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Topic: Handaxes

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	Hand axe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Handaxes are only found in Africa, Europe and Northern Asia, while South-Asia retained flake-industries (Hoabhinian).
		Handaxes are mainly made of flint, but rhyolites, phonolites, quarzites and other rather coarse rocks were used as well.
		As most handaxes have a sharp border all around, there is no agreement about their use.
	www.wikipedia.org /wiki/Handaxe (422 words)

	Hand axe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		This kind of axe is typical of the lower (Acheulean) and the middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) and is the longest used tool of human history.
		The older handaxes were produced by direct percussion with a stone hammer and can be distinguished by their thickness and a sinous border.
		Later (Mousterian) handaxes were produced with a soft billet of antler or wood and are much thinner, more symmetrical and have a straight border.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Hand_axe (422 words)

	hand axe (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		It is typical of the lower (Acheulean) and the middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) and is the longest used tool of human history.
		Handaxes are only found in Europe and Northern Asia, while South-Asia retained flake-industries (Hoabhinian).
		Later (Mousterian) handaxes were produced with a soft billet of antler or wood an are much thinner, more symmetrical and have a straight border.
	www.yourencyclopedia.net /hand_axe.html (409 words)

	Antiquity of Man handaxes
		Handaxes were made by a variety of hominid types in numerous different geographical areas with different resources, the social context of manufacture and use is likely to have been variable.
		The variable presence of handaxes in Early Palaeolithic assemblages is, we suspect, a direct reflection of both variable sexual selection pressure and the degrees of inter-male competition arising from the variation in hominid socio-ecology throughout the Old World.
		As a consequence, cultural traditions of handaxe manufacture flourished during the Pleistocene in the period between the emergence of large, socially complex societies and prior to a significant change in social relations between the sexes arising from greater dependency by females on male provisioning.
	www.antiquityofman.com /handaxes.html (4426 words)

	Handaxe (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The older handaxes were produced by direct percussion with a stone hammer and can be distinguished by their thickness and asinous border.
		Later (Mousterian) handaxes were produced with a soft billet of antler or wood an are much thinner, moresymmetrical and have a straight border.
		Handaxes are mainly made of flint, but rhyolites, phonolites, quarzites and otherrather coarse rocks were used as well.
	www.therfcc.org /handaxe-23597.html (353 words)

	Stone Age Olorgesailie: Esthetics Among The Carrion Eaters
		Most of the handaxes to be seen at Olorgesailie — where much of the material unearthed by archeologists has been allowed to remain as found — are irregular and lopsided, but clearly would be effective as cutters and choppers or even stabbers and slicers.
		Until they made their handaxes as they did — that is, until a few of them chose to make their handaxes as they did — earlier men and pre-men had shown no more indication of an esthetic sense than to make crudely chipped pebbles that were used to chop up prey.
		Among the many handaxes, cleavers (chopping tools with flat rather than pointed edges), and rocky debris, Leakey also found what he considered to be clusters of three nearly spherical stones two to three inches in diameter.
	www.aliciapatterson.org /APF001973/Rensberger/Rensberger01/Rensberger01.html (3554 words)

	[No title]
		The thatched roof protects excavation of intact "living floors." \par }\pard\plain \s15\sb240\sl360\slmult1\widctlpar\adjustright \f1\cgrid {Here, along one of the gentler slopes of the valley, the infrequent rains have for decades been delicately washi ng away the soil to expose one of the most remarkable displays of the technology of early man to be found anywhere.
		Until they made their handaxes as they did \endash that is, until a few of them chose to make their handaxes as they did \endash earlier men and pre-men had shown no more indication of an esthetic sense than to make crudely chipped pebbles that were used to chop up prey.
		Yet, it should be clear from the ancient handaxes that the artistic imp ulse that would create those magnificent and artistically mature paintings in European eaves was already beginning to glimmer among man's beetle-browed and nearly chinless African ancestors.
	www.aliciapatterson.org /APF001973/Rensberger/Rensberger01/Rensberger01.rtf (3687 words)

