Chopping tool

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Chopping tools

As a chopping tool ( English for hack tools ) are rubble devices called, typical of the earliest part of the Old Stone Age are the African Early Stone Age , in Europe and Asia Lower Paleolithic is called. In contrast to choppers that are trimmed on one side (impact negatives are limited to one surface), the cutting edge of the chopping tools is trimmed from both sides (impact negatives on both surfaces).

Research history

The distinction between choppers and chopping tools was introduced in 1948 by the American archaeologist Hallam Leonard Movius . With the Movius line named after him, he described the spread of bifacial stone tools, distinguishing between chopping tools and hand axes in terms of technology and their form concept. Mary Leakey , the excavator of the hominid sites in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania , on the other hand, described the chopping tools as “proto- two-piers ” and thus as a preliminary stage to the later, technologically more sophisticated real hand axes. The oldest real hand axes in Africa are around 1.6 million years old and mark the beginning of the Acheulean .

Temporal and regional distribution

The oldest chopping tools come from Africa, especially from sites in Ethiopia and Tanzania (→ Oldowan ) . There chopping tools are especially typical for the developed Oldowan . This more highly developed level of Oldowan is characterized by a decline in the predominance of choppers that was previously dominant and by an increasing prevalence of chopping tools. The developed Oldowan has therefore already been discussed in the past as belonging to the subsequent Acheuléen. In addition, chopping tools are also known from more recent sources, for example from Zhoukoudian near Beijing (China) in connection with the Peking man . Chance also sites in Europe, such as the Georgian exist hominins -Fundplatz Dmanisi and the reference Vertesszöllös in western Hungary .

Range of types and use

The most important recognition criterion for chopping tools is the presence of an intentional retouch that exists on both sides . There are different types of chopping tools, for example tools whose cutting edge is formed by an alternating negative or two opposing negatives - these are chopping tools with sloping negatives or with a wavy cutting edge as well as artifacts with wavy highlighting that tapers off ( this type of artifact forms the transition to the hand ax). The different forms of chopping tools result mainly from the fact that the development of the earliest stone industries took place in very large, extensive areas. Technological innovations were discovered independently of one another in different centers, which sometimes led to a very diverse division of the types.

Chopping tools vary in size from small ones that can be guided with two or three fingers to large cutting tools that can only be guided with both hands. They were used for chopping (to break down hard-skinned plant food or to break bones to get to the bone marrow ), as well as for cutting, sawing, scraping and slaughtering. The existence of chopping tools, for example in Zhoukoudian (see above), indicated that the Peking man was a meat eater, since these same tools were discovered in association with large amounts of the remains of fauna .

literature

  • Joachim Hahn : Recognition and determination of stone and bone artifacts. Introduction to artifact morphology ( Archaeologica Venatoria. Vol. 10). Verlag Archaeologica Venatoria, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-921618-31-2 .
  • L. Ramendo: Les galets aménagés de Reggan (Sahara). In: Libyca. NS 11, 1963, ISSN  0459-3030 , pp. 43-73.
  • Suzanne Simone: Choppers et bifaces de l'Acheuléen mediterranéen. Essentiellement d'après les Matèriaux de Terra Amata (Alpes-Maritimes, France) et de Venosa (Basilicante, Italie). Musée d'anthropologie préhistorique, Monaco 1987 (At the same time: Aix-Marseille, Univ. De Provence, Diss., 1979).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ HL Movius: The Lower Palaeolithic Cultures of Southern and Eastern Asia. Transact. At the. Philos. Soc. NS 38, 1948, p. 329ff.
  2. ^ Mary D. Leakey: Olduvai Gorge. Excavations in beds I and II. 1960-1963. Cambridge University Press 1971, p. 5.
  3. ^ Ian Tattersall , Eric Delson et al .: Encyclopedia of human evolution and prehistory . Garland Verlag, New York / London 1988, p. 388.
  4. ↑ J. Hahn: Recognition and determination of stone and bone artifacts. Introduction to artifact morphology. In: Archaeologica Venatoria , Volume 10, Tübingen 1991, pp. 139-141.
  5. ↑ Grahame Clark: The stone age hunters. Thames and Hudson, London 1967, p. 28.
  6. ↑ Grahame Clark: The stone age hunters. Thames and Hudson, London 1967, p. 30.