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Results for cleaver:

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cleaver

CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A heavy, large core or flake tool of the Palaeolithic period, typically having a wide, straight cutting edge at one end, like a modern ax head. Technologically it is related to the handax, and is often found as a component of Acheulian (esp. Upper Acheulian) handax industries. The sharp transverse cutting edge was almost always notched by use but never sharpened. Along with bifacial tools, it was one of the main instruments of Homo erectus. It is found mainly in Africa, where much of the flake surface is left unretouched. The axlike knife was used since the Middle Pleistocene era to cut through animal bone and meat.

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Ambrona

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic site in Soria, central Spain, first discovered before World War II. Ambrona probably dates 300,000-400,000 years ago, from the end of the Mindel glacial period. Its occupants hunted elephants, deer, and bovines though the horse was the most common animal in the area. There are stone hand axes, scrapers, and cleavers of the Acheulian type and similar to some African sites were made from chalcedony, quartzite, quartz, and limestone. Points were fashioned from young elephant tusks. Pieces of charcoal show that fire was used.

Bhimbetka

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large series of Palaeolithic-to-present rock shelters with rich deposits and rock art, close to Bhopal, India. A succession of Acheulian handaxes, cleavers, and Levallois tools are preceded by Middle Palaeolithic blades, Upper Palaeolithic bladelets, and then a Mesolithic bladelet and grinding lithic assemblage, and finally by copper tools and Chalcolithic pottery. The Mesolithic industry has dates of 6000-1000 BC and the rock art is of the Mesolithic and later. The rock art is painted in a range of colors and there are human and animal figures, some in hunting, warfare, or ceremony scenes. Petroglyphs have been found in a shelter.

Isimila

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Tanzania that may have been occupied about 250,000 years ago. The most distinctive tools are hand axes and cleavers of African Acheulian type, but two other assemblage types are found, one with picks and the other with small retouched tools.

Olorgesailie

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Lower Palaeolithic site south of Nairobi in southern Kenya; the area of Mount Olorgesailie was where the Rift Valley was first recognized. It had an informative Earlier Stone Age Acheulian industry with hand axes, cleavers, and other stone artifacts dating to 900,000-700,000 years ago. Baboons were hunted in large numbers.

Patjitanian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Pleistocene chopper-chopping tool culture from Java characterized by coarse flakes in the shape of cleavers, known from a very prolific site in south central Java. In the Patjitanian, the main types of implements consist of single-edged choppers and chopping tools that occur in association with primitive flakes with unprepared, high-angle striking platforms. There are also pointed, bifacial implements that have been described as crude hand axes.

Peninj

SYNONYM: Peninj mandible, Natron mandible
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site west of Lake Natron, 50 miles (80 km) north of Olduvai in Tanzania, were an almost perfectly preserved fossil hominid jaw with a complete set of adult teeth was found. The specimen was assigned to Australopithecus boisei, c 1.5 million years old. The artifacts belonged to the Acheulian industry, including stone cleavers and hand axes.

saex

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In Old English, a single-edged knife or cleaver; examples are commonly found in Saxon and Anglo-Saxon graves. Continental versions have a curving back while English types (late 6th century AD and later) are straight-backed with an angle near the point.

Sangoan

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Stone tool industry or complex of Sango Bay in Uganda on Lake Victoria, a Mainly Middle Pleistocene series of assemblages containing heavy-duty picks (core axes), handaxes, scrapers, finely flaked lanceolate points, cleavers, and small specialized tools. The Sangoan may have developed from a late Acheulian basis, and which was roughly contemporary with the Mousterian of Europe, dating to 100,000-20,000 BP. The term is loosely applied to a rather heterogeneous group of industries in eastern and south-central Africa, and perhaps in West Africa, also. The most informative site for the composition and sequence of Sangoan industries is at Kalambo Falls, Zambia. In several regions of Zaire and neighboring countries, the Sangoan appears to mark the first human settlement of the low-lying country now occupied by the equatorial forest.

Ternifine

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Acheulian site in Algeria, east of Oran, with three well-preserved jaws of Homo erectus type, along with numerous stone tools including handaxes and cleavers. The fauna is regarded as Middle Pleistocene.

Torralba

SYNONYM: Torralba and Ambrona
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Lower Palaeolithic lakeside site in the Spanish province of Soria. Torralba and the nearby site of Ambrona have Acheulian tools (cleavers, flake tools, handaxes) and the remains of dismembered elephants and horses. The sites are of the Middle Pleistocene, c 300,000-700,000 BP. Traces of fire are amongst the earliest known, possibly c 0.4 million years ago.