Acheulean

The Acheulean, or mode 2 industry, is a lithic industry originating in the Lower Paleolithic. It is also known as acheliense or acheulense.

Dating

The Oldovaan period (or mode 1 industry) is estimated to have appeared in East Africa 2.5 million years ago, while the mode 2 industry originated at least 1.65 million years ago according to the oldest remains found in the western Lake Turkana region (in Kenya). Acheulean technology first spread through the Rift Valley and East Africa, as evidenced, for example, by finds in Layer II of the Olduvai site in Tanzania and the Konso region in the southern Ethiopia, dating to about 1.5 million years ago. It is characterized by bifaces, cleavers (a biface that has been given an oblique blow) and by a more complex elaboration, being able to be divided into several phases of improvement. Its first use is attributed to Homo ergaster.

History of discoveries

John Frere is considered to have been the first to suggest an early dating of Acheulean bifaces. In 1797 he sent from Hoxne (in Suffolk) two examples to the Royal Academy (in London). Frere had found bones of extinct animals in the lake deposits where he found these bifaces and concluded that they had been made by people unaware of the use of metal, in a very ancient period. His ideas were ignored by his contemporaries, still with a pre-Darwinian mindset of human evolution.

Bifaz achelense from Saint-Acheul (France).

Later, between 1836 and 1846, the customs clerk and antiquities collector Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes wrote papers about his collection of bifaces and fossil animal bones collected from the gravel terraces of the River Somme near Abbeville (in the north of France). Again, he attributed a great antiquity to these finds, which was rejected by the scientific community of the time, until one of the main opponents, Dr. Jean Paul Rigollot, found more tools near Saint Acheul (Picardy). Thanks to investigations at both sites by geologist Joseph Prestwich, the great antiquity of these tools was finally accepted.

It was in 1925 that the name associated with this industry, more concisely described by Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet in 1872, was renamed Acheulean (after Saint Acheul, the Rigollot site).

Technology

The Acheulean is characterized for being the first lithic culture to have bifaces in its typology. This main innovation, associated with Acheulean hand axes and cleavers, is that the stone was worked symmetrically on both sides of the flake.

Types of tools in Acheulean assemblages include points, hand axes, cleavers, retouched flake tools, scrapers, and segments. The materials used were determined by the types of local stone; thus, in Africa igneous and sedimentary rocks, such as basalt, were the most widely used, while flint is associated with tools found in Western Europe. Among other materials, chalcedony, quartzite, andesite, sandstone, quartz and schist were used. Even relatively soft rocks such as limestone were used.

In all cases the toolmakers crafted their hand axes with raw materials from nearby locations, suggesting that the Acheulean was a set of skills transferred between different groups.

Some of the smaller tools were made from fragments left over from stone cores. Characteristic of the Acheulean is the manufacture of secondary tools with the residues of the primary work on the core. Such a feature suggests a more complex technique, which required the toolmaker to plan or know the step-by-step sequence that needed to be followed to create multiple tools in one process.

A hard hammer was used to outline the shape of the primary tool by removing large scales. The larger fragments could be reused to create other tools. The fabricator worked around the stone core, separating small fragments symmetrically on each face. The mark created by removing the previous fragment served as a platform for the blow that cut the next one. Although hammering errors or defects in the material used could cause problems, the specialist toolmaker could overcome them.

As a smooth shape was created, smaller fragments were removed, which was done with a soft, bone hammer, for example. Light hammering required more careful preparation of the platform to ensure that the hammer did not slip when struck, and that it was polished with a coarse stone. The final shaping of the useful cutting edge of the tool was then applied by finely removing minor scales. Some Acheulean tools however were sharpened by the removal of a tranchet fragment. This is done by striking from the side edge of the hand ax close to the intended cutting area, resulting in the removal of a flake that runs along and parallel to the ax blade to create a clean, highly polished working edge. sharp. The distinctive surviving fragments of this fine work have been termed a tranchet and have been identified among the remains of stone carving at Acheulean sites.

Scatter

The following is a summary of the lower and upper limits of the appearance of cultures (as dictated by the archaeological record) in different areas of the world.

Africa

There are a series of sites located in the vicinity of Lake Turkana, in Kenya that correspond to the oldest Acheulean lithic instruments. The nature of the archaeological record in these places, and the dating associated with it, is controversial, since in these settlements there are mixed Olduvayan and Acheulean remains, which show, in part, the transition between the two cultures. The majority opinion is that the Acheulean appears in these places 1.65 million years ago, although others push these dates back to 1.8 million years. Regarding the last remains found, they can be located around 0.18 million years, in Zambia.

Middle East

Although the Near Eastern area was settled about 2 million years ago (in Riwat, northern Pakistan), the Acheulean first appeared 1.4 million years ago. Specifically, at the Ubeidiya site (in Israel), and its presence was confirmed until at least 200,000 years ago, in Holon, also in Israel. Acheulean remains have also been found in Pakistan and Syria (700,000 to 500,000 BCE), as well as other parts of the Near East. But the vast majority of remains from the entire interval between 1.4 and 0.2 million years come from Israel, which is the region where most has been excavated.

