Handaxe

Object

Flint tool

Production date

400,000 BC = 150,000 BC

Object number

1991.383

Physical Description

Flint, handaxe. Ficron type. Palaeolithic.

Object history

Worthington George Smith writing in 1888 descibes 'The largest and heaviest implements found in the Valley of the Lea are now in the collection of Mr. J. E. Greenhill, of Clapton; the largest is from the Lea Bridge Road, and measures 11 1/8 inches by 4 1/2 inches,
and weighs 3 lbs. Mr. Greenhill has a second implement from the Heighten Road, Clapton, which measures 8 inches X 41/4 inches, and also weighs 3 lbs.'

This axe is of similar dimensions to the first axe, so it could be from Lea Bridge Road. However, when weighed it was closer to 2 lbs 11 oz. Either way, it is clearly a very large example of a handaxe.

Personal experiences

"It is a special kind of handaxe.
This is the kind of handaxe that we call a ficron. You get them in this country about 300,000 thousand years ago, when people were making handaxes like this. It’s different from the other handaxes because it is not an oval shape, it’s a very pointy shape. You can see its got a very round butt that’s not very worked at all. And then on the tip they have worked really hard to flake it and create this very thin narrow tip on it.
These are interesting because you don’t see other handaxes like this. They are also a bit strange because we are not sure ow useful they would have been? How they would have been used? You can say they probably held it at the bottom and used it as a knife, or a weapon. But it would have broken quite easily using it like that. We’re not sure.
You get some really big ones. This one’s quite big but you get some much bigger ones. We’re not sure why. We don’t know whether people were just trying to compete with each other, who could make the biggest, pointiest handaxe? Or if there was some specific way of using these that we are just not seeing yet."

Associated Person

Joseph Exhall Greenhill (Archaeologist)

Dimension

Width: 280mm

Exhibition Label

From ‘Hackney 300,000 BC: Meet the Neanderthal neighbours and curious creatures of the borough's Old Stone Age’

A Work of Art?

Handaxes suggest that the toolmakers of the Old Stone Age had an appreciation of design and ‘beauty’.

Handaxes often show far more skill, symmetry and size than needed for them to simply be a useful tool. In some cases, handaxes are so large that they would be impractical to use at all.

Some archaeologists have proposed that handaxes were a way of showing off the maker’s knowledge and skill for status - or maybe even to attract a member of the opposite sex.