	Antiquity: Handaxes: products of sexual selection?@ HighBeam Research (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Handaxes are bifacially manufactured stone artefacts, predominantly pointed or ovate in shape.
		Along with cleavers, which have a wide, straight edge at right angles to the major axis of the artefact, handaxes are also known as 'bifaces'.
		Handaxes are associated with a range of hominid species, including those assigned to Homo ergaster, H. 594 of 44459 Characters
	www.highbeam.com /library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:57049967&refid=ip_encyclopedia_hf (201 words)

	Stone Age Hand Axes
		There were no handaxes at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and none at the end, but for one million years in between this was the tool of choice for stone age man. Although everpresent in stone age culture, the exact purpose and use of this tool remains a mystery.
		Ultimately the handaxe was replaced by an array of specialized tools, and may have ceased to have any value beyond that of pure tradition and culture.
		Handaxes come in many shapes and sizes, and many styles unique to cultures of specific periods and in specific geographical areas.
	www.abotech.com /Articles/Kowalski02.htm (845 words)

	The Shotton Project
		Handaxes are the main source of archaeological evidence for the activities of our hominid (early human) ancestors.
		The handaxe ‘culture’ is sometimes referred to as the Acheulean after the site of St Acheul in France where some of the first discoveries of these stone tools were made.
		Handaxes are seen by some as a multi-purpose tool and experiments have shown they can be used for different tasks, e.g.
	www.arch-ant.bham.ac.uk /shottonproject/handaxes.htm (313 words)

	Antiquity, Project Gallery: Hosfield & Chambers
		The handaxes were individually numbered, while a digital image archive documented cortex distributions and granular variations and inclusions in the flint and chert raw materials.
		Handaxe and flake tracers were emplaced throughout the three year period of the experimental programme (September 2000-July 2003), with bi-monthly monitoring of the experimental sites (excluding the period between January 2001 - December 2001 when the Foot and Mouth outbreak prevented access to the sites).
		The first handaxe (#6; Figure 3) was transported 137.70m downstream (straight-line distance) and was recovered from the channel bed surface, while the second (#7) travelled just 0.40m downstream (straight-line distance), and was buried by other clasts.
	antiquity.ac.uk /ProjGall/chambers (1354 words)

	Australian Museum - Sex Axe
		Handaxes are two-sided stone artefacts that first appear in the archaeological record of Africa, Europe and Asia about 1.4 million years ago.
		The high degree of symmetry and unusual size of some handaxes suggest they were unnecessarily fancy and over-designed for the proposed mundane economic tasks.
		So handaxes, which were extremely costly to produce, were ditched in favour of more functionally efficient tool kits, including spears with stone points.
	www.austmus.gov.au /display.cfm?id=406 (433 words)

	2 - The Lower, Middle and Early Upper Palaeolithic periods
		Lacking from the assemblage are handaxes which were always assumed to have been part of the tool-kits of the Lower Palaeolithic hunters.
		Handaxes were general purpose tools and are so called because they were simply used in the hand.
		The skull perhaps belonged to an early member of the Neanderthal lineage, while the handaxes are of the Acheulian type.
	www.btinternet.com /~ron.wilcox/onlinetexts/onlinetexts-chap2.htm (1713 words)

	W. H. Calvin "Rediscovery and the cognitive aspects of toolmaking: Lessons from the handaxe" (2002)
		Before we assign their obsession with symmetry to an esthetic judgment, we must consider whether it is possible that the symmetry is simply very pragmatic for one particular use of the many suggested.
		In Calvin (1993, expanded in 2002), I describe the handaxe’s extraordinary suitability for one special-purpose case of projectile predation: attacking herds at waterholes on those occasions when they are tightly packed together and present a large, stampede-prone target.
		Many lost handaxes would be tumbled by a flood and then later discovered in the river bed, with some edges smoothed enough to hold comfortably.
	www.williamcalvin.com /2002/BBS-Wynn.htm (1218 words)

