The Acheulian of Western Europe

Bibliographic Data

ID20082269
AuthorsManuel Santonja (0000-0001-5848-9011), P Villa (0000-0002-9831-5443)
Year2024
Pages429-478
Publication date2024-10-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueAxe Age (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781003579595-25
OpenAlexW4403893112
ISBN9781003579595
LanguageEN
Citations received7

In the current state of knowledge, the European distribution ofAcheulian industries that include handaxes and cleavers appears to be centered in southwestern Europe; their maximum northward expansion reaches England and Germany. North of latitude 52° and east of Germany and Italy, handaxe industries are conspicuously absent, occurring only sporadically in southeastern Europe Elandaxe industries are again well documented in western Asia, from Georgia to Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, clearly indicating an East African origin. The gap between eastern and western Eurasia and the high density of finds in the Iberian Peninsula suggests that the Acheulian in southwestern Europe may derive from the Maghreb, notwithstanding the lack of direct evidence for the crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar. In the Spanish Meseta the geological formations containing Acheulian industries are dated to the time range of OIS 11 to 6. The chronological gap between the earlier human occupation sites at Gran Dolina and in the Orce region and the Spanish Acheulian (an interval of about 300-400,000 years) would seem to reflect an earlier settlement in warm-temperate Europe that did not take a strong hold. The distribution of cleavers coincides only partly with that of Acheulian handaxes. Cleavers are most abundant in regions in which the raw material occurs in the form of large quartzite cobbles that do not need extensive decortication and shaping prior to the removal of large flakes, as in the Spanish Meseta and the Garonne and Tarn valleys of southwestern France. Elsewhere (northern France, England, Italy), cleavers also occur in different raw materials (flint or limestone) but are not common. In Spain, the transition from Acheulian industries to assemblages characterized by the Levallois method without large cutting tools may be as old as 300 ka, based on the age of stratigraphic units TD 10 and 11 at Gran Dolina. However, the evidence from open-air sites suggests a possible coexistence of industries traditionally called Upper Acheulian and others included in the Mousterian complex up to the end of the Middle Pleistocene. In northern France and adjacent countries (Belgium, the Netherlands), assemblages containing rare bifaces and Levallois debitage occur during OIS 8, broadly contemporaneous with assemblages containing bifaces and non-Levallois debitage. The Levallois method is well documented from OIS 7 onward

Archaeology · Geography · Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies · Geological Formations and Processes Exploration · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

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