ABSTRACT
One of the strangest enigmas of prehistory is a thing called a handaxe. I have before me, as I write, a replica made for me to order by the professional stone knapper, John Lord (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). It is a thing of great beauty, consummate craftsmanship and no obvious practical use at all. Of a size and shape that fits perfectly to the palm and outstretched fingers of an adult hand, I like just to hold it and feel its weight and texture. Wrought from a nodule of black flint, with some residual traces of white cortex, its form is of what prehistorians call a biface: that is, it has two convex faces, one bulging slightly more than the other, which meet around an edge that tapers from a thick butt towards a rounded tip. The two faces bear the scars of the technique by which it was made, involving the successive removal of flakes from an original core. This technique exploits the property of conchoidal fracture, that is, the tendency of flint to break off in slivers, issuing from a bulb-shaped cone at the point of impact, when struck at an oblique angle near a protruding edge. Since the ventral surface of each sliver is slightly convex, it leaves its mark on the core as an elongated concavity. Once the face is fully flaked, these concavities intersect to form an irregular pattern of well-defined ridges. The edge at which the two faces converge is surprisingly sharp, and has been trimmed through the addition of further serrations made by applying pressure through a punch of softer and less brittle material such as wood or antler. Replica Acheulean handaxe, made by John Lord, face up. (Courtesy of Susanna Ingold.) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203559055/36525f38-dc19-4161-9a91-f23deb32d346/content/fig3_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> The same handaxe, edge up. (Courtesy of Susanna Ingold.) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203559055/36525f38-dc19-4161-9a91-f23deb32d346/content/fig3_2_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
