there was generally no specialization in the different types created and that they were multi-use implements. Functions included hacking wood from a tree, cutting animal carcasses as well as scraping and cutting hides when necessary. Some tools, however, could have been better suited to digging roots or butchering animals than others.[citation needed]
Alternative theories include a use for ovate hand-axes as a kind of hunting
Recently, it has been suggested[26] that the Acheulean tool users adopted the handaxe as a social artifact, meaning that it embodied something beyond its function of a butchery or wood cutting tool. Knowing how to create and use these tools would have been a valuable skill and the more elaborate ones suggest that they played a role in their owners' identity and their interactions with others. This would help explain the apparent over-sophistication of some examples which may represent a "historically accrued social significance".[27]
One theory goes further and suggests that some special hand-axes were made and displayed by males in search of a mate, using a large, well-made hand-axe to demonstrate that they possessed sufficient strength and skill to pass on to their offspring. Once they had attracted a female at a group gathering, it is suggested that they would discard their axes, perhaps explaining why so many are found together.[28] This popular sexual selection hypothesis is controversial due to the assumptions made about sexual selection among extinct organisms.[29]
Stone knapping with limited digital dexterity makes the center of mass the required direction of flake removal. Physics then dictates a circular or oval end pattern, similar to the handaxe, for a leftover core after flake production. This would explain the abundance, wide distribution, proximity to source, consistent shape, and lack of actual use, of these artifacts.[30][additional citation(s) needed]
Mimi Lam, a researcher from the University of British Columbia, has suggested that Acheulean hand-axes became "the first commodity: A marketable good or service that has value and is used as an item for exchange."[31]
Distribution
The Paleolithic |
---|
↑ Pliocene (before Homo) |
↓ Mesolithic |
The geographic distribution of Acheulean tools – and thus the peoples who made them – is often interpreted as being the result of
Acheulean stone tools have been found across the continent of Africa, save for the dense
Areas further north did not see human occupation until much later, due to glaciation. In Athirampakkam at Chennai in Tamil Nadu the Acheulean age started at 1.51 mya and it is also prior than North India and Europe.[34]
Until the 1980s, it was thought that the humans who arrived in East Asia abandoned the hand-axe technology of their ancestors and adopted chopper tools instead. An apparent division between Acheulean and non-Acheulean tool industries was identified by Hallam L. Movius, who drew the Movius Line across northern India to show where the traditions seemed to diverge. Later finds of Acheulean tools at Chongokni in South Korea and also in Mongolia and China, however, cast doubt on the reliability of Movius's distinction.[35] Since then, a different division known as the Roe Line has been suggested. This runs across North Africa to Israel and thence to India, separating two different techniques used by Acheulean toolmakers. North and east of the Roe Line, Acheulean hand-axes were made directly from large stone nodules and cores; while, to the south and west, they were made from flakes struck from these nodules.[36]
Acheulean tool users
Most notably, however, it is
The symmetry of the hand-axes has been used to suggest that Acheulean tool users possessed the ability to use
Lower Palaeolithic finds made in association with Acheulean hand-axes, such as the
The kill site at Boxgrove in England is another famous Acheulean site. Up until the 1970s these kill sites, often at waterholes where animals would gather to drink, were interpreted as being where Acheulean tool users killed game, butchered their carcasses, and then discarded the tools they had used. Since the advent of zooarchaeology, which has placed greater emphasis on studying animal bones from archaeological sites, this view has changed. Many of the animals at these kill sites have been found to have been killed by other predator animals, so it is likely that humans of the period supplemented hunting with scavenging from already dead animals.[46]
Excavations at the
Only limited artefactual evidence survives of the users of Acheulean tools other than the stone tools themselves. Cave sites were exploited for habitation, but the
See also
- Hand axe
- Lithic reduction
- Lower Palaeolithic
- Ndutu cranium
- Oldowan
- Palaeolithic
- Stone Age
- Stone tools
References
Citations
- ^ Musée de Préhistoire Terra Amata. "Le site acheuléen de Terra Amata" [The Acheulean site of Terra Amata]. Musée de Préhistoire Terra Amata (in French). Retrieved 10 June 2022.
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- ^ Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Ed. (1989)
- ^ Frere, John. "Account of Flint Weapons Discovered at Hoxne in Suffolk.". Archaeologia 13 (1800): 204–205 [reprinted in Grayson (1983), 55–56, and Heizer (1962), 70–71].
