Learning Through Making

Experimental production of stone tools

Tag: Handaxe (Page 2 of 3)

Handaxe style

September 1, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I have been making quite a few handaxes recently, but only just detected that I have a style. It occured to me when I saw these two next to each other and recognised how similar they are. Shape and size was an obvious similarity, and so these two can be recognised as the same ‘type’, and that would be cordate, or heart shaped.

However, it is the process, or ‘technology’ that is the real connector and this relates to how I get my initial flakes. We have very large and chalky nodules, as discussed here and these nodules need breaking down into flakes in order to make a handaxe. Flakes have a thick, bulbar ‘proximal’ end, and a thin and sharp ‘distal’ edge at the other. Intuitively, I seem to make my handaxes with a heavily thinned bulbar section on one side, and a minimally thinned distal edge on the other. This method has developed unconsciously, and I have only became aware of it with these two, and then looking at earlier examples.

In the above video you can first of all see the minimally worked ‘distal’ edge, then the more intensively worked bulbar section, and finally the ripples of percussion indicating this was originally the ventral face of the flake. I’m not sure why my body chooses to work the flakes in this way. I will have to make some more handaxes to find out!

Mrs Anning’s amazing fossil echinoderm handaxe

August 21, 2024 / / 0 Comments

As discussed in the previous post Ian brought not one, but two of Mrs Anning’s handaxes to site for me to have a look at. This second handaxe is another amazing example, for both similar and different reasons to the first.

Dealing with ‘similar’ first, you can see from comparing these two photographs that the patina on each surface is different. It looks like the more orange face sat uppermost, whilst the more cream coloured face was face down and protected, for many millennia (my hypothesis).

Moving onto different reasons, the echinoderm in the room is the amazing fossil sitting at the top of the photograph below. I sent a picture of it to my Geology friend, Stephen Poole, and he got back to me with the term: echinoderm. A number of well known handaxes have fossil inclusions and this has led to debates about evidence for Palaeolithic aesthetics. The most recent paper I read (Flanders & Kay 2023) argues that with the famous West Tofts example, it was simply left in because it would have been difficult to remove. I have discussed similar in a previous post.

There is a potentially long and interesting discussion on Palaeolithic aesthetics, however I think we first need to speak to Mrs Anning!

Reference: Emily Flanders, Alastair Key, The West Tofts handaxe: A remarkably average, structurally flawed, utilitarian biface, Journal of Archaeological Science,
Volume 160, 2023, 105888, ISSN 0305-4403, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2023.105888.

Mrs Anning’s twisted cordate handaxe

August 20, 2024 / / 0 Comments

We were away on fieldwork in Herefordshire over July and I am very slowly catching up with things. One of those things is Mrs Anning’s twisted cordate handaxe. Ian Elliott has worked on our sites over a number of seasons, and this year he brought some lithics for me to have a look at, in particular two fantastic handaxes, one of which I will discuss in this post.

As you can see from the video this handaxe is what is termed a twisted cordate. Twisted because the cutting edge undulates around the tool, cordate because it is heart shaped. It bears a striking resemblance to my favourite handaxe within our teaching collection, a 3D model of which can be seen here: https://skfb.ly/ooCKM.

As can be seen with these two photographs, the patina, or colour on one face is different to that on the other. This indicates that it has been sat for a considerable length of time and the lower surface has patinated at a different rate to the exposed upper surface. The edges are in good condition and indicate that it has not been rolled around much if at all. Like the one we have, it is in very good condition. White, Ashton and Bridgland (2019 open access) looked at the recorded contexts of this particular type of handaxe in Britain and dated them to around Marine Isotope Stage 11, so around 400,000 years ago.

The handaxe(s) were donated to Ian’s local primary school, St Mary’s in Dilwyn, Herefordshire by a Mrs Anning. They asked Ian to give a talk about our site, he told them we had very few finds and in response they showed him their donated stone tools. I am both really keen to find out from Mrs Anning where she got the handaxes from, I think Ian is on the case there. I am now keen to make one of these twisted handaxes.

White, Ashton and Bridgland explain the technological process and it sounds complicated, so I am really interested to see if the actual systematic reduction process is as complicated as the descriptions. Watch this space!

References: White M, Ashton N, Bridgland D. Twisted Handaxes in Middle Pleistocene Britain and their Implications for Regional-scale Cultural Variation and the Deep History of Acheulean Hominin Groups. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 2019;85:61-81. doi:10.1017/ppr.2019.1

In the lab

February 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Flint, Handaxe

Second Saturday in the lab. I made some more large flakes from an older nodule of different flint. This was harder and chalkier than the new material. Consequently, it took me a while to get it right, hence the small size. However, I like it. I should also say at this point I had about five goes, destroying three flakes before coming away with two handaxes. The others would have worked as tools but they weren’t ‘right’, so I carried on with consequences.

This is the second handaxe, and last go I had. It is of the same flint as the large handaxe last week, and this is slightly larger. It is mainly flake, with thinning going on at the proximal or bulbar end. Karl Lee told me that handaxe edges were worked so that they didn’t break and leave bits of flint in the meat.

Approximately two thirds of the cutting edge is worked, and the final third simply the feathered edge of the original flake. I think this would have worked fine as each edge type would have had different qualities.

