Hand axe
A hand axe is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history. It is made from stone, usually flint or chert that has been "reduced" and shaped from a larger piece by knapping, or hitting against another stone. They are characteristic of the lower Acheulean and middle Palaeolithic periods, roughly 1.6 million years ago to about 100,000 years ago, and used by Homo erectus and other early humans, but rarely by Homo sapiens.
Their technical name comes from the fact that the archetypical model is a generally bifacial and almond-shaped lithic flake. Hand axes tend to be symmetrical along their longitudinal axis and formed by pressure or percussion. The most common hand axes have a pointed end and rounded base, which gives them their characteristic almond shape, and both faces have been knapped to remove the natural cortex, at least partially. Hand axes are a type of the somewhat wider biface group of two-faced tools or weapons.
Hand axes were the first prehistoric tools to be recognized as such: the first published representation of a hand axe was drawn by John Frere and appeared in a British publication in 1800. Until that time, their origins were thought to be natural or supernatural. They were called thunderstones, because popular tradition held that they had fallen from the sky during storms or were formed inside the earth by a lightning strike and then appeared at the surface. They are used in some rural areas as an amulet to protect against storms.
Handaxes are generally thought to have been primarily used as cutting tools, particularly for animal butchery, with the wide base serving as an ergonomic area for the hand to grip the tool, though other secondary uses, such as throwing weapons and use as social and sexual signaling have been proposed.
Terminology
The four classes of hand axe are:- Large, thick hand axes reduced from cores or thick flakes, referred to as blanks
- Thinned blanks. While form remains rough and uncertain, an effort has been made to reduce the thickness of the flake or core
- Either a preform or crude formalized tool, such as an adze
- Finer formalized tool types such as projectile points and fine bifaces
French antiquarian André Vayson de Pradenne introduced the word biface in 1920. This term co-exists with the more popular hand axe, that was coined by Gabriel de Mortillet much earlier. The continued use of the word biface by François Bordes and Lionel Balout supported its use in France and Spain, where it replaced the term hand axe. Use of the expression hand axe has continued in English as the equivalent of the French biface, while biface applies more generally for any piece that has been carved on both sides by the removal of shallow or deep flakes. The expression Faustkeil is used in German; it can be literally translated as hand axe, although in a stricter sense it means "fist wedge". It is the same in Dutch where the expression used is vuistbijl which literally means "fist axe". The same locution occurs in other languages.
However, the general impression of these tools was based on ideal pieces that were of such perfect shape that they caught the attention of non-experts. Their typology broadened the term's meaning. Biface hand axes and bifacial lithic items are distinguished. A hand axe need not be a bifacial item and many bifacial items are not hand axes. Nor were hand axes and bifacial items exclusive to the Lower Palaeolithic period in the Old World. They appear throughout the world and in many different pre-historical epochs, without necessarily implying an ancient origin. Lithic typology is not a reliable chronological reference and was abandoned as a dating system. Examples of this include the "quasi-bifaces" that sometimes appear in strata from the Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian periods in France and Spain, the crude bifacial pieces of the Lupemban culture or the pyriform tools found near Sagua La Grande in Cuba. The word biface refers to something different in English than biface in French or bifaz in Spanish, which could lead to many misunderstandings. Bifacially carved cutting tools, similar to hand axes, were used to clear scrub vegetation throughout the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. These tools are similar to more modern adzes and were a cheaper alternative to polished axes. The modern day villages along the Sepik river in New Guinea continue to use tools that are virtually identical to hand axes to clear forest. "The term biface should be reserved for items from before the Würm II-III interstadial", although certain later objects could exceptionally be called bifaces.
Hand axe does not relate to axe, which was overused in lithic typology to describe a wide variety of stone tools. At the time the use of such items was not understood. In the particular case of Palaeolithic hand axes the term axe is an inadequate description. Lionel Balout stated, "the term should be rejected as an erroneous interpretation of these objects that are not 'axes. Subsequent studies supported this idea, particularly those examining the signs of use.
