Tag Archives: Acheulian

Rift Valleys Acheulian Sites

The Western Rift Valley in January licensed under Creative Commons (http://earth.imagico.de/cc.php) The Rift Valleys of East Africa extend in a “Y” shape southward from the Red Sea in the north, through Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania to Zambia and Mozambique. Overall, … Continue reading

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A Handaxe From Isimila

The Isimila Acheulian Occupation Site in the Iringa Highlands of Tanzania was discovered in 1951 by  D.A Marclennanof  who on his way from Nairobi to Johannesburg collected some tools from the site. A first scientific report by Clarence van Riet … Continue reading

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Cordiform Handaxes during the Acheulian, MSA and the Middle Paleolithic

This is a small cordiform handaxe from Fontmaure The majority of handaxes can be easily classified according existing type-lists because there are only a finite number of possible technological solutions in the productions of bifacial tools. Cordiform Handaxes, which are … Continue reading

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Handaxe from the Draa Valley (Marocco)

The Sahara is rich in Palaeolithic resources and an enormous amount of material was collected during the nineteenth-century colonial explorations by the French military. Subsequent scientific expeditions have also shown the overwhelming presence of the Acheulian in much of the … Continue reading

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Middle Paleolithic from Scheden; Lower Saxony

This is a small (6 cm long) Handaxe from a field at Scheden (Southern Lower Saxony, near Dransfeld). In southern lower Saxony, between Kassel and Göttingen, there are numerous outcrops of middle and fine-grained Oligocene / Miocene quartzites on the Dransfeld … Continue reading

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Swanscombe during the Hoxnian

This handaxe (Length: 16cm, Width: 8.5cm) was found in the Middle Gravels at “Barnfield Pit”, Swanscombe, Kent; UK on the 1st February 1934. Barnfield pit lies on the southern edge of the lower Thames Basin, 5 km east of Dartfort. … Continue reading

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Trihedrals in the Acheulian of Africa and Europe

  This is an African trihedral quartzite pick hand-axe (16 cm long) exhibiting wind gloss and desert varnish, found in 1976 in the Grand Erg Oriental in Algeria by a Friend who has already passed away. In Africa Acheulian stone … Continue reading

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Handaxe complexes of the Levant

This is a flat handaxe, dating from the younger Acheulian or Acheulo-Yabrudian from N-Syria found during the 1960ies. The data base from the Levant includes 239 Acheulian sites from Syria, 33 sites from Lebanon and 137 sites from Israel. Most … Continue reading

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Black Basalt Handaxe

Our prehistoric ancestors were constantly looking for stone. As soon as ancient hominids started to use stone tools on a regular basis, some 2.6 million years ago and most probably even earlier than that, the search for their stone became … Continue reading

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St Acheul again and again

This is a handaxe from the typesite of St. Acheul, found in 1889. Some handaxes of this series are shown in the Musée d’Archéologie nationale et Domaine national de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It took more than 100 yrs to establish the absolute dating … Continue reading

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