Abbevillian industry,
prehistoric stone-tool
tradition generally considered to represent the oldest occurrence
in Europe of a bifacial (hand-ax) technology. The Abbevillian
industry dates from an imprecisely determined part of the Middle
Pleistocene, somewhat less than 700,000 years ago. It was recovered
from high terrace sediments of the lower Somme valley, in a
suburb of Abbeville, Fr. The distinctive stone tools include
massive core-tools (hand-axes), bifacially flaked, with deep
flake scars and sinuous or jagged edges, along with thick, usually
unretouched, flakes. The assemblage is usually considered closely
related to the
Acheulian industry and
may, in fact, represent merely a variant or temporal expression
of it. See also Acheulian
industry.
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Related Propaedia Topics:
Inferred behavioral characteristics; e.g., use of tools, language and related symbolic behaviour, social organization