Quantifying the Functional Utility of Handaxe Symmetry: An Experimental Butchery Approach
Anna Machin, Robert Hosfield, Steven Mithen, 2006. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000094. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © University of Reading unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
Anna
Machin
University of Reading
Whiteknights
PO Box 227
Reading
RG6 6AB
England
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 503
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000094
- How to cite using this DOI
Overview
History of the Originating Project
Acheulean handaxes are the most enigmatic artefacts from the Lower Palaeolithic and have been the source of widespread debate since their antiquity was first established over 150 years ago (Wynn 1995). Although commonly described as heavy duty butchery tools, many handaxes intuitively appear to be over-engineered for this purpose alone. Much of the debate has focused on the issue of symmetry, which appears to have been intentionally imposed on many handaxes during manufacture. This has been explained as a means to increase the efficiency of the handaxe as a butchery tool (Mitchell 1996, Simao 2001), as a by-product of raw material type and the bifacial knapping method (McPherron 2000, White 1998), as a form of sexual display (Kohn & Mithen 1999), as a marker within the landscape (Gamble 1999, Pope & Roberts 2005), and as an indication of an aesthetic sense in Early and Middle Pleistocene hominins (Edwards 2000, Pelegrin 1993).
This project aims to make a contribution to this debate by establishing the nature of the statistical relationship between, amongst other morphological variables, the degree of symmetry exhibited by a handaxe and its effectiveness as a butchery tool. If a positive relationship exists between symmetry and effectiveness, support can be given to those who argue that handaxes were primarily, or perhaps solely, subsistence tools. If no such relationship exists, then support will be given to those who argue that social, sexual or aesthetic factors may have been important influences on handaxe morphology. Previous experiments have addressed this topic (e.g. Jones 1980, Mitchell 1996, Schick & Toth 1993), but these have always been on the basis of small scale butchery (one or two carcasses) and reliant on the subjective assessment of the butcher (often an archaeologist with limited experience of butchery techniques). In contrast, this project has produced a dataset from a substantial programme of butchery carried out by two butchers and undertaken in experimentally controlled conditions.
Information about Methods
The experiments were designed to test the following hypothesis: Symmetry increases the effectiveness of a handaxe as a butchery tool. 'Effectiveness' can be measured in various ways. One might, for instance, wish to prioritise time and hence be concerned with the speed of a butchery event. Alternatively one might be concerned with the quality of the butchery process, although this is intrinsically difficult to quantify. We used both measures, recording the time taken for a series of butchery events relating to each carcass and asking our butchers to score the effectiveness of each handaxe as a butchery tool on seven ordinal scales relating to different measures of butchery quality and tool use.
The Experimental Assemblage
The experimental assemblage consisted of 60 ovate and cordiform handaxes of varying degrees of frontal (FS) and side (SS) symmetry. These had been randomly selected from a pool of 104 flint handaxes manufactured by John Lord. Using raw material sourced from the Lynford gravels, Norfolk, John was directed to produce an assemblage of handaxes which, in his opinion, were all capable of butchery (i.e. had a length of cutting edge) but exhibited variability in frontal and side symmetry. Thirty of these sixty handaxes (H1-H30) were randomly assigned to B1 and thirty (H31-H60) were randomly assigned to B2.
Content and Structure of Dataset
- Butcher 1 Handaxe Logs: Time logs for the use of handaxes H1-H30 by Butcher 1.
- Butcher 2 Handaxe Logs: Time logs for the use of handaxes H31-H60 by Butcher 2.
- Butcher 1 collated data: Summary morphological measurements, time and subjective scoring data for handaxes H1-H30.
- Butcher 2 collated data: Summary morphological measurements, time and subjective scoring data for handaxes H31-H60.
- Experimental Assemblage Photographs: JPEG images of the front and side profiles for handaxes H1-H60. Frontal views are designated as [Handaxe identifier]front.jpg and side views as [Handaxe identifier]side.jpg.
A more detailed explanation of the methods and results, together with a full bibliography, can be found in the .pdf file Dataset Methods and Description. This can be found on the downloads page.
