The Enigmatic Handaxe: In Search of Idiosyncrasies in Bifacial Technology through Three-Dimensional Form

Abstract

Palaeolithic archaeology has experienced a dramatic shift from processual to post-processual theory in recent years. As a result we have begun to adjust our focus from interpreting the roles of groups of hominids to investigating the way in which ‘individual’ hominins had an impact on their societies. While some argue for a ‘bottom-up’ approach to the study of the Palaeolithic (Gamble and Gittens 2004), others are of the opinion that the study of ‘individual’ hominins is a goal beyond the resolution of the Palaeolithic archaeological record (e.g. Clark 1992). Perhaps more problematic is the current lack of a methodological framework that allows us to test our theoretical assumptions and interpret the social aspect of material culture beyond mere ‘naïve reconstructionism’ (Hopkinson and White 2005). With lithic assemblages being our most celebrated source of evidence for Palaeolithic societies, this paper presents the results from a new and innovative experiment that seeks to show whether these artefacts can be aributed to the individuals who made them. Using three-dimensional reconstruction of tool forms and a reflexive method of interpreting the data, this paper attempts to test the validity of the ‘bottom-up’ approach in a step towards new analytical techniques that may ask, and answer, new questions of Palaeolithic material culture.