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- ^ Wood 2005, p. 87.
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- ^ "Neanderthal and early modern human stone tool culture co-existed for over 100,000 years". phys.org. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
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- ^ Barton, RNE, Stone Age Britain English Heritage/BT Batsford:London 1997 qtd in Butler, 2005. See also Wymer, JJ, The Lower Palaeolithic Occupation of Britain, Wessex Archaeology and English Heritage, 1999.
- ^ Ashton, NM, McNabb, J, and Parfitt, S, Choppers and the Clactonian, a reinvestigation, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, pp21–28, qtd in Butler, 2005
- ^ Wymer, JJ, 1968, Lower Palaeolithic Archaeology in Britain: as represented by the Thames Valley, qtd in Adkins, L and R, 1998
- ^ Collins, D, 1978, Early Man in West Middlesex, qtd in Adkins, L and R, 1998
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- ^ Gamble, C and Steele, J, 1999, Hominid ranging patterns and dietary strategies in Ullrich, H (ed.), Hominid evolution: lifestyles and survival strategies, pp 396–409, Gelsenkirchen: Edition Archaea.
- ^ Unattributed citation in Renfrew and Bahn, 1991, p277
- , 1993, The unitary hypothesis: a common neural circuitry for novel manipulations, language, plan-ahead and throwing, in K.R. Gibson & T. Ingold (ed.), Tools, language and cognition in human evolution: 230–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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- ^ Nowell, April; Chang, Melanie (2009). "The Case Against Sexual Selection as an Explanation of Handaxe Morphology" (PDF). PaleoAnthropology: 77–88. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
- ^ "The Acheulean Handaxe".
- ^ Welsh, Jennifer (1 March 2012). "Tools May Have Been First Money". LiveScience.
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- ^ Prasad, R. (24 March 2011). "Acheulian stone tools discovered near Chennai". The Hindu.
- ^ Hyeong Woo Lee, The Palaeolithic industries of Korea: chronology and related new findspots in Milliken, S and Cook, J (eds), 2001
- ^ Gamble, C and Marshall, G, The shape of handaxes, the structure of the Acheulian world, in Milliken, S and Cook, J (eds), 2001
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- ^ Dibble, HL, 1989, The implications of stone tool types for the presenceof language during the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, in The Human Revolution (P Mellars and C Stringer eds) Edinburgh University Press, qtd in Renfrew and Bahn, 1991.
- ^ Goren-Inbar, N and Peltz, S, 1995, Additional remarks on the Berekhat Ram figure, Rock Art Research 12, 131–132, qtd in Scarre, 2005
- ^ Mania, D and Mania, U, 1988, Deliberate engravings on bone artefacts of Homo Erectus, Rock Art Research 5, 919–7, qtd in Scarre, 2005
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- ^ Scarre, 2005, chapter 3, p118 "However, objects whose artistic meaning is unequivocal become commonplace only after 50,000 years ago, when they are associated with the origins and spread of fully modern humans from Africa".
- ^ ...the most conservative conclusion today is that Acheulean people and their contemporaries definitely hunted big animals, though their success rate is not clear ibid, p 120.
- Hebrew University, Retrieved 2010-01-05.
- ^ Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy (December 22, 2009). "HU: Evidence of advanced human life half a million years earlier than previously thought". The Jerusalem Post.
- ISBN 9781317892229.[page needed]
- ISBN 9780080868530.[page needed]
- ISBN 9780470751961.[page needed]
- ^ De Lumley, 1975, Cultural evolution in France in its palaeoecological setting during the middle Pleistocene, in After the Australopithecines, Butzer, KW and Issac, G Ll. (eds) 745–808. The Hague:Mouton, qtd in Scarre, 2005
Sources
- Adkins, L; and R (1998). The Handbook of British Archaeology. London: Constable. ISBN 978-0-09-478330-0.
- Butler, C (2005). Prehistoric Flintwork. Tempus, Stroud. ISBN 978-0-7524-3340-0.
- Milliken, S; Cook, J, eds. (2001). A Very Remote Period Indeed. Papers on the Palaeolithic presented to Derek Roe. Oxford: Oxbow. ISBN 978-1-84217-056-4.
- ISBN 978-0-500-27605-1.
- Scarre, C, ed. (2005). The Human Past. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-28531-2.
- Wood, B (2005). Human Evolution A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280360-3.
External links
- Media related to Acheulean at Wikimedia Commons