![]() This means a handaxe requires a sawing motion to cut effectively. This gives the edge a serrated cutting margin, instead of a straight one like a kitchen knife. Handaxes are often flaked on both sides or faces, making them “bifacial” (two-faced). However, in truth, it is far more likely they were used as butchery tools and worked in the same way as a modern butcher's saw knife (similar to a bread knife). The handaxe is often labelled as a multi-function tool that could be used for a variety of activities, from digging, smashing bones to displays of sexual prowess (Ohel 1987 Murray 2017 Kohn & Mithen 1999). ![]() Therefore it is quite possible many artefacts were more than just a cutting tool or similar, but we will probably never know. Due to the extreme age of many Palaeolithic artefacts, those intimate connections have long since been lost. We see this commonly in modern society connected to objects and tools such as carpenters who have a favourite chisel or archaeologists favouring a trowel that has arguably seen better days. As with many prehistoric tools, it is likely that a degree of non-functional agency developed over generations such as myths, folk tales and belief/religious significance of some kind. Though simplified, this kind of approach can be applied to prehistoric tools, though experimental archaeology is sometimes needed to determine a tool’s use beforehand. Their toolkit is very different to that of a plumber, and a plumber’s tools can tell us some of the activities they engaged with during their working day. From a modern perspective, a hairdresser has a distinctive set of tools many of which have changed little in generations. ![]() Clearly we can infer information about the lifestyles of these early humans through the tools they left behind. Some of these tools remained in the human toolkit for hundreds of thousands of years, this raises questions on human reliance on existing technology or a reluctance to use different tool types. In an attempt to avoid this becoming a multi-volume book series on Palaeolithic tool technology, I explore some of the iconic tools from the Old Stone Age. ![]()
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