	Toward a Science of Consciousness 3: Handaxes and Ice Age Carvings: Hard Evidence for the Evolution of Consciousness
		Often nonarchaeologists speculate that handaxes are equivalent to the complex artefacts made by other animals, such as a beaver's dam, a honeycomb or a spiders web: all complex artefacts with degrees of symmetry but which require neither intelligence nor conscious thought to produce.
		A third feature of handaxe manufacture is planning: flake removals happen in a sequential fashion to allow one to move from a nodule to a roughout to a finished artefacts.
		To make a handaxe one must plan; but one must also be flexible, able to modify the plan and react to contingencies, such as unexpected flaws in the material and miss-hits.
	cognet.mit.edu /posters/TUCSON3/Mithen.html (3730 words)

	ninemsn Encarta - Print Preview - Stone Age
		Handaxes arose during the time of Homo erectus, direct ancestors of Homo sapiens, whose fossilized remains have been found from southern Africa to south-eastern Asia and who span a period from about 1.8 million years to a few hundred thousand years ago (see Human Evolution).
		In some areas, the long-lasting culture of the handaxe makers is called Acheulian after Saint-Acheul, in northern France, one of a number of sites where such handaxes have been found.
		One notable invention made during this period, probably quite independently at different times and places, was the Levallois technique (named after another French site): a core of fine-grained flint was shaped in such a way that large, flat, sharp-edged flakes of preconceived size and form could be struck from it.
	au.encarta.msn.com /text_761555928___6/Stone_Age.html (832 words)

	22 July 2004
		The handaxe is intriguing because the same shape of tool was made for over a million years, and we find them over wide areas of Africa, Europe and Asia - in many places where the hominins of that time had spread.
		The hominins brought the handaxes to the butchery site as a portable source of flakes, which were smaller, sharper and more useful for cutting flesh.
		Archeologists have done experiments with handaxes (ones they've made themselves) to show that the handaxes can be very useful in heavy-duty tasks like separating joints on a carcass, cutting branches, and sharpening digging sticks.
	www.mnh.si.edu /anthro/humanorigins/aop/olorg2004/dispatch/22jul04/22jul04.htm (534 words)

	Acheulean Gallery
		Handaxes are the most conspicuous item of the Acheuléen, and indeed the word has grown to be almost synonymous with them.
		Again, handaxes are never found with their manufacturing debris; although such handaxe manufacturing debris is found with handaxes at several sites (e.g.
		They infer this from some characteristics of handaxes –that they appear to emphasize a symmetrical shape, and that some of them are very large, that they often are discarded in pristine condition, and that sometimes they occur together in large numbers.
	home.wanadoo.nl /marco.langbroek/acheul.html (2020 words)

	Participants (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The handaxe is a tool type that first appeared in Europe around 500 kyr.
		Handaxes have been extensively studied by Paleolithic researchers since the earliest beginnings of the discipline.
		Handaxes have been variously described as simple cores, throwing implements, multipurpose tools and most recently as sexual tokens.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /~hdibble/particip.htm (1302 words)

	Weapon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The usefulness of such tools made their development of paramount importance for a humanity consisting of small, thinly spread, hunter-gatherer communities.
		The first known traces of weapons are from the stone age with flint knives, handaxes and heads for large darts.
		There is no evidence for handaxes being thrown, but very good evidence for them having been used to butcher animals.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Weapon (2534 words)

	Evolution of Language - Abstracts
		The most obvious case which still needs discussion is the handaxes called Acheulean which seem to dominate the production of stone tools over 1.5 million years and over most of the world occupied by hominins over that period.
		If I am right in the contention that the form of handaxes is an outcome of the application of a small number of constraints in knapping, then some of the features of handaxes should be present on the non-handaxe cores in the related assemblage.
		Arguments about the uniformity of handaxes over such vast times and regions, bring into question the issue of standardisation which is such an important part of Mellars’s definition.
	www.infres.enst.fr /~evolang/actes/_actes17.html (1864 words)

