THE ACHEULEAN INDUSTRY
Both in France and in Palestine, as well as in some African cave sites, the next layers in the deep caves have an industry in both the core-biface and the flake traditions. The core-biface tools usually make up less than half of all the tools in the industry. However, the name of the biface type of tool is generally given to the whole industry. It is called the Acheulean, actually a late form of it, as “Acheulean” is also used for earlier core-biface tools taken from the glacial gravels. In western Europe, the name used is Upper Acheulean or Micoquian. The same terms have been borrowed to name layers E and F in the Tabun cave, on Mount Carmel in Palestine.
The Acheulean core-biface type of tool is worked on two faces so as to give a cutting edge all around. The outline of its front view may be oval, or egg-shaped, or a quite pointed pear shape. The large chip-scars of the Acheulean core-bifaces are shallow and flat. It is suspected that this resulted from the removal of the chips with a wooden club; the deep chip-scars of the earlier Abbevillian core-biface came from beating the tool against a stone anvil. These tools are really the best and also the final products of the core-biface tradition. We first noticed the tradition in the early glacial gravels ([p. 43]); now we see its end, but also its finest examples, in the deeper cave levels.
The flake tools, which really make up the greater bulk of this industry, are simple scrapers and chips with sharp cutting edges. The habits used to prepare them must have been pretty much the same as those used for at least one of the flake industries we shall mention presently.
There is very little else in these early cave layers. We do not have a proper “industry” of bone tools. There are traces of fire, and of animal bones, and a few shells. In Palestine, there are many more bones of deer than of gazelle in these layers; the deer lives in a wetter climate than does the gazelle. In the European cave layers, the animal bones are those of beasts that live in a warm climate. They belonged in the last interglacial period. We have not yet found the bones of fossil men definitely in place with this industry.
ACHEULEAN BIFACE