Dr. H. L. Movius has emphasized that the tools which were found in the
Peking cave with Peking man belong to the chopper-tool tradition. This
is the only case as yet where the tools and the man have been found
together from very earliest times--if we except Sterkfontein.
DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE TOOL-MAKING TRADITIONS
The latter three great traditions in the manufacture of stone
tools--and the less clear-cut pebble tools before them--are all we have
to show of the cultures of the men of those times. Changes happened in
each of the traditions. As time went on, the tools in each tradition
were better made. There could also be slight regional differences in
the tools within one tradition. Thus, tools with small differences, but
all belonging to one tradition, can be given special group (facies)
names.
This naming of special groups has been going on for some time. Here are
some of these names, since you may see them used in museum displays
of flint tools, or in books. Within each tradition of tool-making
(save the chopper tools), the earliest tool type is at the bottom
of the list, just as it appears in the lowest beds of a geological
stratification.[3]
[3] Archeologists usually make their charts and lists with the
earliest materials at the bottom and the latest on top, since
this is the way they find them in the ground.
Chopper tool (all about equally early):
Anyathian (Burma)
Choukoutienian (China)
Patjitanian (Java)
Soan (India)
Flake:
“Typical Mousterian”
Levalloiso-Mousterian
Levalloisian
Tayacian
Clactonian (localized in England)
Core-biface:
Some blended elements in “Mousterian”
Micoquian (= Acheulean 6 and 7)
Acheulean
Abbevillian (once called “Chellean”)
Pebble tool:
Oldowan
Ain Hanech
pre-Stellenbosch
Kafuan
The core-biface and the flake traditions appear in the chart (p. 65).
The early archeologists had many of the tool groups named before they
ever realized that there were broader tool preparation traditions. This
was understandable, for in dealing with the mixture of things that come
out of glacial gravels the easiest thing to do first is to isolate
individual types of tools into groups. First you put a bushel-basketful
of tools on a table and begin matching up types. Then you give names to
the groups of each type. The groups and the types are really matters of
the archeologists’ choice; in real life, they were probably less exact
than the archeologists’ lists of them. We now know pretty well in which
of the early traditions the various early groups belong.
THE MEANING OF THE DIFFERENT TRADITIONS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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