	Hist&DevArch: Liz's Choices
		John Frere's 1797 discovery of a handaxe at Hoxne is the first documented account (published in Archaeologia XII, 1800 - In the lecture on "The Early Days of Archaeology" I show you a photocopy of the drawing from this) which clearly associates this evidence of a tool-maker as a contemporary of extinct animals.
		In the case of "my" handaxe, this would not be possible, the patina covering the artefact, developed as it was exposed in the topsoil, would have obscured all such traces.
		Handaxes have also been considered in a completely different light by Marek Kohn and Steven Mithen [5], when they propose that the elaborately finished handaxes, which often show little sign of use, may have been a signal produced during courting - in their scenario by the males.
	www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk /teaching/C1089/lst.htm (3629 words)

	Antiquity, Project Gallery: Marshall, Gamble & Roe
		The Acheulian handaxe is the icon of the Lower Palaeolithic.
		Handaxes have been measured, typed, replicated and examined for use wear and abrasion.
		Recent studies of British handaxes have suggested ovates, rather than pointed forms, as the preferred biface shape (White 1998) probably because, as experimentation shows, they are more efficient for butchering large animals.
	antiquity.ac.uk /ProjGall/marshall/marshall.html (1253 words)

	Stone Age Hand-axes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The reason handaxes seem to have no specific identifiable use is probably because they served a general purpose.
		Since the handaxe seems to have remained long after it became obsolete, it may have become primarily ritualistic.
		Handaxes were known to the ancient Greeks, who believed them to be the thunderbolts thrown down by Zeus, the Tree-splitter.
	www.personal.psu.edu /users/w/x/wxk116/axe (1123 words)

	A review of the Early Acheulian evidence from South Asia
		Early Acheulian assemblages are generally 'characterized by such core tools as handaxes, choppers, polyhedrons, and spheroids, a low number of cleavers and flake tools, the predominant use of the stone-hammer technique, and the absence of the Levallois technique' (Misra, 1987: 117).
		The assemblage from Bori is dominated by trihedral handaxes and closely resembles Early Acheulian localities known from Africa and 'Ubeidiya (Gaillard and Mishra, 2001).
		The Acheulian deposits (10 to 35 cm thick) were found to be in a compact gravel context, where the artifacts were produced primarily on limestone obtained in pebble/cobble form from the stream bed and as angular blocks from the plateau (Misra, 1987; Paddayya, 1982).
	www.shef.ac.uk /assem/issue8/chauhan.html (9937 words)

	ABBEVILLE FACTS AND INFORMATION (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Various handaxes were found near Abbeville by Jacques_Boucher_de_Perthes during the 1830's and he was the first to desribe the stones in detail, pointing out in the first publication of its kind, that the stones were chipped deliberately by early man, so as to form a tool.
		These earliest stone tools found in Europe were chipped on both sides so as to form a sharp edge, are now known as Abbevillian handaxes or bifaces.
		The more refined handax became known as the Acheulean industry, named after Saint_Acheul, today a suburb of Amiens.
	www.rocgames.com /Abbeville (675 words)

	Learn more about Weapon in the online encyclopedia. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Weapon history is believed to begin in the stone age with flint knivess, handaxes and heads for lances.
		A widespread early weapon, perhaps finally understood, is the "stone handaxe." This is a flat, sharp-sided stone disc, with an egg-shaped or triangular projection.
		Some paleontologists built one and threw it, and noticed that it lands with the pointed edge digging into the ground.
	www.onlineencyclopedia.org /w/we/weapon.html (999 words)

	Prehistory (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The handaxes probably had many uses, but the main one seems to have been to butcher animals that had been either hunted or scavenged.
		At Boxgrove cut marks have been found on the bones of red deer, giant deer, rhinoceros and horse, but not on those of roe or fallow deer; this suggests that only the larger animals were hunted.
		They took place in the bottom of a quarry from which vast quantities of gravel were extracted for use in the modern construction industry (the gravel had been washed over the chalk cliff of the old seashore during summer thaws in the ice age that succeeded the heyday of the Boxgrove people).
	www.chichester.gov.uk /museum/tl1000.htm (530 words)

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