Asian

Although Asia is normally divided into various geographical sub-areas, which coincide to a greater or lesser extent with the archaeological sub-areas of interest (such as the Indonesian area, the Indian area, or the Chinese area). Treating it as a whole, it can be said that the oldest remains of the Acheulean period in Asia have been found in India, in Attiramapakkam (Tamil Nadu state), dating back at least one million years, with an average age 1.51 (±0.07) million years old and in Isampur (Hunsgi valley, Karnataka state), which could date from 1.27 million years ago.

In southern China, in Guangxi-Zhuang, Acheulean tools dating back 0.8 million years have been found. The most recent are located in Ngandong (Indonesia), between 51,000 and 25,000 BC. C. During all this course of time, Acheulean remains have been located, above all, both in China and in India.

Europe

In Europe, the Acheulean made its appearance about 900,000 or 800,000 years ago, identified in 2022 in the Black Cave near Caravaca de la Cruz (Murcia, Spain) A 600,000-year-old hand ax had previously been located (in Fordwich, England), which represents the Abbevillense, the name given to a first stage of Acheulean in Europe. Its latest dating is estimated between 125,000 and 70,000 years in Cys-la-Comune (Aisne, France). In all this interval of time, there are, above all, Acheulean remains in Spain, England, Italy and Germany.

Typology

Bifaz achelense of 200 000 years a. p. found in Madrid (Spain).

Its panoply varies throughout the entire sequence: on the one hand we would have the nuclear industry (fundamentally, core and carved edge); the bifacial industry (trihedron, biface and, in the western Mediterranean, also cleavers); finally, the so-called tools on flakes, often associated with certain «type lists» (with scrapers, notches and denticulates, and tools from the Upper Paleolithic group, among others). Due to variations in the types, techniques and percentages of these industries, a classic sequence has been established that divides the Acheulean into three stages: lower, middle and higher.

Traditionally, two other phases were added to these three phases at both ends: the Abbevillian and the Micoquian. Both one and the other were characterized by the types of bifaces: the Abbevillian had very crude bifaces, carved with a hard hammer by means of large lacquers, with large reserved areas and without regularization of edges. The Micoquian had balanced lanceolate bifaces with slightly concave edges, carved almost exclusively with a soft hammer and intensely regularized, especially in the area of the tip. They accompanied the Micoquian hand ax in this industry, the cordate hand ax, scrapers and other tools that were developed, above all, in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.

Today, these two phases have been abandoned, encompassed respectively in the lower and upper Acheulean. Located in situ only in the eponymous places, and little else, today they have been eliminated as autonomous cultures and there is a tendency to consider them only as an adjective that qualifies a certain type of bifaces. Here, for these types of bifaces, the denomination: "abbevillense style biface" and "Micoquian style biface" will be preserved, without this presupposing any type of chronological affiliation.

Chronologically, the Acheulean would develop from around 600,000 years ago to around 200,000 to 150,000 years ago. Its correlation with some Alpine glaciation is complex, since, except for the Würm glaciation, there is no consensus on its dating. In any case, it could be said that it coincides with part of the Günz-Mindel interglacial, with the Mindel glaciation, the Mindel-Riss interglacial and with the first phases of the Riss glaciation.

Regarding the V28-V38 isotopic stages, a correlation is proposed in the table, collected after collating numerous bibliographies. It is only a proposal to clarify the division into these phases, which in fact is arbitrary, and the passage from one to the other is gradual. In any case, stages 15, 13, 11, 9 and 7 are considered as transition stages between the indicated chronocultural phases.

Lower Acheulean

Lower Acheulean seems to start with Abbevillian. Subsequently, the bifacial axes were refined and elliptical axes of bifacial cut appeared, more or less flat (limands). The flake tools begin to develop and some rough tips appear.

This period takes place in the Mindel-Riss interglacial (300,000 to 200,000 BC), of long duration, and warm climate, although later the Riss glaciation wiped out most of the deposits.

Middle Acheulean

The middle Acheulean contributes a great variety in flat bifacial axes, limandes, lanceolate, amygdaloid, etc.

There are many tools in flakes, and thousands of them have also been located from the carvings. The flake tooling is abundant: various types of scrapers, points, denticulated tools, perforators, etc.

In the central zone of Spain (specifically in Torralba, near Medinaceli) there seem to be hatchets with flakes with an African influence, which would indicate that while in the north the population arrived in successive transfers from France, in the center and south it could arrive from Africa, or from France and Africa simultaneously. In this central Spanish zone, several remains of Elephas antiquus skeletons have been found along with the hunters' tools.

The Middle Acheulean developed during most of the Riss Ice Age (200,000 to 125,000 BCE). The traces of fire, which has now become very necessary, multiply.

Upper Acheulean

The Upper Acheulean begins late in the Riss Glaciation (perhaps around 140,000 BC), continuing into the Riss-Würm interglacial (125,000-100,000 BC), ending already in the First Würmian period (started 100,000 BCE).

The bifacial axes are of a highly evolved type, lanceolate, with a finely retouched tip and rectilinear lateral edges. There are other varieties (amygdaloid, cordiform...) and finds from this period are found in England, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and France.