Materials
Hand axes are mainly made of flint, but rhyolites, phonolites, quartzites and other coarse rocks were used as well. Obsidian, natural volcanic glass, shatters easily and was rarely used.Uses
Most researchers think that handaxes were primarily used as cutting tools. The pioneers of Palaeolithic tool studies first suggested that bifaces were used as axes despite the fact that they have a sharp border all around. Other uses seem to show that hand axes were a multi-functional tool, leading some to describe them as the "Acheulean Swiss Army knife". Other academics have suggested that the hand axe was simply a byproduct of being used as a core to make other tools, a weapon, or was perhaps used ritually.Wells proposed in 1899 that hand axes were used as missile weapons to hunt prey – an interpretation supported by Calvin, who suggested that some of the rounder specimens of Acheulean hand axes were used as hunting projectiles or as "killer frisbees" meant to be thrown at a herd of animals at a water hole so as to stun one of them. This assertion was inspired by findings from the Olorgesailie archaeological site in Kenya. Few specimens indicate hand axe hafting, and some are too large for that use. However, few hand axes show signs of heavy damage indicative of throwing, modern experiments have shown the technique to often result in flat-faced landings, and many modern scholars consider the "hurling" theory to be poorly conceived but so attractive that it has taken a life of its own.
As hand axes can be recycled, resharpened and remade, they could have been used for varied tasks. For this reason it may be misleading to think of them as axes; they could have been used for tasks such as digging, cutting, scraping, chopping, piercing, and hammering. However, other tools, such as small knives, are better suited for some of these tasks, and many hand axes have been found with no traces of use.
Baker suggested that since so many hand axes have been found that have no retouching, perhaps the hand axe was not itself a tool, but a large lithic core from which flakes had been removed and used as tools. On the other hand, there are many hand axes found with retouching such as sharpening or shaping, which casts doubt on this idea.
Other theories suggest the shape is part tradition and part by-product of its manufacture. Many early hand axes appear to be made from simple rounded pebbles. It is necessary to detach a 'starting flake', often much larger than the rest of the flakes, thus creating an asymmetry. Correcting the asymmetry by removing material from the other faces, encouraged a more pointed form factor. Studies in the 1990s at Boxgrove, in which a butcher attempted to cut up a carcass with a hand axe, revealed that the hand axe was able to expose bone marrow.
Kohn and Mithen independently arrived at the explanation that symmetric hand axes were favoured by sexual selection as fitness indicators. Kohn in his book As We Know It wrote that the hand axe is "a highly visible indicator of fitness, and so becomes a criterion of mate choice." Miller followed their example and said that hand axes have characteristics that make them subject to sexual selection, such as that they were made for over a million years throughout Africa, Europe and Asia, they were made in large numbers, and most were impractical for utilitarian use. He claimed that a single design persisting across time and space cannot be explained by cultural imitation and draws a parallel between bowerbirds' bowers and Pleistocene hominids' hand axes. He called hand axe building a "genetically inherited propensity to construct a certain type of object." He discards the idea that they were used as missile weapons because more efficient weapons were available, such as javelins. Although he accepted that some hand axes may have been used for practical purposes, he agreed with Kohn and Mithen who showed that many hand axes show considerable skill, design and symmetry beyond that needed for utility. Some were too big, such as the Maritime Academy handaxe or the "Great Hand Axe" found in Furze Platt, England that is 30.6 cm long. Some were too small - less than two inches. Some were "overdetermined", featuring symmetry beyond practical requirements and showing evidence of unnecessary attention to form and finish. Some were actually made out of bone instead of stone and thus were not very practical, suggesting a cultural or ritual use. Miller thinks that the most important clue is that under electron microscopy hand axes show no signs of use or evidence of edge wear. Others argue that little evidence for use-wear simply relates to the particular sedimentological conditions, rather than being evidence of discarding without use. It has been noted that hand axes can be good handicaps in Zahavi's handicap principle theory: learning costs are high, risks of injury, they require physical strength, hand-eye coordination, planning, patience, pain tolerance and resistance to infection from cuts and bruises when making or using such a hand axe.