Editorial: Chronology, palaeoenvironments and subsistence in the Acheulean of western Europe
Résumé
The handaxe is an iconic object in European prehistory. The first discovery (a flint handaxe) was in 1679 in the Grays Inn Road in central London, followed in the late 18th century by the pioneering work of John Frere at Hoxne (Suffolk, eastern England, Fig. 1; Frere, 1800). In the next century, Jacques Boucher de Perthes (1847) made important discoveries of handaxes in the gravels of the River Somme around Abbeville (northern France). His work inspired a distinguished group of British visitors, namely Hugh Falconer, Joseph Prestwich, John Evans and John Lubbock (later Lord Avebury), whom he convinced that these artefacts were manufactured by primitive humans who lived at the time when the gravels were being deposited (see Bridgland and White, 2015). This established an Anglo-French collaboration that continues to this day and is reflected in this Special Issue. Key contributions in the 19th and 20th centuries to the study and understanding of handaxes were made on both sides of the English Channel. In France, Gabriel de Mortillet (1883) was the first to establish nomenclature for these characteristic implements, followed by Victor Commont (1906, 1908), who established the importance of St-Acheul, in the Somme valley, eventually the type locality for the handaxe industries. Subsequent work by François Bordes (1961) erected an influential typological classification of handaxe varieties. In England (see Bridgland and White, 2015), Derek Roe (1968a, b) made an exhaustive study of handaxe occurrences and variability, while John Wymer (1968, 1985, 1999) also documented find-spots, particularly in fluvial contexts, and was responsible for his own typological classification.
Origine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
---|