Anyway, the inadvertent soundtrack is ‘Senorita’ by James.

What to do with all this flint?

February 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Flint, Handaxe

I have had a bit of a ‘John day’ today. First thing I took Bella for a walk to the bottle dump. I found some blue glass fragments and a couple of interesting bottles, but no nice thick pieces.

After a late breakfast of left over veggie Shepherds Pie I went into uni. As you can see, we have some very big nodules, inherited from Alice la Porta. When she was buying them I told her to specify big nodules, as our previous delivery had been largely small ones. I should have said medium size.

Anyway, today I wanted to try breaking one up to see how it would go. I chose what looked like the easiest nodule, with flat sections as ways in. I then proceeded to produce a series of large flakes, and a lot of small debris.

For the breaking up process I used these two hammer stones, and as you can see, I didn’t get off scott free. However, they did their job and I then wanted to make a handaxe from one of the flakes.

All together I had three goes and made two handaxes, and I really like the one made from this flake. I learned from the glass handaxe I made last week, and this time stayed focused on preparing platforms and getting long thin flakes off.

One of the transverse flakes came off nicely but stepped in the centre of the handaxe (see left hand side with brown stripes).

So I did one of my special techniques that I learned from a Bronze Age knapper, and fitted the flake back in. I then whacked it again and successfully removed the step.

If you look at the flake scar on the right hand side you can see the negative bulb of percussion in the centre of the handaxe illustrating the process.

I am very pleased with this one, it is large with nice long flat removals. I don’t know if a Homo heidelbergensis knapper would have been concerned about the step fracture, however that process was immensely satisfying for me and gives the handaxe some personality. Happy days.

Large glass ovate handaxe

January 29, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Glass, Handaxe

I don’t normally destroy perfectly functional things in order to make my stone tools, however…I found this nice thick glass ashtray in Oxfam and it reminded me of the glass slabs I want to produce with Nacho.

So £3.99 and 24 hours later I was sat in the lab with a small hard hammer. The glass was really good to work even if it took me a while to get rid of the ‘walls’ of the ashtray.

Like the older glass I am used to, this ashtray glass had bubbles in it. I knew what I wanted, a large ovate handaxe, and my earlier removals, when I had more material were better. I have some nice flakes that will be good for arrowheads at some point.

It looks half decent, is fully bifacially worked (no original surface left) and I have retained a good size. However, it is not my best. Harder to see from the pics is a step fracture ‘island’ on one face. I relaxed a little and went ‘intuitive’, which felt right, but failed to produce descent removals.

I was concentrating more on outcome than process, and in doing so stopped giving each removal the due consideration it deserved. By the time I realised I didn’t any longer have a good way in to remove the steps. If I really wanted to make it into something I like I would lose size, and it would end up like many of my smaller ones that are either made from smaller pieces, or like this, takes me lots of removals to get it ‘right’. Anyway, the hour in the lab was the thing. It’s been a while and it was great.

Bottle tip ovate handaxe

March 28, 2022 / / 0 Comments

This afternoon Roxanna, Bella and myself went to the bottle tip. I thought from the style of the earliest bottles it was 1940s material and this newspaper from the site indicates late 1930s.

I was looking for big pieces and at first thought this was a metal pan lid. It was very concave and so needed considerable reduction to get it flat, but apart from a couple of irritating step fractures the glass behaved really well.

I took a few risks with this, but well prepared platforms and well behaved material led to this nice and lumpy but symmetrical ovate. Roxanna is not as keen on the bottle tip as me so we went to a cafe afterwards, to have some daddy daughter time…on our phones 😐

Quarried materials?

March 24, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I mentioned in the last post how this very knappable material was not present in the museum lithic collections or associated text books for the area of Tuscany we were staying in.

I really enjoyed collecting these materials, and they were mostly eroding from a low wall that ran along the path to the house. I have realised subsequently that in fact all the pieces I picked up were from humanly produced structures.

Quarrying for materials is generally accepted to be part of the Early Neolithic, and in Britain some of the earliest monuments are flint mines. The Radiolarite (if that is what it is) may not have been easily available, or available at all to the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic populations using the area if it in fact comes from a deep stratigraphic context.

So my materials collection experience, whilst useful for getting to know the Radiolarite and its properties, was very much a post prehistoric experience, and actually more similar to my visits to the bottle tip. Those are my thoughts from the experience and evidence to date. Looks like I will have to come back to Tuscany if I want to categorically find out….

Arezzo, Tuscany and lots of knappable material

March 22, 2022 / / 0 Comments

We are staying with a friend, David, in their Tuscan farmhouse villa, and the place is literally surrounded by this amazing knappable material.

It’s interesting as it seems to break up into tabular form, but also has linear inclusions running through it, perpendicular to the tabular planes. In the above photo you can see how the flakes stop as they run into the inclusion line.

The inclusion line is perhaps more obvious on the other face. A quick Wikipedia search suggests it is Radiolarite chert, and a visit to the local museum gives the impression that stone tools found in the area were made from an imported flint, not this material.

Anyway, I am bringing the first two artefacts home, the rest are for David, our host, and his neighbours who made the mistake of expressing an interest in what I was doing.

What a lovely week, spent with David, Chrissy, Penny, Karen, and my new friend, Radiolarite chert.

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